Glaciers on Mars!

Recent evidence leads many scientists to believe that glaciers existed on Mars and still exist in places--especially on some high volcanoes--just as on Earth many high mountains have glaciers.  These glaciers in most cases would not contain pure water ice.  Instead they would consist of dirty ice with a large amount of dust. 

Shown below is an exceptionally clear view of the remains on a glacier in a crater.  It has the shape of a tongue.  The ice is gone.  The ice sublimed away--went directly from a solid to a gas.  This process would be common on Mars because the atmosphere is so thin.  However, the dust stayed behind and formed ridges.  On Earth such ridges are called moraines.  The thick one at the front could be called a terminal moraine.  It marks the farthest that the glacier advanced.  Examples of moraines can be found in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.  The ones at the sides of the tongue could be called lateral morains because they are on the sides of the main glacier.

A moraine from an older glacier may be at  the bottom just right of the tongue.

This may be one of the most detailed picture of this type of feature and it was suggested by an amateur.

The terminal moraine above has also been called a Moraine-like Ridge (MLR) and a Viscous Flow Feature (VFF).

The picture below may be showing us quite a bit of history.  The loops near the bottom are probably the remains of old tongue-shaped glaciers from a previous age.  The one at the far right is rather nice.  The gullies may be much more recent.  The material that the gullies formed in may be what is thought of as a mantle of an ice-dust mixture that is deposited here when the tilt of Mars changes.  Those loop-shaped features are also called viscous flow features (VFF) or flow front ridges.  The bottom of the crater has an odd pitted texture.  This may have been formed when the ice that was mixed with the dust sublimed away--leaving pits where the ice was.  Remember the thin atmosphere would cause ice to go directly from a solid to a gas; hence, no running water would have left its trace.

The picture below shows some beautiful gullies together with some terminal maoraines from a past age that have united.  I live in the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York.  Our Finger lakes were caused by moraines like these forming a dam in valleys to the South.   The moraine dams caused the valleys to fill with water to produce our beautiful Finger Lakes.

One can easily see how the gullies came after the moraines because  material from the aprons lies on top of some of the old tongue-shaped glaciers that left the moraines.

For more pictures click here

Revised January 2007