Seismic waves generated by a meteorite impact on the other side of Mars from where NASA's InSight lander sits have provided new clues about the Red Planet's deep interior, prompting scientists to reappraise the anatomy of Earth's planetary neighbor.
View of the InSight's seismometer on the Martian surface, in one of the last images taken by NASA's InSight Mars lander, on December 11, 2022. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via REUTERS/File Photofrom where NASA's InSight lander sits have provided new clues about the Red Planet's deep interior, prompting scientists to reappraise the anatomy of Earth's planetary neighbor.- vary in speed and shape when journeying through different material inside a planet.
The behavior of the waves indicated that previous assessments of the Martian interior were missing something - the presence of a molten silicate layer about 90 miles thick surrounding the core. This molten region sits at the bottom of the interior portion of the planet called the mantle. "The molten and partially molten layer is essentially composed of silicates that are enriched in iron and in radioactive heat-producing elements compared to the overlying solid mantle," said Henri Samuel, a planetary scientist with the French national research organization CNRS working at Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris and lead author of the
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