The image above generated by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, an instrument aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, shows an impact basin deep enough to swallow Mount Everest and surprising slopes in Valles Marineris. The high-resolution map that has influenced scientific understanding of the red planet for years, represents 27 million elevation measurements.
If you remember seeing the disaster movie, The Core, then you that the only thing between us and instant space-death is a magnetic field (most likely Jupiters). You also know that's the only thing that's even heard of real science in the entire movie, but it's a pretty important one - and could explain why the otherwise eminently habitable Mars is such a barren wasteland.
Scientists think the Martian magnetic field might have been hammered into submission by strikes from space. Planetary magnetic fields are created by massive molten metal currents within the planet's core. A flowing current creates a magnetic field, even when the current is massive volumes of charged liquid metal moving under the influence of temperature gradients (convection) - in fact, especially then. But magnetic analysis of Martian sites by Berkeley researchers has shown that the red planet's protective field was switched off half a billion years ago.
Read More: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/11/-did-a-colossal-asteroid-erase-mars-magnetic-field.html
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