Mars chilled for aeons, but stayed so stressed it gets crusty marsquakes

Mars doesn’t have tectonic activity but still manages to have marsquakes, according to a paper that probed a 2022 shake detected by the InSight lander. As explained in a Geophysical Research Letters paper titled A Tectonic Origin for the Largest marsquake Observed by InSight, in May 2022 the InSight lander detected the …

[Wellyboot]

Not enough time has passed.

When the Martian core solidified it was still many billion cubic miles of hot rock, so tectonic activity may have long ceased but I'll punt that the deep core is still slowly cooling and contracting which will eventually produce surface movement as the whole planet settles due to gravity.

[Sceptic Tank]

The aliens are in South Africa

The West Rand is plagued by earthquakes that are not the result of plate tectonics, but rather due to abandoned mines collapsing or Zama Zamas hollowing out the ground.

So there: masrquake can almost certainly be attributed to alien mining operations. (Zama Zamas are also mostly illegal aliens).

[Dr Dan Holdsworth]

The crust likely had fully solidified whilst there were still major oceans on Mars; as the oceans evaporated into space the reduction in weight would have created stresses in the crust rocks which should account for at least some of these quakes.

[ArrZarr]

It is worth noting that intraplate earthquakes do happen as well.

I was lucky(?) enough to be awake in Bangor in early 2013 when Caernarfon was hit by a 2.3 quake and while I'm pretty sure that there are dragons flying around there, the closest plate edge is Iceland.

[Caver_Dave]

It a shame the lead author was not called Simon, then...

Sizzza could have told us about S1222a

Stop the groaning, half of you misread it as that :-)

[Arthur the cat]

Alternative theory

Mars could have eaten a curry washed down with Guinness. That can cause internal quaking.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Alternative theory

Yes, I was thinking indigestion - from consuming all the probes sent over from Earth