NEW YORK, BRONX (ORDO News) — Mars, it seems, is not as lifeless as we are used to seeing it. Recent events captured by NASA‘s InSight spacecraft have lifted this Red Planet from a world of cold, barren wasteland.
Using a seismometer on the InSight lander, which remained operational until late last year, scientists recorded something surprising: a magnitude 4.7 “marsquake” dubbed S1222a. Not only was this event the largest on Mars, it was larger than more than 1,300 other (combined) tremors detected by InSight.
Researchers initially speculated that the event could have been caused by a meteorite hitting the surface, but more thorough investigation ruled out this possibility. This confirms that Mars appears to have significant seismic activity, which was expected.
Scientists previously predicted the possibility of recording earthquakes with a magnitude of up to 5 points recorded by InSight. And the results confirm their hypotheses.
“This is a welcome confirmation that the estimates were not grossly off,” said Benjamin Fernando of the University of Oxford, who led the study. “Mars does have these pretty strong marsquakes. 4.7 on Earth wouldn’t destroy your house, but you’d probably notice it.”
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