People know more about Mars than Himalayas

Colorado, June 21: Turns out, people know more about Mars than about the young Himalayan ranges.

“We know more about the rocks on parts of Mars than we do about some of the areas in the Himalaya,” said a scientist, Alka TripathyLang.

In this regard, a group of scientists from Arizona State University have started to use data from Terra, a satellite orbiting the Earth, in the same way, that planetary geologists have been using data from the Mars- orbiting satellite, Odyssey.

“Many researchers have done extraordinary geologic mapping in this rugged region, but the fact is that some places are just completely inaccessible because of topography, elevation, or geopolitical issues. The rocks in those areas are an important piece of the tectonic puzzle and are important for understanding the way the region evolved,” said Wendy Bohon, another scientist working on this subject.

“The tools we used, originally developed for mapping rocks on Mars, were a way to safely access information about the rocks in the Himalayas,” she added.

The researchers relied on the fact that every mineral has a unique spectral “signature,” where some parts of the thermal infrared spectrum are absorbed, while the other parts are reflected.

Rocks are made of different combinations of minerals, so when all of these mineral signatures are combined, they reveal the rock type. To easily distinguish between different kinds of rocks, the researchers translated these signals into red/ green/ blue imagery, which results in a distinguishable colour for each rock type.

This can be used to map the distribution of rocks throughout the region. The map created by the researchers revealed interesting geology.