Floods

[ayin jade]

"If you look at the soil composition of Mars, the one thing that really strikes you is that it's 5 to 14 percent iron oxide," said Dr. Peter Curreri, a materials scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "It's almost ore-grade material."

Its not entirely iron. Only 5-14%. Rocks on Mars, from what I can see from reading various sites, are andesetic. They can be either basalt (volcanic) or something with quartz (on earth granite contains quartz). These are still hard rocks, much harder than the grand canyon, but not iron.

[Guest Krakatua]

Ok iam a geologist (hence the name) and i would like to point out a few things.

The ravine in Mars is very different from the grand canyon even from the most basic anaylsis we can tell this.

http://www.nps.gov/grca/grandcanyon/maps/area_map.gif

As you can see from this image the grand canyon meanders there are partuicually pronounced bends around the North rim, Havasupai indian reservation, Hualapai indian reservation, lake mead and most pronounced at Henderson. These meanders are typical of lower energy system; just check out any local river you will see what i mean.

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/ww...d_020620_01.jpg

In the mars ravine the bends and meanders are far less pronounced. In a massive energy system (such as that in this case) the forces involved would cut away the rock with little or no effort. In all cases water courses attempt to reach sea level in the shortest way possible, (ideally a stright line). So in high energy level systems where the erosion is greater the water course will be straighter.

Thats how the two differnet ravines can form very differently.

Edited October 5, 2005 by Krakatua

[Guest Krakatua]

heres a better image of the mars ravine.

http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imaged...wlands+%28f+%29.

[Guest Krakatua]

Ok Mars fell inot quintessence about 3 billion years ago. Quintessence being the point when the internal heat of the planet from decay of raidoactive isotopes dwindles to the point that vulcanism and tectonics are no longer viable.

So from that point we have no new igneous rocks forming on its surface for 3 billion years, liquid water on the suface maybe lasted for another few hundread million years. Either way beofre quintessesnce the prevailing sedimentary rocks were sandstones of a subareial source (i.e a desert)

Desert sands rarely have cements holding them together (marine sands) and as of such are easily eroded. If the rocks that the water cut through were desert based sandstone it would of been even easier to erode.

even still if the rocks were ingeous a fault in the geology could of easily been prevailed upon. Either way if the energy levels were high enough it wouldnt matter what geology was in the waters way.

Oh lastly, mars is red becasuse it is an oxidising enviroment.