What Australia’s Hidden Caves Can Teach Us About Martian Terrain

You might think by the year 2026 there wouldn’t be any major geological formations left to discover, but you’d be wrong. According to a new study published in Communications Earth & Environment, a vast network of caves in southern Australia has surface features that have been hiding in plain sight. Geologists from Curtin University made the discovery after investigating a series of shallow trenches on the Nullarbor Plain, a sprawling crescent-shaped desert bordered by the Great Victoria Desert to the north and the Great Australian Bight to the south.

The cave system beneath is also great, but the nondescript trenches—some of which stretch for over 10 miles—weren’t known to be associated with the underground network until now. Over millions of years, many of these openings collapsed, partially filling in the caves and leaving long, wide depressions in the surface. According to the team, this unique characteristic of the Nullarbor trenches make them an ideal template for identifying cave systems that might be hiding on other planets.

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