GGP Seminar: Dr. Arya Udry - "How do we form granite on Mars without plate tectonics?"

Dr. Arya Udry, MSA distinguished lecturer and associate professor, UNLV, Department of Geoscience. The abstract for today's presentation:

For a long time, the Martian crust has been considered to be solely basaltic. These past six years, with the analyses of surface rocks and additional meteorites, it was shown that the Martian crust is more lithologically diverse than previously thought: Evolved rocks (i.e., high in silica), including granitic rocks, have been observed on the Martian surface by the Curiosity, Mars Science Laboratory rover. In this talk, I present how we can better constrain the conditions of formation of martian evolved rocks including magmatic processes (e.g., assimilation and fractional crystallization), using thermodynamical modeling.

Dr. Udry bio:

Her research program seeks to better constrain the interior composition, magmatic processes and general evolution of the planet Mars through meteorite and rover data analyses. Her martian studies include comprehensive petrological analyses of martian samples to mimic the scale of terrestrial geological studies. She also analyzes martian rover data to understand the formation of rare martian rocks with felsic compositions. Udry is a participating scientist on the Mars 2020 mission.

Free