New research has shown that Mars is filled with gigantic and gigantic lava tubes with high ceilings like the Empire State Building, gigantic tubes that make Burj Khalifa (the tallest tower in the world), "looking like a dwarf inside," and skylights and openings to these caves and tubes the size of soccer fields.
The scientific community witnesses a wide debate about the possibility of these caves from protecting many organisms on the surface of Mars, including humans in the future, from the dangers of cosmic and solar radiation, which favors hypotheses that there are creatures in the lower layers of the red planet living in these caves.
The lava tubes are an underground tunnel, formed as a result of an intense flow of molten rock during volcanic eruptions, where it can be observed on the planet Earth in the safety of volcanoes.
And it forms long grooves of lava remnants, interspersed with openings "skylights" due to the collapse of the weak parts of them, as these skylights reveal virgin tubes that no object entered after the volcano subsided.
The researchers speculated that the lava tubes may have been present on Mars and the moon since the 1960s, but in recent years most of the exploration trips to Mars have broadcast scenes and images that clearly show the presence of these canyons and paths, in the red planet or the moon.
The researchers believe that these canyons and volcanic paths of their enormous size may provide a safer habitat than the surfaces of the Moon or Mars for many organisms, according to the research published in the specialized scientific journal "livescience".
"The largest lava tubes on Earth have a width and height of up to a maximum of 40 meters, so like a very large highway tunnel," said Ricardo Bozobon, a geologist at the University of Padua in Italy and a co-author of the study.
The researchers found that the lava tubes are much larger, with the collapse sites (windows) 300 to 700 times the size of their sites on Earth, so the researchers estimate that the lunar lava tubes are likely to range from about 500 to 900 meters.
According to the researcher, lunar lava tubes can contain entire cities within them.
The researchers suggested the reason for the huge size of the volcanic tubes outside the Earth to the low gravity of Mars and the Moon, as well as differences in how the volcanoes work on those structures compared to Earth.
The researchers pointed out, according to the specialized scientific journal "livescience", that these volcanic channels or tubes constitute attractive human habitats for a number of reasons, including protection from meteorites that do not burn easily in the thin atmosphere of Mars and the Moon. In addition, there may be beneficial chemicals, such as ice, water, and volatile chemicals that could be used to make the fuel. It can also provide a thick layer of top rock.
The Source: arabic.sputniknews.com
The Source: arabic.sputniknews.com