Some of the slopes and cliffs look quite gentle and scalable in this mosaic of the Candor
Chasma area in Valles Marinares looking from north to south (fig.92b made from images from
both the Viking Orbiters), but it must be understood that this trench is a whopping five to seven
km deep split in the Martian surface, an enormous rip, stretching to a gaping 200 km across. At
over 5000 km long it would stretch across the entire continent of Australia. Then on the other side
of the planet nearer the bottom, in fact almost directly opposite the area where we find the three
huge volcanoes, is a huge impact crater and all the signs that a very large object at one time
slammed into Mars with such enormous speed and energy that penetrated deep into the planet.
Fig.92Fig 92bDo you see where this all leads?
There is significant evidence that Mars recently suffered the impact of an asteroid or comet
fragment. An impact so great and so devastating that the object in question punched deep into the
planets lower hemisphere and so doing blew all the crust of the top hemisphere from the force of
the blow. The impact had totally devastating results and may well have caused the planet to bulge
and split its surface and three huge gaping ‘blisters’ to appear opposite to the impact site to
release the sudden pressure and catastrophic energy from the blow that was delivered to it.