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RE: Oddball Geological Features: Part 4 - Olympus Mons on Mars
very nice post, u'll get my vote once the 30 min window is over ;-)
Just to set it straight: Is this giant active or not? Or do we just don't know because we never saw an eruption?
Good question and thank you! From our observations, we can actually see that certain lava flows may be as young as a few million years. That may seem like a very long time and could be presumed to be inactive. However, due to their being less surface gravity on Mars, the process of magma rising is slowed down tremendously because it's less buoyant. I'd imagine if that were the case, eruptions would be delayed, but much larger as well. Then again, it could just be inactive. There's no way of telling unless we saw activity or had the proper equipment on the planets surface.