SPACE/COSMOS
Mars’ “young” volcanoes were more complex than scientists once thought
Geological Society of America
image:
Visualization of the studied volcanic system (Pavonis fissure). Image courtesy Bartosz Pieterek.
view moreCredit: Image courtesy Bartosz Pieterek.
Contributed by Kea Giles, Managing Editor, Geology
Boulder, Colo., USA: What appears to be a single volcanic eruption is often the result of complex processes operating deep beneath the surface, where magma moves, evolves, and changes over long periods of time. To fully understand how volcanoes work, scientists study the volcanic products that erupt at the surface, which can reveal the hidden magmatic systems feeding volcanic activity.
New research published recently in Geology shows that this complexity also applies to Mars. Recent high-resolution morphological observations and mineral analyses provided from orbit revealed that some of the planet’s youngest volcanic systems experienced a far more intricate eruptive history than scientists once thought. Rather than forming during single, short-lived eruptions, these volcanoes were shaped by long-lasting and evolving magma systems beneath the martian surface.
An international research team, including scientists from Adam Mickiewicz University in PoznaĆ, the School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability (SEES) at the University of Iowa, and the Lancaster Environment Centre, investigated a long-lived volcanic system located south of Pavonis Mons—one of Mars’ largest volcanoes. By combining detailed surface mapping with orbital mineral data, the team reconstructed the volcanic and magmatic evolution of this system in unprecedented detail.
“Our results show that even during Mars’ most recent volcanic period, magma systems beneath the surface remained active and complex,” says Bartosz Pieterek of Adam Mickiewicz University. “The volcano did not erupt just once—it evolved over time as conditions in the subsurface changed.”
The study shows that volcanic system developed through multiple eruptive phases, transitioning from early fissure-fed lava emplacement to later point-source activity that produced cone-forming vent. Although these lava flows appear different on the surface, they were supplied by the same underlying magma system. Each eruptive phase preserved a distinct mineral signature, allowing scientists to trace how the magma changed through time.
“These mineral differences tell us that the magma itself was evolving,” Pieterek explains. “This likely reflects changes in how deep the magma originated and how long it was stored beneath the surface before erupting.”
Because direct sampling of Martian volcanoes is currently not possible, studies like this provide rare insight into the structure and evolution of the planet’s interior. The findings highlight how powerful orbital observations can be in revealing the hidden complexity of volcanic systems—on Mars and on other rocky planets.
CITATION: Pieterek, B., et al., 2026, Spectral evidence for magmatic differentiation within a martian plumbing system, https://doi.org/10.1130/G53969.1
About the Geological Society of America
The Geological Society of America (GSA) is a global professional society with more than 18,000 members across over 100 countries. As a leading voice for the geosciences, GSA advances the understanding of Earth's dynamic processes and fosters collaboration among scientists, educators, and policymakers. GSA publishes Geology, the top-ranked “geology” journal, along with a diverse portfolio of scholarly journals, books, and conference proceedings—several of which rank among Amazon’s top 100 best-selling geology titles.
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Journal
Geology
Article Title
Spectral evidence for magmatic differentiation within a Martian plumbing system
Chinese scientists develop distributed intercity quantum sensor network to expand dark matter research
Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters
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Constraints on axion dark matter by distributed intercity quantum sensors
view moreCredit: Image by USTC
Ordinary visible matter accounts for only about 4.9 percent of the universe, while dark matter makes up about 26.8 percent. Axions are hypothetical, extremely light particles—with field-like properties—that may help us understand dark matter. Researchers speculate that axion fields formed topological defects during phase transitions in the early universe. In turn, these defects are expected to interact with nuclear spins and induce signals as the Earth crosses them. Detecting these signals could thus be key to understanding dark matter; however, such signals are extremely weak and of short duration.
In order to identify such signals, researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their collaborators developed the first intercity nuclear-spin-based quantum sensor network, thereby experimentally exceeding astrophysical observation constraints on dark matter associated with axion topological defects. The study was published in Nature on January 28.
In this experiment, the researchers developed a nuclear-spin quantum precision measurement that "stores" microsecond-scale axion-induced signals in a long-lived nuclear-spin coherent state, enabling a readout signal on the scale of minutes. Based on a self-developed quantum spin amplification technique, they enhanced the weak dark-matter signal by at least 100-fold and increased the sensitivity of spin rotation to about 1 ÎŒrad, about four orders of magnitude higher than previous techniques.
Furthermore, the researchers created the first intercity nuclear-spin based quantum sensor network to discriminate dark matter signals. This network consisted of five nuclear-spin quantum sensors geographically distributed across Hefei and Hangzhou with a baseline distance of approximately 320 km, which were synchronized using Global Positioning System (GPS) time.
Although no statistically significant topological-defect-crossing event was recorded during two months of observation, the researchers set the most stringent constraints on axion–nucleon coupling across an axion mass range from 10 peV to 0.2 ÎŒeV, achieving 4.1 × 1010 GeV at 84 peV.
This study provides the first laboratory experiment to exceed astrophysical constraints on axion topological-defect dark matter, opening up the possibility of examining unexplored parameter space. It provides a new way to probe topological-defect dark matter as well as a new direction for searches on broad beyond-Standard Model physics such as axion stars and axion strings.
Journal
Nature
Article Title
Constraints on axion dark matter by distributed intercity quantum sensors
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