Mars' interior is more like Rocky Road than Millionaire's Shortbread

"A mouth-watering new study has revealed exactly what the interior of Mars looks like - with scientists comparing the structure to a Rocky Road. Until now, it has been widely assumed that the inside of Mars is smooth and uniform. In fact, scientists have suggested the planet's crust, mantle, and core are stacked like the biscuit base, caramel, and chocolate of a neat slice of Millionaire's Shortbread."

"Instead, the Red Planet's mantle is rather messy, according to experts from Imperial College London. Rock fragments measuring up to 2.5 miles (4km) wide are dotted throughout the interior - much like the marshmallows and biscuit pieces in a Rocky Road. These ancient fragments are 'preserved like geological fossils from the planet's violent early history,' according to the team. We already know that Mars formed about 4.5 billion years ago, as dust and rock orbiting the young Sun gradually clumped together."

"'These colossal impacts unleashed enough energy to melt large parts of the young planet into vast magma oceans,' said lead researcher Dr Constantinos Charalambous. 'As those magma oceans cooled and crystallised, they left behind compositionally distinct chunks of material - and we believe it's these we're now detecting deep inside Mars.' These impacts mixed fragments of Mars' early crust and mantle into the molten interior."

NASA's InSight mission data reveal that Mars' mantle contains rock fragments up to 4 km wide scattered throughout, creating a heterogeneous interior. These ancient fragments are preserved like geological fossils from the planet's violent early history. Mars formed about 4.5 billion years ago and experienced giant, near-cataclysmic impacts that melted large portions into vast magma oceans. As magma oceans cooled and crystallized, they left compositionally distinct chunks of material. Impact-driven mixing embedded early crust and mantle fragments into the molten interior, and subsequent cooling trapped these chunks within the mantle beneath a stagnant outer crust. Most of this chaotic mixing occurred within Mars's first 100 million years.

Read at Mail Online