Cool Pictures 11: If You're Cool And You Know It Clap Your Hands
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tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
Oh, we wants it, preciousss, yes we doesss...
Morty
Prince
What's the theory on it's creation @hobbsyoyo ? Tectonic movement, river/water erosion??
hobbsyoyo
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There was a massive river that ran through there. Mars does not have tectonic plates - or if it does, they are not and likely have never been mobile like the Earth's. Although to be honest, that 'never been' is highly debatable as we don't have enough information to definitively prove that.
Anyways, the fact that there aren't plates moving around meant that stuff like this and Olympus Mons (one of the biggest volcanoes in the solar system) got absolutely huge because they didn't move around and get disrupted in their formation. In the case of the valley, that river ran through there likely for a billion years or something crazy. Same for the volcano which sat over the exact same hotspot without moving for similar timescales. The Hawaiian islands are a good example of how tectonic forces break up things like giant volcanoes. That island chain is a long arc of extinct volcanoes that moved off the hotspot, stopped growing and started eroding. Olympus Mons sat there feeding on magma until the magma dried up.
Edit: While there was a river there, see following post for more accurate information.
Anyways, the fact that there aren't plates moving around meant that stuff like this and Olympus Mons (one of the biggest volcanoes in the solar system) got absolutely huge because they didn't move around and get disrupted in their formation. In the case of the valley, that river ran through there likely for a billion years or something crazy. Same for the volcano which sat over the exact same hotspot without moving for similar timescales. The Hawaiian islands are a good example of how tectonic forces break up things like giant volcanoes. That island chain is a long arc of extinct volcanoes that moved off the hotspot, stopped growing and started eroding. Olympus Mons sat there feeding on magma until the magma dried up.
Edit: While there was a river there, see following post for more accurate information.
Last edited:
Morty
Prince
Ta! As a complete non-expert I looked at it and immediately thought of tectonics and rift valleys - a bit like Great Rift Valley in Africa....that sort of thing.
hobbsyoyo
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I looked it up and there are tectonic theories for formation. Essentially some people think that the crust is pretty thin in that area and tectonic plates sort of tried to form and tugged at the area but the process eventually stopped. There are also theories about magma subsiding below the surface and causing the crack. Most of the theories agree that water played a big role in widening and deepening the fissure even if water wasn't the primary cause. According to wikipedia, the leading theory is that it is a rift valley that was widened by water erosion so you were right.
Obviously in the strait of Corinth.
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