Interplanetary cracks (IMAGE)

University of Pennsylvania

Interplanetary cracks — Caption

(Top to bottom) Surface crack patterns on three different worlds: Mars, Europa, and Earth that reveal how fractures form under vastly different environmental conditions. Penn geophysicist Douglas Jerolmack and longtime collaborator Gábor Domokos used the mathematical framework they developed for understanding fracture patterns on Earth to survey two-dimensional fracture networks across the solar system. Their findings could offer insights into detecting potentially habitable environments on other planets.

Credit

NASA - JPL

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No restrictions.

License

Public Domain

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