Mountains on Mars Carved by Climate and Winds

Mountain on earth are a result of tectonic plates smashing into each other. Geologic activity underneath Earth's surface leads to its continual shifting. At the same time, our neighboring planet, Mars, too has signs of mountains that go a mile high or higher. But they are not formed due to the tectonic activity, which led the scientists to wonder what is causing these mounds to form and rise.

According to new research published in Geophysical Research Letters on March 31, 2016, reveals that winds over billions of years carved these huge mounds that look like mountains today.

Mackenzie Day, lead author of the study and a graduate student at the University of Texas, Austin Jackson School of Geosciences, said in a statement: Wind could never do this on Earth because water acts so much faster, and tectonics act so much faster.

Simply put, the tectonic plate movement on Earth dominates mountain-building by winds. However, that is obviously not the case on Mars.

Before this study, the scientists didn't know about the presence or absence of tectonic plates on Mars and couldn't explain how the mountains or mounds on the red planet formed.

Day also said, "There's been a theory out there that these mounds formed from billions of years of wind erosion, but no one had ever tested that before.

So the cool thing about our paper is we figured out the dynamics of how wind could actually do that."

For the purpose of the study, researchers built a mini crater, 11 inches wide and 1.5 inches deep. This test crater was filled with damp sand and placed in a wind tunnel. The team monitored the elevation and distribution of sand until all of it was gone. The model's

sediment took shape similar to those observed in craters on Mars.

Day explains, "We went from a filled crater layer cake to this mounded shape that we see today."