--- title: "Scientists Detect Gooey Core Inside Mars" description: "After looking at NASA's Mars lander data, scientists say they've figured out what lies at the heart of the Red Planet's core." date: "2023-04-25" modified: "2023-04-25" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-detect-mars-core" categories: - "Astronomy" - "Mars" - "Space" tags: - "insight" - "mars" - "seismic monitoring" - "the digest" --- # Scientists Detect Gooey Core Inside Mars ![After looking at NASA's Mars lander data, scientists say they've figured out what lies at the heart of the Red Planet's core.]() *\Image: University of Maryland\* ## Martian Mood After inspecting NASA's Mars lander data, scientists say they've figured out what lies at the heart of the Red Planet's core. In a [press release]() about the revolutionary findings out of the University of Maryland, the geologists who made this landmark discovery say that Mars' core is made up of a gooey liquid iron alloy that's "rich in sulfur and oxygen." This hypothesis was gleaned, as the press release notes, by using seismic data from NASA's InSight Mars lander, which for years monitored the Red Planet's rumblings until the end of 2022 — and as one of the authors of the new [paper published yesterday]() in the journal *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences* notes, there's a precedent for this sort of thing. "In 1906, scientists first discovered the Earth’s core by observing how seismic waves from earthquakes were affected by traveling through it,” UMD's Vedran Lekic, an associate geology professor who co-authored the paper, said in the school's statement. "More than a hundred years later, we’re applying our knowledge of seismic waves to Mars." ## Quaking in their Boots Lekic and the rest of the UMD geology team got to their incredible prediction by looking at the waves caused by two events that were recorded in the InSight data: a marsquake (yes, that's like an earthquake on Mars) and an impact event. "By comparing the time it took those waves to travel through Mars compared to waves that stayed in the mantle... the team estimated the density and compressibility of the material the waves traveled through," the UMD press release notes, adding that ultimately, the researchers concluded that "Mars most likely has a completely liquid core, unlike Earth’s combination of a liquid outer core and solid inner core." The UMD team also "inferred details about the core’s chemical composition, such as the surprisingly large amount of light elements (elements with low atomic numbers) — namely sulfur and oxygen — present in Mars’ innermost layer," the statement reads. While this discovery is super cool on its own, it could also help aid future research into planet formation — and there's still much to learn. "Even though the InSight mission ended in December 2022... we're still analyzing the data that was collected," Lekic said. “InSight will continue to influence how we understand the formation and evolution of Mars and other planets for years to come.” **More on Mars:** [*Scientists Baffled By These Almost Perfectly Circular Dunes on Mars*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()