Grab your headphones: NASA shared two more seismic events from the surface of Mars.
Since docking on the Red Planet in December, the InSight lander’s sensitive seismometer has kept an ear to the ground, listening for “marsquakes.”
Each event acts as a sort of flashbulb, illuminating the orb’s interior and revealing the depth and composition of its layers.
Mars produced its first interior rumbling in April, which turned out to be an “odd duck,” according to NASA: Sol 128 featured a surprisingly high-frequency seismic signal, compared to what the science team has heard since then.
Out of more than 100 events detected to date, only 21 are strongly considered marsquakes—including one on May 22 (the 173rd Martian day, or sol, of the mission) and another on July 25 (Sol 235).
Far below the human range of hearing, these sonifications were sped up and “slightly processed” to make them audible through headphones.
Sol 173 is about a magnitude 3.7.
Sol 235 is about a magnitude 3.3.
Both recordings suggest the Martian crust is like a mixture of Earth’s hard outer layer and the Moon’s rocky surface.
“It’s been exciting, especially in the beginning, hearing the first vibrations from the lander,” according to Constantinos Charalambous, an InSight science team member at Imperial College London. “You’re imagining what’s really happening on Mars as InSight sits on the open landscape.”
Charalambous and Nobuaki Fuji of Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris provided NASA’s audio samples, including the one below (which is best heard with headphones).
Unlike Earth’s rambunctious surface (overpowered by the seismic noise of oceans and weather), the Red Planet is extremely quiet, allowis SEIS to pick up even the faintest rumbles from within.
Mars doesn’t have tectonic plates—large discs that glide over Earth’s mantle, causing quakes and forming volcanoes, mountains, and ocean trenches.
Instead, the planet experiences quivers caused by faults, or cracks in its crust. As heavy masses and slow cooling add stress to the crust, it breaks, releasing energy.
The InSight team is always on the hunt for quakes, which appear more prevalent in the twilight hours. During the day, sunlight warms the air and creates more wind interference than at night.
Evenings also provide some peculiar sounds—dubbed “dinks and donks”—that likely come from the delicate parts within the seismometer expanding and contracting against one another.
More on Geek.com:
- Here’s What a Marsquake May Look Like, According to Scientists
- NASA Images Show ‘Earthquake Island’ Swallowed Up By Sea
- The Moon Is ‘Shrinking Like a Grape’ and Releasing Moonquakes
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