“This discovery suggests Mars could sustain large, long-lived systems where molten rock evolved and reprocessed itself throughout the entire crust.”

Researchers from the University of Oxford have uncovered evidence that Mars once hosted enormous, Earth-like magmatic systems deep beneath its surface – despite the planet lacking the plate tectonics long thought necessary for this kind of geological complexity. Mars is often described as a ‘stagnant lid’ planet: unlike Earth, its surface is not broken into […]