Blade-thin 'walls', some as tall as a 16-story building, forming an intricate network of intersecting ridges on Mars have been found in images from the Red Planet's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) probe.
So far, NASA experts have offered the simplest explanation for the emergence of these impressive mountain ranges – it is lava, which once flowed in pre-existing cracks on the planet's surface.
“The discovery of these ridges inspired me to search for all types of polygonal ridges on Mars,” said Laura Kerber of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, author of the research report published this month in Icarus.
Observations have shown that although similar in shape, similar ridge networks on Mars can vary in origin, and their scale can range from centimeters to kilometers.
Sources: NASA
