Heather Goss
The main problem for scientists studying the universe is that she is very big. They cannot aim telescopes at all stars in the sky or send ATVs to distant planets so that those plowed vast territories of millions of square kilometers. Therefore, researchers have to choose the optimal objects.
A photo open source © flickr.com/ rarebeasts John Grant knows what and how to choose. This geologist from the National Aviation Museum and astronautics was a co-chair of the scientific committee that selected Gale Crater as a landing pad for NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity (10 years ago, he likewise chose landing sites all-terrain vehicles Spirit and Opportunity.) “There are two things that necessary to do when you travel to a specific place on Mars, says Grant. – Firstly, of course, you need to make sure that this place meets the scientific needs and goals of the expedition. For Curiosity had to choose a place with many layers in geological section so that the rover can study the conditions existed on Mars in the past when at least some parts of the planet were livable. Secondly, these results must be put in a global framework. “Observations from the Martian orbit showed other landscapes similar to Gale Crater, and therefore a limited view of the rover can be extrapolated to get an idea of Mars as a whole.
In this regard, the question arises. If sentient beings wanted to land a research ship or apparatus on Earth, to find out as much as possible about our geology, no matter what places would become the most informative and characteristic? We asked several experts become alien john grants and say us, where is Gale’s earth crater.
A photo from open sources
Fire and Life: Iceland © AFP 2014 / Bjorn Oddsson Scientific employee of the meteorites department of the Smithsonian National Museum Natural History Brent Grocholski proposed extraterrestrial geologists are one place where you can find out everything. “Our planet consists of tectonic plates, but there are also volcanoes on it, which fed by heat coming from the depths of the earth’s mantle, – he says. – Isn’t it great to land where you can find and active fault zone, and hot spots of volcanic activity? Aliens, welcome to Iceland. ”
The area of divergence of tectonic plates here is Mid-Atlantic ridge that runs from the southern tip Africa along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to the southwestern part of Iceland, where he goes to land. There are two tectonic plates on this ridge slowly diverge to the sides, creating a crevice through which the magma of the mantle rises up and cools there, forming a new Earth’s crust. Such ridges are everywhere on our planet, and they are mainly under water. In Iceland, however, research the apparatus will be able to observe this fundamental geological process on land.
Iceland is also an area of high volcanic activity similar to that not on Earth. All-terrain vehicle will not need travel far to see large tracts of land covered volcanic stone. He will find geothermal activity in the form hot mineral springs and fumaroles – holes in the earth’s crust, throwing out superheated water that turns into steam and often emits sulfur dioxide spewed out by the bowels of the earth. Drive along such a rough terrain will not be easy, but an all-terrain vehicle can examine crevices, craters and calderas formed in the result of continuous lava movement underground. He may even record the moment of the eruption because in Iceland they occur every few years.
If an alien device lands near the Bradfjord, representing a large and shallow bay on the west coast Iceland, then the aliens will even be able to learn something about astrogeology. Watching the ebb and flow of the day, they will understand the physical relationship between the Earth and its moon satellite.
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Depths: Mariana Trench © Photo: University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping / Joint Hydrographic Center The first thing that alien astronomers will probably notice observing the Earth from a distance, it is that it is distinctly blue and mostly covered in water says marine geologist Deborah Hutchinson (Deborah Hutchinson), working in the US Geological Survey. So that you must include in the list of possible landing places water open spaces. But she asks the question: “Where do they want to go – to the most extreme places or to the most characteristic? “According to Hutchinson, extreme places will give a broader view of The earth. Relief features are more noticeable there, the results are more impressive and they provide the end point from which to produce accurate measurements.
Therefore, aliens do not need to splash at random. Must choose a specific place. Perhaps the best place would be Mariana hollow. Her deepest point “Challenger Abyss” is About 200 miles from Guam in the Western Pacific. Though the cavity is not visible from the surface, aliens will be able to find this underwater trench using gravity field mapping, Hutchinson says. This is how NASA’s GRAIL spacecraft recently conducted a cartographic survey of the moon. Alien space travelers probably have the necessary technique to withstand powerful pressure at a depth of 11 kilometers: eight tons per square inch.
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© RIA Novosti, Infographics. Alexey Timatkov / Vasily Shikhachevsky / Alexey Vysokosov Mariana Trench – the deepest oceanic trench on Earth “From experience, I can to say that nature has no long linear features and characteristics, ” – says Hutchinson. In other words, on gravity maps Ocean troughs will be clearly visible. By studying them, aliens will be able to find out what is the reason for these long relief details: in tectonic plates. The huge gutter is the result of the convergence of two plates in fault zone, where a huge and heavy Pacific the stove goes under the Philippine stove. Understanding how plates move and how this movement creates hollows, volcanoes, mountains and earthquakes, aliens learn a lot about the geophysics of the Earth. Water Strength: Large Canyon
All-terrain vehicle sent to study the geological history of the Earth You should definitely visit the Grand Canyon located in Arizona, where the Colorado River gradually, over millions of years, cut piece of the earth’s crust. “If the aliens land there, they will see a wonderful layer cake telling about the history of our planet “, – says professor of Boston University Richard Murray (Richard Murray), an Earth science scientist.
