Ford Neild 10/12/15
Current Event 4
This article, “Scientists find evidence of supervolcanoes on Mars,” by Elizabeth Landau provides interesting insights into the mysterious craters on Mars. Scientists have long suspected that volcanoes caused many of the craters on Mars. With the rover in place, little evidence has been found to support this theory. This article suggests that the reason for this evidence, or lack thereof, is due to a misconception concerning the types of volcanoes that existed. It claims that supervolcanoes, unlike the traditional mountain shaped volcanoes, were responsible for leaving this craters. These suggested supervolcanoes would have erupted around 3.5 million years ago. According to Joseph Michalski, the lead study author at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson. “This is a totally new kind of process that we hadn't thought about on Mars, and it changes the way we view the evolution of the planet.” But how exactly do supervolcanoes cause the craters? After they explode, these supervolcanoes leave a caldera (spanish for caldron) crater. These craters, from a distance, are almost indistinguishable from impact craters caused by meteorites. Michalski hopes to investigate a crater on mars, Eden Patera, with hopes to learn more about the ancient volcanoes on Mars. However, with the recent cut backs on NASA’s federal spending, little new information can be gained. Eden Patera is compared to the Yellowstone supervolcano, which 640,000 years ago, underwent a similar explosion. Unlike traditional explosions, Michalski describes, a supervolcano erupts after a series of earthquakes opens up huge cracks in the ground by which magma and smoke can be violently spewed. This smoke and gas heats and covers the atmosphere for years.
While this article may, at first glance, have very little relevance today, This supervolcano theory provides insight into many puzzling topics. For example, the formation of many geological features not only on mars, but also on Earth is perceived very differently in light of this. What were once perceived as large impact craters are now revisited and renamed as a type of caldera. Also, supervolcanoes could give scientists new clues into what the Martian atmosphere was like at geographically relevant times. The conditions caused by these supervolcanoes, despite being extreme, may have actually given life to extremophiles. More recently, this theory provides an explanation for the puzzling rocks that are currently discovered by the curiosity rover.
This article was very well written overall and i was particularly impressed with the authors incorporation of quotes. The author, Landau, used quotes in such a way that they fit into the flow of the paragraph as if it were they her own words. In this way, the did not distract from the meaning of the rest of the paragraph or the quote itself. On the other hand, I felt that some areas of the article, especially the relevance portion, needed to be expanded upon. When landau stated, “Supervolcanoes were instrumental in shaping geological formations and the climate on our own planet, and the same goes for Mars”, she should have gone into more detail regarding what types of affects the supervolcanoes could have our topography and our climate.
Landau, Elizabeth. "Scientists Find Evidence of Supervolcanoes on Mars."CNN. Cable News Network, 2 Oct. 2015. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/02/tech/innovation/mars-supervolcanoes/
ReplyDeleteFord,
I enjoyed reading your review of “Scientists find evidence of supervolcanoes on Mars” by Elizabeth Landau. This article is a great choice because this is an area of study that has received a lot of recent media attention which has made mars a very intriguing area of study. I liked how you included many specific statistics and dates to help back up all of your points and give the reader more information about the topic. I also liked how you quoted specific scientists to make your article more factual and research based which makes it a more accurate and reliable source. I also thought you did a very good job at describing the relevance of this article and supervolcanoes on mars to today. I liked how you admitted there was no obvious relevance but analyzed the topic enough to find the important implications this information has for our society. This review was overall very well written and thought out and I thought you did a good job at displaying your thoughts in a descriptive yet concise manner.
I felt that the primary problem with your review was carelessness. There were a couple of times when I had to reread a sentence to understand what you were talking about or noticed words that were out of place or misspelled. These are small errors that could have been easily corrected and they took away from the flow of the review. Another aspect missing from your review was your last paragraph being undescriptive. I would have liked some more detail in your critique of the article and why you chose the article and/or this topic. The conclusion feels a little rushed and that you could have provided a little more insight.
Overall I really enjoyed reading your review and was especially interested by this topic because the current event I reviewed last cycle was about the discovery of water on mars and the implications that has. It was interesting to learn more about mars and a completely different aspect of mars that as you said could maybe help us understand more about the atmosphere and maybe we could find out more about what happened to the oceans on mars.
Ellie Briskin AP Bio C Even
ReplyDeleteOctober 14, 2015 Current Event #4
Wow. Great review, Ford! So well done. You summarized everything clearly and seemingly with ease, covering all of the main points of the article without including any extraneous details. Not only that, but you were able to establish a connection to how this topic affects human beings today, something that many people struggle with in these current events. By directly comparing the geographical features on Mars with that of Earth, we were able to see the importance of these formations. I especially enjoyed that you brought up the fact that still, so little is known about Mars, even though our government is spending a lot of time and resources trying to study it; this is obviously more than relevant to the average American. Thirdly, your writing style was very easy to read and follow, yet remained extremely informative. This is an extremely hard quality to find in nonfiction writings, which are usually either much oversimplified or much overcomplicated; this hints at a real knack you have for writing intellectual reviews!
Ford, it's so hard to think of any area which could benefit from improvement! But if anything, you may benefit from some more outside information in general. I would have liked to learn about the types of technologies that actually allow us to study Mars in such detail, or maybe some past missions to mars and what they discovered, for the revelation of the origin of these craters are definitely not the first thing to be discerned. Secondly, although the style itself was great, the professionalism of the article overall could have been improved. A handful of grammatical mistakes, such as unneeded capitalization or incorrect/missing placement of commas, make your argument seem slightly less legitimate.
But on the whole, this review was astounding. Your writing and analysis blew me away. It really taught me a lot about the makeup of Mars, a topic that I knew little to nothing about before. After reading this, I'll be sure to take into consideration the impact of geographical features on a location, and put my life not just in perspective of earth but of the entire galaxy. As do many things pertaining to space, I was really just reminded of the huge expanse past our universe, and am interested for the umpteeth time on what’s really out there! I chose this article because of my lack of knowledge of the topic, and am extremely glad that this is the one I read. Thanks, Ford, for giving me such a great read!
Landau, Elizabeth. "Scientists Find Evidence of Supervolcanoes on Mars."CNN. Cable News Network, 2 Oct. 2015. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/02/tech/innovation/mars-supervolcanoes/