As we now know, this extensive desert region contains two large craters with dark, windblown dust streaks and the gigantic canyon
Valles Marineris. All three features were portrayed as canals by many 19th-century astronomers and given various names.
Olympus Mons is roughly 27 kilometres high, about three times as tall as Mount Everest, while the
Valles Marineris can go as deep as 8 to 10 kilometres in some places and runs for roughly 4,000 kilometres, which is close to the width of Australia.
It is some 170 km south of Eos Chaos, which lies in the far eastern section of
Valles Marineris.
Elsewhere in the show, this conflicted dynamic opened onto other antagonisms endemic to AbEx: intuitive spontaneity versus composition (see the tussle between drip and symmetry in Longhand, 2007), for example, or the grid as self-referential versus the grid as a portal to those regions beyond that it was meant to annul (the inky rectilinear armature of
Valles Marineris, 1992, simultaneously forswears illusionist space and creates windowlike apertures).
Secondary dust cores originated around Solis Lacus and spread along
Valles Marineris. A general yellow haze quickly spread over the planet, making the event not only encircling but global.
Filling Mars'
Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system, with genetically modified redwoods would indicate that we do not properly appreciate its present desolate beauty.
Where would you find
Valles Marineris, a great chasm some 4,000km long?
10 At 2,500 miles long and four miles deep,
Valles Marineris is the Solar System's biggest canyon - on which planet is it?