Artificial Intelligence has just helped astronomers discover a new crater on the surface of Mars that has revealed a long-hidden secret.
New findings reveal that meteoroids striking Mars produce seismic signals that can reach deeper than previously known. The details are the result of joint work by Nasa Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the now-dead InSight lander, which had its ears to the ground listening for aftershocks.
In a series of two papers, published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), scientists observed how seismic waves from those quakes change as they travel through the planet’s crust, mantle, and core.
Scientists have now got a glimpse into Mars’ interior, as well as a better understanding of how all rocky worlds form, including Earth and its Moon.
“We used to think the energy detected from the vast majority of seismic events was stuck travelling within the Martian crust. This finding shows a deeper, faster path — call it a seismic highway — through the mantle, allowing quakes to reach more distant regions of the planet,” InSight team member Constantinos Charalambous said.
The meteor crash was detected in Cerberus Fossae, an especially quake-prone region of Mars that is 1,640 kilometres away from the InSight lander. The impact crater is 71 feet in diameter and much farther from InSight than scientists expected, based on the quake’s seismic energy.
Nasa said that the Martian crust has unique properties thought to dampen seismic waves produced by impacts, and researchers’ analysis of the Cerberus Fossae impact led them to conclude that the waves it produced took a more direct route through the planet’s mantle.
The team then used an AI model to analyse pictures and search for craters within roughly 3,000 kilometers of InSight’s location. By comparing before-and-after images from the Context Camera over a range of time, they found 123 fresh craters to cross-reference with InSight’s data; 49 of those were potential matches with quakes detected by the lander’s seismometer.
