Nasa’s InSight Lander Captures Audio of First Likely ‘Quake’ on Mars
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Re: Nasa’s InSight Lander Captures Audio of First Likely ‘Quake’ on Mars
#2Marsquake.
Re: Nasa’s InSight Lander Captures Audio of First Likely ‘Quake’ on Mars
#3"In contrast, Earth’s surface is quivering constantly from seismic noise created by oceans and weather."
Fascinating, I wouldn't have thought these would be measurable on a large area's scale.
Re: Nasa’s InSight Lander Captures Audio of First Likely ‘Quake’ on Mars
#4Much like the Mars probes, the pre-2014 MATLAB color scheme is certainly an staunch survivor!
Re: Nasa’s InSight Lander Captures Audio of First Likely ‘Quake’ on Mars
#5Interesting, I didn't know that quakes could still occur without tectonic activity. The explanation makes sense, but I had just never thought about it.
Re: Nasa’s InSight Lander Captures Audio of First Likely ‘Quake’ on Mars
#6"In contrast, Earth’s surface is quivering constantly from seismic noise created by oceans and weather." Fascinating, I wouldn't have thought these would be measurable on a large area's scale.
This omnipresent seismic noise is also a big challenge for building terrestrial gravitational wave detectors like LIGO. Even though the noise is "only" a bunch micrometers of movement, they had to deploy multiple levels of noise suppression to be able to measure gravitational waves: https://youtu.be/j4gE-hSQm68?t=1380
Re: Nasa’s InSight Lander Captures Audio of First Likely ‘Quake’ on Mars
#7The article states definitively that Mars does not have tectonic plates. This is news to me because hitherto I thought there is no evidence either way.
Re: Nasa’s InSight Lander Captures Audio of First Likely ‘Quake’ on Mars
#8Much like the Mars probes, the pre-2014 MATLAB color scheme is certainly an staunch survivor!
Come on, like Nasa isn't going to use the Jet color scheme ...
Re: Nasa’s InSight Lander Captures Audio of First Likely ‘Quake’ on Mars
#9Sounds a bit like a rockfall to me, perhaps nearby? The slow buildup and slower subsidence of the sound intuitively fits what I would expect for a rockfall, and also we know there are rockfalls on the surface of Mars. It would be neat if that could be corroborated with surface evidence of a rockfall (I think a few have even been captured by satellite!)
Impulsive quakes on Earth have a characteristic waveform which this does not match: The arrival of a compression wave, followed by a larger shear wave. That waveform wouldn't be much different on another planet, since the shape of the waveform arises from the mechanical properties of rock. If it were not a rockfall, it would have to correspond more to a seismic tremor, which happens more slowly-- I know less about those and I am curious how this matches up.
Having multiple stations would really help to narrow down what the source of sounds like this could be.
Re: Nasa’s InSight Lander Captures Audio of First Likely ‘Quake’ on Mars
#10Pedantry: "audio of first likely 'quake' on Mars" is unlikely. But "first likely audio of a 'quake' on Mars", sure.