Pitt Prof to study Mars

Pitt professor Michael Ramsey has received a $160,000, three-year grant from the National… Pitt professor Michael Ramsey has received a $160,000, three-year grant from the National Aeronautic and Space Administration to study lava flow surfaces on Earth and Mars.

“On Mars, there are huge lava flows the lengths of the United States,” explained Ramsey, assistant professor in the department of geology and planetary science and co-investigator on the project, along with Steve Anderson of Black Hills State University in South Dakota.

Scientists used to explain that these lava flows were from a massive eruption, Ramsey said. Now, scientists think that the large lava flows might be caused by an inflation behavior of the lava surface.

“The lava flows puff up like bread rising,” Ramsey said. If the huge lava flows on Mars were caused by this esoteric phenomenon, then, he explained, “maybe Mars is not so drastically different from early Earth.”

The one fundamental principle of geology is that the process that is happening now happened in years past the same way, said Ramsey. Following this principle, how lava forms on Earth might be how it forms on Mars just under different gravity and air pressure.

In his Natural Disasters class, Ramsey lectures about volcanic monitoring using a PowerPoint presentation of notes interspersed with photographs of erupting volcanoes. He tells his class the different ways to measure volcanic changes, but doesn’t mention that he’ll be using thermal infrared cameras to monitor lava flow surfaces in Hawaii.

Ramsey doesn’t think that his undergraduates would be interested.

Eva Gruenberg, a Pitt freshman and student in Ramsey’s class, disagrees.

“That’s pretty … sweet,” said Gruenberg when she was told about Ramsey’s grant. “He never talks about that at all.”

Ramsey is also a year and a half into another three-year grant for which he is the principle investigator.

Ramsey is studying small impact holes called maars, which occur when lava rises to the Earth’s surface and heats ground water to cause an eruption. He is looking at the differences between meteorite craters and maars in order to make a checklist of ways to tell them apart from space.

“For the first time, we can see small holes the size of a car to a football field on Mars’ surface,” Ramsey said. If these craters were formed by volcanic lava hitting ground water it means that Mars might have had the same composition as early earth.

Ramsey said that in the past, more attention used to go to Pitt’s planetary science program and he is happy that his research combines both facets of the department.