What is the nature of the magma heavier than rock that exists deep inside Mars? -The Japanese Experiment Module “Kibo” on the International Space Station (ISS) is an electrostatic levitation furnace that will help us to understand the mysteries of the Martian interior.
Summary
In 2019, Mars earthquakes were observed for the first time by NASA’s Mars InSight spacecraft, and analysis of seismic waves propagating through the interior of Mars is advancing our understanding of Mars’ interior structure. One of the results is the discovery that a layer of magma exists between the core, which forms the center of Mars, and the mantle, the rocky layer above it. Understanding this deep magma is considered to be an important key to understanding the formation and evolution of Mars. In particular, for liquid magma to be gravitationally stable in the Martian deep interior, the density of the magma must be heavier than the density of the rocks that make up the mantle, but what composition of magma could be gravitationally stable in the Martian deep interior has been a mystery.
Professor Yoshio Kono, School of Science, Kwansei Gakuin University; Specially Appointed Assistant Professor Nozomu Kondo, Institute for Planetary Materials Research, Okayama University; Professor Koji Ohara, Faculty of Materials and Energy, Shimane University; Specially Appointed Lecturer Shuji Kuwahara, Research Center for Deep Earth Dynamics, Ehime University; Senior Researcher Ryoichi Nakada, Kochi Core Research Institute, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology; Research Fellow Chihiro Koyama, JAXA, The research group led by Dr. Hirohisa Oda, Senior Researcher at Kochi Core Research Institute, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Prof. Takehiko Ishikawa, and Dr. Yuki Watanabe of AES Inc. conducted a joint research and found that magma with low SiO2 content and iron-rich The density of magma with low SiO2 and iron-rich silicate composition, which had been difficult to measure on the ground, was successfully measured. The density model developed based on the experimental results indicates that Fe-rich silicate magmas are denser than Martian mantle rocks and can exist gravitationally stable at the core-mantle boundary in the Martian deep interior. The research results were published in the international journal “Communications Earth & Environment” published by Springer Nature on March 3, 2025 (Japan Standard Time). For more details, please see the press release by Okayama University.
For more details, see the Okayama University press release [ JP | EN ].
Reference
Title: Gravitational stability of iron-rich peridotite melt at Mars’ core-mantle boundary
Journal: Communications Earth & Environment
Authors: Yoshio Kono, Chihiro Koyama, Nozomi M. Kondo, Koji Ohara, Hideharu Kuwahara, Ryoichi Nakada, Yuki Watanabe, Hirohisa Oda, Takehiko Ishikawa
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02117-3
