Plate Tectonics on Mars

This is a story which will run – see www.phenomenica.com/2012/08/plate-tectonics-like-on-earth-also-exist-on-… … a Chinese scientists, An Yin, analysing images from the THEMIS spacecraft and the HIRISE camera on NASAs Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter, says he has found evidence of plate tectonics on Mars. This appears to involve fault lines, deep canyons, steep sided cliffs, and a linear volcanic zone. These are all geological features incorporated into Plate Tectonics – and not necessarily integral to it, but generally considered to signal the consensus view of how things happen in the crust. Mars has a deep system of canyons, one that is nine times longer than the Grand Canyon on Earth. An Yin sees this as a plate boundary rather than a giant crack in the outer shell of Mars. He says it is moving horizontally, akin to the Rift Valley system in East Africa and the Levant. Like the Rift the open wound on Mars is thought to move in an episodal fashion, in jerks rather than continuously, at diverse ocassions over long periods of time.