Mars may have once been filled with seas of magma that made the Red Planet habitable

Deep oceans of magma once sloshed about inside the crust of Mars, seismic measurements taken by NASA's InSight mission suggest. The marsquakes detected by InSight show a boundary 15 miles (24 kilometers) deep between two different types of rock that were formed by enormous pools of magma. The presence of these magma pools could completely change what we thought we knew about the early development of Mars . Already, scientists say the discovery could change what we know about the history of Mars. "One of the big questions in planetary science is whether Earth is unique," said the University of Oxford's Jon Wade in a statement . "If Mars could develop this kind of complex crust without plate tectonics, then maybe the conditions needed for habitability can emerge on more planets than we realized, including those previously dismissed based on size or their apparent lack of tectonic activity." Earth is shaped by plate tectonics , the shifting of giant slabs of the planet's crust above our planet's molten mantle in a motion that generates earthquakes and volcanoes, but which also creates new land and regulates atmospheric carbon by drawing it out of the atmosphere and re-releasing it though volcanic eruptions. This constant reprocessing results in a fairly complex crust with multiple layers. However, no convincing evidence has been found that the Red Planet has ever had plate tectonics. …