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Scientists have inferred that part of Mars’s mantle beneath the southern highlands is about 200–400 °C warmer than surrounding mantle. They did not measure that temperature directly: a Nature study published 26 August 2026 used changes in Mars’s gravity, detected through spacecraft tracking, to infer how the planet’s interior deforms.
What the Mars finding means
The inferred warm region is deep inside Mars, beneath the southern highlands—not a hot spot on the surface. The study describes a thermal contrast of 200–400 °C relative to surrounding mantle. That is an estimate derived from the inferred structure of the mantle, not a thermometer reading.
The analysis averages interior heterogeneity over the mantle and cannot uniquely determine how it is distributed vertically. The study therefore does not establish a precise depth for the anomaly.
How scientists detected it without drilling
Mars’s tilted axis and elliptical orbit create seasonal solar tides. The Sun’s gravitational pull slightly deforms the planet. That deformation shifts mass and changes Mars’s time-varying gravity field, which researchers can infer from the radio tracking of orbiters.
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- Track the orbiters. Researchers analyzed about 16 years of Doppler tracking data from Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
- Recover changes in gravity. Small variations in spacecraft motion reveal changes in Mars’s gravity as the planet responds to seasonal tidal forces.
- Model the interior response. Researchers compare the observed gravity changes with predictions for different interior structures. A hotter or less rigid mantle deforms more readily; a colder or more rigid one resists deformation.
- Infer the mantle pattern. The study found that degree-3 components of Mars’s time-variable gravity differ by as much as 300% from predictions for a spherically symmetric planet. Its model also inferred more than 20% variation in effective mantle shear modulus, in a pattern broadly aligned with the crustal dichotomy.
Those gravity and rigidity results are model-based findings reported by the study authors. They support the thermal interpretation, but they are not direct temperature measurements. As Brown University postdoctoral researcher and co-author Nick Wagner explained, “A hotter or less rigid interior deforms more easily, while a colder or more rigid interior resists deformation.” (Nature study; Brown University interview, 14 September 2026)
Why might the southern mantle be warmer?
The study does not identify a settled cause. It discusses regional mantle convection and long-term insulation by the thick southern crust as possible ways to preserve or create the contrast. In Brown University’s interview, Wagner also raised an early large impact as a hypothesis. A compositional contribution is another possibility for follow-up, not an established explanation.
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- Regional mantle convection: movement within the mantle could produce regional differences in temperature or rigidity.
- Insulation by the southern crust: the thick crust may have slowed heat loss from the mantle beneath it over geological time.
- An early impact: a major ancient collision could have contributed to the asymmetry, but the available evidence does not establish that explanation.
The study’s results do not select a winner among these possibilities.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsDoes this prove Mars is volcanically active now?
No. An inferred warm mantle region alone does not demonstrate an active eruption, a current surface volcanic episode or any specific activity at the surface. The finding concerns the planet’s interior response to tidal forces, interpreted through gravity and tracking data.
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It is also different from a direct seismic or temperature measurement: no probe or thermometer measured the anomaly. A telescope cannot reveal this interior feature; the evidence came from radio tracking of orbiters.
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