Plates on Mars!!

    Let me start off by saying, I'm barely ready to do this! But did I not  vow to approach Geology with as much vigor as I do musing over the rest of life's complexities? I underestimate myself and my ability to ponder science and yet I find my mind at home contemplating Philosophy, a study with even less definition!!
 Nevertheless, here I am, searching the web for the latest story in Geology that would not only perk my interest, but yours as well.
     I'm not ashamed to say this, but it is true that I did not know Mars is a planet with similar features to Earth. And that is where my story begins:

 "Mars has tectonic plates, just like earth!"

    And when I read this I felt excited because in my second week of Geology I learned about Tectonic plates. They were two words I had no previous relationship to, but now I could recognize them! I couldn't say I knew much about them except that the were associated to other words like, mantle, crust, and  lithosphere and I knew that this all had to do with the Earth's vast and layered interior.

     In reading this article about this breakthrough discovery I came upon this explanation:

" Scientists have long believed that plate tectonics — in which huge crustal plates pull apart, smash together and dive under one another — exist nowhere in our solar system but Earth. But the phenomenon is also active on Mars, according to the new study."
 
      And for those of you who don't know the shifting plates are what causes earthquakes and volcanoes. My previous knowledge of this was limited to the "San Andreas Fault." Living in California I was familiar with this because of frequent earthquakes, but I did not know what it meant. I did not know that a fault line is when plates slide past each other. But now I know that not only does Earth  have Earthquakes, but Mars has Marsquakes!
         The article said,  "Mars is at a primitive stage of plate tectonics," study author An Yin, a planetary geologist at UCLA, said in a statement. "It gives us a glimpse of how the early Earth may have looked and may help us understand how plate tectonics began on Earth."
         
        This information also excited me because even though the earth is billions of years old this discovery on Mars could take us back billions of years! Time traveling geology! I imagine this would be a similar feeling to discovering America or walking on the moon. It is something you were born to discover!
             
          Yin analyzed about 100 images snapped by NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. And what I found most interesting is that when he studied the satellite images from Mars, many of the fault systems looked like similar ones he had seen in Himalayas, and Tibet and in California. There are also many volcanoes on Mars and they could have formed similarly to the Hawaiian Islands.

     All this to say if Mars is similar to Earth, it could sustain life and if it could sustain life, then maybe a sci-fi movie plot could become reality and a colony of people will establish a home on Mars and I will be the first to sign up! It could happen!