You're getting warmer: Nasa's thermal mole reveals active mantle plume on Mars
Please be aliens, please be aliens, please be aliens... Boffins discover mystery mass beneath Moon's biggest crater
They found Cerberus Fossae, where Insight touched down, sits over a mantle plume of hot material that is 95–285 Kelvin warmer than its surroundings. The presence of an active plume drives local sustained geological activity, including the marsquakes detected by InSight, and is the cause of the slow opening of the crust beneath the Cerberus Fossae.
“Ongoing plume activity demonstrates that Mars is not only seismically and volcanically active today, but possesses a geodynamically active interior as well. A plume beneath Elysium Planitia also indicates that the surface volcanic flows and seismic activity are not isolated events, but part of a long-lived, actively sustained, regional system, with implications for the longevity and astrobiological potential of subsurface habitable environments,” the research paper said.
The researchers noted that the findings suggest that Mars is only the third body in the inner Solar System, after the Earth and Venus, with currently active mantle plumes. ®