the surrounding rocks, so ore is deposited in any kind of the rock that happens to be nearby, but the ore minerals first had to be concentrated by way of a molten mass of magma. Research carried out at Louisiana State University found different types of volcanic materials around volcanoes in Elysium Mons. This showed that Mars can have a magma evolution. This leads to the possibility of finding useful minerals for a future human population on Mars." Molten rock on Mars The presence of many huge volcanoes on Mars shows that large areas were very hot in the past. Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the solar system; Ceraunius Tholus, one of its smaller volcanoes, nears the height of Earth's Mount Everest. There is strong evidence for much more widespread sources of heat in the form of dikes, which indicate that magma traveled under the ground. Dikes take the shape of walls and cut across rock layers. In some cases, dikes on Mars have become exposed by erosion. Large areas of Mars contain troughs, called fossa, which are classified as grabens by geologists. They stretch thousands of miles out from volcanoes. It is believed that dikes helped with the formation of grabens. Many, maybe most, of the grabens had dikes under them. One would expect dikes and other igneous intrusions on Mars because geologists believe that the amount of liquid rock that moved under the ground is more than what we see on the top in the form of volcanoes and lava flows. On Earth, vast volcanic landscapes are called large igneous provinces (LIPs); such places are sources of nickel, copper, titanium, iron, platinum, palladium, and chromium. Mars's Tharsis region, which contains a group of giant volcanoes, is considered to be a LIP. Heat from impacts Besides heat generated by molten rock, Mars has had much heat produced when asteroids impacted its surface making giant craters. The area around a large impact may take hundreds of thousands of years to cool. During that time, ice in the ground will melt, heat, dissolve minerals, then deposit them in cracks or faults that were produced with the impact. Studies on the earth have documented that cracks are produced and that secondary minerals veins are filled in the cracks. Images from satellites orbiting Mars have detected cracks near impact craters. Areas of aqueous and low-grade thermal alteration have been found by