True polar wander on Mars to the atmosphere, as well as carbon dioxide to warm the atmosphere; these effects would provide water for the rivers. Tharsis is found in the Amazonis quadrangle and the Tharsis quadrangle. True polar wander on Mars For some time, scientists have thought that the location of the poles of Mars have shifted due to the great mass of volcanic material in the Tharsis dome which includes Olympus Mons, the highest volcano in the solar system. A study published in Nature supports this idea. For a period early in the history of Mars, the poles were about 20 degrees away from
Stability of the Solar System essentially the distance from sun to earth). These are now known as the Kirkwood gaps. Some asteroids were later discovered to orbit in these gaps, but their orbits are unstable and they will eventually break out of the resonance due to close encounters with a major planet. Another common form of resonance in the Solar System is spin–orbit resonance, where the period of spin (the time it takes the planet or moon to rotate once about its axis) has a simple numerical relationship with its orbital period. An example is our own Moon, which is in a 1:1 spin–orbit resonance