Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren boge obamb here. Ever, since NASA's Inside mission placed its dome shape sizemometer onto the dusty Martian surface in December, hopes were high that the robotic lander would quickly detect its first Martian quake or Mars quake. Well, the weight is finally over. The mission Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure or SIZE, confirmed its first faint rumble coming from the inside of the red planet on April six,
confirming that Mars is seismically active. SIZE team lead Philip Lognan said in a NASA's statement, We've been waiting for months for a signal like this. It's so exciting to finally have proof that Mars is still seizemically active. We're looking forward to sharing detailed results once we've had a chance to analyze them. NASA hopes to use seismic signals like these to give Mars a health check of sorts, like a doctor placing a stethoscope on their patient's chest.
Inside is doing something similar. It's trying to hear what makes the planet tick. On Earth. The cacophony of seismic signals bouncing around our planet's interior become distorted as they encounter regions of different densities. By measuring these seismic waves, we've learned about the different unreachable layers deep inside our planet.
Mars's interior is something of an enigma. The planet doesn't have a global magnetic field for reasons we have yet to fully understand, and its volcanic activity was extinguished hundreds of billions of years ago. If the planet is geologically or more accurate, areologically dead? How can it produce Mars quakes at all? It's thought that as the planet continues to cool, it's shrinking and crack leg with small quakes
that echo throughout the Martian interior. Mission scientists also want to listen out for meteorite impacts will produce their own mini trembles, perhaps turning Insight into a real time meteorite detector. Until now, Mars quakes were theoretical possibility, but now that we know that they're there, they can be used by
Insight to understand what lies beneath the planet's surface. According to mission scientists, this first Mars is a pip squeak, nothing like the tremors you're used to if you've ever lived in southern California. On Mars, however, this weak quake stands out in the comparative silence of Mars's quiet innards. Other weaker seismic signals have also been heard over the past month or so, but their origins are more ambiguous.
Although the April sixth event was too weak to be used to gain much information about the Martian interior, scientists are excited as we've seen something like it before on the Moon. During the Apollo program, astronauts placed five seizemometers on the lunar surface, which detected thousands of moonquakes between nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy seven. These seismic waves helped scientists learn about the lunar interior and even helped
model its formation. Although inside is just one seizemometer on Mars, scientists hope that it will give us a window into the mysterious Martian interior that we know so little about. Today's episode was written by Ian O'Neil and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works from on this and lots of other earth shaking topics. Visit our home planet, how stuff Works
dot com and for more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.