What Can Marsquakes Teach Us?

Seismic activity has been recorded on Mars, and researchers hope to use the data to learn lots about the history and current state of the red planet. Learn how in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Hey brain Stuff Lauren boge obamb here. Ever, since NASA's
Inside mission placed its dome shape sizemometer onto the dusty
Martian surface in December, hopes were high that the robotic
lander would quickly detect its first Martian quake or Mars quake. Well,
the weight is finally over. The mission Seismic Experiment for

(00:24):
Interior Structure or SIZE, confirmed its first faint rumble coming
from the inside of the red planet on April six,
confirming that Mars is seismically active. SIZE team lead Philip
Lognan said in a NASA's statement, We've been waiting for
months for a signal like this. It's so exciting to
finally have proof that Mars is still seizemically active. We're
looking forward to sharing detailed results once we've had a

(00:46):
chance to analyze them. NASA hopes to use seismic signals
like these to give Mars a health check of sorts,
like a doctor placing a stethoscope on their patient's chest.
Inside is doing something similar. It's trying to hear what
makes the planet tick. On Earth. The cacophony of seismic
signals bouncing around our planet's interior become distorted as they
encounter regions of different densities. By measuring these seismic waves,

(01:10):
we've learned about the different unreachable layers deep inside our planet.
Mars's interior is something of an enigma. The planet doesn't
have a global magnetic field for reasons we have yet
to fully understand, and its volcanic activity was extinguished hundreds
of billions of years ago. If the planet is geologically
or more accurate, areologically dead? How can it produce Mars

(01:31):
quakes at all? It's thought that as the planet continues
to cool, it's shrinking and crack leg with small quakes
that echo throughout the Martian interior. Mission scientists also want
to listen out for meteorite impacts will produce their own
mini trembles, perhaps turning Insight into a real time meteorite detector.
Until now, Mars quakes were theoretical possibility, but now that

(01:52):
we know that they're there, they can be used by
Insight to understand what lies beneath the planet's surface. According
to mission scientists, this first Mars is a pip squeak,
nothing like the tremors you're used to if you've ever
lived in southern California. On Mars, however, this weak quake
stands out in the comparative silence of Mars's quiet innards.
Other weaker seismic signals have also been heard over the

(02:13):
past month or so, but their origins are more ambiguous.
Although the April sixth event was too weak to be
used to gain much information about the Martian interior, scientists
are excited as we've seen something like it before on
the Moon. During the Apollo program, astronauts placed five seizemometers
on the lunar surface, which detected thousands of moonquakes between

(02:33):
nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy seven. These seismic waves
helped scientists learn about the lunar interior and even helped
model its formation. Although inside is just one seizemometer on Mars,
scientists hope that it will give us a window into
the mysterious Martian interior that we know so little about.

(02:55):
Today's episode was written by Ian O'Neil and produced by
Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production I Heart Radio's
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