How do we form granite on Mars without plate tectonics?

Arya Udry, Associate Professor, Mineralogical Society of America Distinguished Lecturer, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

For a long time, the martian crust has been considered to be solely basaltic. These past six years, with the analyses of surface rocks and additional meteorites, it was shown that the martian crust is more lithogically diverse than previously thought: Evolved rocks (i.e., high on silica), including granitic rocks, have been observed on the martian surface by the Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory rover. In this talk, I present how we can better constrain the conditions of formation of martian evolved rocks, including magmatic processes (e.g., assimilation and fractional crystallization), using thermodynamical modeling.

Host: Jeff Catalano

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