Huge Mars impact created solar system's largest crater

Read more:
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19826624.700

An impact by an object more than half as wide as Mercury is thought to have created a crater that covers most of Mars's northern hemisphere (Courtesy of S Lombeyda/ M Marinova/ O Aharonson)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• mars
• impact
• crater
• new
• scientist
• newscientist

[look2leap4]

My turd fell into the toilet and caused a splash of similar proportion.

[FaithIsImaginary]

Or pushed Mars into its current orbit and left a huge crater?

[Kennraie]

@boboriginal yes

[boboriginal]

i am truely disapoint

[rspawn]

"Where is the debris ring from such an impact? Phobos and Deimos are hardly an explanation."

Given the force of the impact it is likely that most of the debris did not end up in stable orbit around Mars.

"Don't rely on what science & astronomy spoon feeds the masses"

Right. It's better to rely on what random comments on the internet tell you.

[SpeedMetal13]

There is excellent experimental evidence that Olympus Mons, is a stupendously huge fulgamite aka Lightning Blister. Look at the so-called caldera and its overlapping craters. How can that be explained by mechanical impact or volcanic activity? Where is the debris? Also look at the filamentary burns, the flat shape etc. Additionally, look at the remarkable similarity between Olympus Mons and Ascraeus Mons. The look almost identical.  Electrical discharge is a much logical explanation IMHO.

[Eschatus2]

PERSONALLY look for the evidence & you will find it. Don't rely on what science & astronomy spoon feeds the masses. Conventional wisdom is wrong. The evidence is everywhere once you shake the influences over you by the current scientific paradigms. Start fresh with new eyes; don't accept the norm, but rather, question it & you will see what I see. Incidentally, the solar system as been rearranged several times.

[TonViper]

But where is the evidence of that? The rest of the solar system is too neat to have been upset to a degree that could have robbed it of that much mass.

[Eschatus2]

Crater impacting on all the planets in our system including Earth + it involved the intrusion of another star system (binary) through ours and half the debris was whisked away into that system, which is the missing half of our solar system.

[TonViper]

The asteroid belt is only around 4% of the mass of the earth's moon. Where would the rest of the mass of a planet larger than Mars have gone?

[technologic21]

That collision coupled with the huge Stratovolcanoes like (Olympus Mons) made it pretty inhospitable early on.

Mars has no plate tectonics, it has a solid surface too.