Mars' Ancient Mantle Chunks Reveal Violent Planetary Past

It started with a quiver deep down in the Martian crust weak, barely detectable, yet bearing 4.5-billion-year-old echoes. Those seismic waves, recorded by NASA's InSight lander from 2018 to 2022, have revealed a remarkable discovery: giant preserved fragments of Mars' primordial crust, trapped in the planet's mantle since the formation of the Solar System.The discovery emerged from the painstaking analysis of eight exceptionally clear marsquake events by a team led by Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London. Using the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), InSight recorded how primary (P) and secondary (S) waves traveled through the planet, reflecting and...