{"id":87,"date":"2012-10-05T02:50:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T02:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/2012\/10\/05\/thursday-4th-october-sol-58\/"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:28:39","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:28:39","slug":"thursday-4th-october-sol-58","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/2012\/10\/05\/thursday-4th-october-sol-58\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday 4th October Sol 58"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Previous missions suggest that the \u2018soil\u2019 on Mars is roughly<br \/>\nbasaltic in composition.&nbsp; However, on<br \/>\nEarth sand is mainly composed of quartz (silica).&nbsp; That reveals a fundamental difference between<br \/>\nMars and the Earth.&nbsp; The Earth has<br \/>\nexperienced plate tectonics, leading to crustal melting and the formation of<br \/>\nsilica-rich rocks like granites over much of the continental surface.&nbsp; When that is eroded by rivers and the wind it<br \/>\nleads to silica-rich sand.&nbsp; Mars has<br \/>\nexperienced a different evolution involving the formation of great volcanic<br \/>\nregions like the Tharsis bulge, but these are melts which take their<br \/>\ncomposition from the underlying mantle rather than from extensive crustal melting.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Thats the current theory.<\/p>\n<p>However, one of the things we are keeping a look out for in<br \/>\nGale Crater is any sign that some rocks have different compositions.&nbsp; That will tell us about the processes,<br \/>\nperhaps unique to Mars, that have altered its crust.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Previous missions suggest that the \u2018soil\u2019 on Mars is roughly basaltic in composition.&nbsp; However, on Earth sand is mainly composed of quartz (silica).&nbsp; That reveals a fundamental difference between Mars and the Earth.&nbsp; The Earth has experienced plate tectonics, leading to crustal melting and the formation of silica-rich rocks like granites over much of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273,"featured_media":336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/273"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":735,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions\/735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}