Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Owen Dunton
Owen is a freshman (class of 2026) at Wesleyan from Westwood, Massachusetts. He plans to major in physics and math, and is a member of the Society of Physics Students. He works in the Starr computation physics lab at the University, and took Applied Data Analysis to engage with skills in research communication. In his free time, Owen enjoys camping, skiing, and sailing.
Abstract: While the history of Mars’ climate is not well understood, craters provide a geological template that allows scientists to observe the accumulation of erosion since their formation ~4 billion years ago (Day et al. 2016). It has been experimentally determined that dunes on the floors of craters have been caused by wind (Gunn et al. 2022), so the present study is on the correlation between the proportion of craters with dune morphologies and location on Mars, with the goal of predicting the latitude distribution of wind. On the other hand, it is unclear whether central crater peaks are formed by wind erosion (Day et al. 2016) or impact recoil, so the present analysis compares the distribution of dunes with that of peaks. The sample is 378,540 Martian craters, compiled into a data set that contains telescopic information on location, size, and morphology. The study determined that the probability of craters containing sand dunes does vary around the planet when longitude and crater size were controlled for, and is significantly higher at low and high latitudes than near the equator. It was also determined that peak morphologies varies with latitude, and that the distribution did not match up with that of dunes. Though the present analysis cannot determine a causal relationship, it can be used as evidence that peaks were possibly formed by erosion types other than wind, and encourage further experimental studies.
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