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© Photo: Laura Crossey, UNM United States Grand Canyon 10 times younger than geologists thought New Mexico Karl Karlstrom, his whole life studying this canyon, calls it “one of the most chic and informative geological laboratories on earth. “The first thing is the visitor sees how much water transforms the landscape. IN the Colorado River gets water from a vast territory in the western United States, and therefore, “a visit to the canyon will provide rich information on water erosion soil on a half continent basis, “says Karlström. He also will show that different types of rocks have different degrees erosion resistance. Even a volcano is not able to permanently block road to water. “Over the past half a million years during eruptions volcanoes along the edges of the lava several times created dams, says Karlstrom. – But every time indomitable water quickly (for thousands of years) washed away these dams. ”
Traveling to the bottom of a 1.5 km canyon is like a trip in a time machine over two billion years ago. It’s almost half the Earth’s history of 4.5 billion years. At the bottom the canyon has streaks of pink granite emerging from chilled and frozen magma that has risen to the surface, when the North American plate about two billion years ago ran into a chain of islands. Moving along the slopes of the canyon upward, sedimentary rocks can be seen showing that this about 500 million years ago, the site was covered by a shallow ocean. Each layer will tell its part of the story, from sandstone to high iron content that has formed about 280 million years back on a muddy coastal plain (iron attaches to the canyon characteristic reddish hue), to the limestone at the very top, which is over 250 million years old.
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Ice History: Antarctica © Photo: Audrey Huerta Exploring ocean troughs and volcanoes, aliens will understand that the earth’s crust is in constant motion and that as a result of such a movement the most prominent features of the relief appear. But if they land on the ice cover, they will be able to look into history.
Geochemist and petrologist Cin-Ty Lee (Cin-Ty Lee) from the University. Rice, calling himself a “historian of the Earth”, would send an alien apparatus on an ice cap, say, to Greenland or to Antarctica on Ross Ice Shelf Near American McMurdo Research Station. There equipped with appropriate all-terrain vehicle could drill a hole to the lowest ice cover points. Ice samples at its core “it’s like tape recorder of our planet. “For millions of years due to rains and snowfalls formed thick layers of ice in which atmospheric samples. The snow gradually caked, condensed and formed separate layers with changing seasons. Impurity analysis in these layers may indicate when there was an eruption of a volcano. Bubbles trapped in an ice trap can show content in atmosphere of oxygen, carbon dioxide and other gases, as well as its change over time. And water isotopes will point to temperature changes.
Photo from open sources If there is enough time to look around, an all-terrain vehicle will find that ice shelves hold huge glaciers, which otherwise would very quickly slip into the sea. “The aliens will understand how seriously glaciers transform the landscape for thousands of years, “- says Brent Groholsky. A smart alien scientist will notice that glaciers are of two types: mountain (formed in the mountains) and continental, representing large integral layers mainland ice. All this can be observed and studied in Antarctica. Mountain Peaks: Everest
Pointing to alien guests at the deepest point of our planets whether we should also send them to the highest mountain top? In fact, Mount Everest 8848 meters high generously will reward any extraterrestrial geologist.
Photos from open sources “Since this is the highest point on the planet, naturally that any stranger wants to land there, ”says Richard Murray But our visitors will not even have to sit on the very the peak. At any point in the vicinity of Everest, aliens will find vivid evidence of how earthly tectonic plates crashed into each other. Unlike the Mariana Trench, where the heavier the stove goes under the lighter, the Himalayas arose 40 million years back when two light plates, Indian and Eurasian, converged in one place, lifting the earth up. If an alien device will stay there for a long time and periodically measure the height, aliens will notice that these already high mountains are still taller, annually growing by 2.5 centimeters.
But what if the all-terrain vehicle lands at the very top? “The aliens will be a little confused,” says Murray, “ because there are fossils from shallow seas on Everest. “Until as the earth rose, between two converging continental massifs were the Tethys Sea. And since his the bottom consisted of light rocks, as a result of a collision mountains formed instead of a hollow. 20 million years after the beginning of the formation of this ridge, the water is gone, but the remains of marine animals remained and the mass formed by them continued to rise. “Alien travelers may wonder why organic the remains are so high above sea level, says Murray, but if they find out what happened there, they will definitely understand how active our planet is geologically. ”
It’s hardly expected that alien geologists will understand all this, visiting only five places on Earth. In the end, our scientists it took centuries to begin to understand what it is – our planet. But they live here. But at least it will be Start. And our experts will confirm what to study on Earth there is still a lot to do.
Antarctica Water Time Volcanoes Life Iceland Moon Mars Mariana NASA USA cavity Mars Rover Curiosity
