Astronomers shocked: Mars is accelerating - Planet rotates faster due to a giant anomaly in its depths

Mars is behaving like a figure skater who suddenly decided to speed up during the finale. The planet is rotating faster and faster, reducing the duration of each day by 70 microseconds per year. For a long time, this was attributed to the whims of the atmosphere or glaciers, but data from the InSight mission have changed the facts. The culprit turned out to be the Tharsis region—a giant "bulge" on the planet's body, beneath which something hot and very light is moving.

The mystery of Tharsis

Tharsis is a giant volcanic formation spanning 6,000 kilometers. Some of the largest mountains in the Solar System are located here. On Earth, plate tectonics constantly move the crust. On Mars, the crust is a single piece, so eruptions in one spot accumulated material for billions of years. However, models showed that the mountains alone do not explain the phenomena. Beneath the crust, a massive "pillar" was identified—a low-density anomaly. "This light material rising from the depths literally hits the lithosphere from the inside. It melts the rocks and creates passages leading to giant volcanoes," explained physicist Dmitry Lapshin.

The "chair effect"

Imagine you are spinning in an office chair while holding weights. If you bring them close to your body, you rotate faster. The same thing is happening on Mars. The "bubble" of lighter material beneath Tharsis pushes heavier masses toward the interior. Because this occurs near the equator, the mass transfer toward the axis of rotation increases the planet's speed. "Any redistribution of mass in a rotating body changes the moment of inertia. This means that the interior of Mars remains active and flexible," noted astrophysicist Alexey Rudnev.

Geological "immortality"

Previously, we believed that small rocky planets cool down quickly. Mars, at half the size of Earth, should have been geologically "dead." But the existence of an active mantle plume indicates that its interior remains warm and active. "We used to consider Mars a geological corpse. The InSight data show that it still has a 'heart,'" emphasized geologist Alexey Trofimov.

What this means for science

The study of the Martian mantle is akin to exploring a hidden world. By combining data from the surface and the interior, scientists are beginning to better understand planetary evolution. Mars is not just a dead red world—it is a dynamic planet that continues to change, even if only by microseconds.

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