Off-topic nitpicking: I find it intriguing to encounter the term "marsquake" in scientific articles, or anywhere outside science fiction. Replacing the prefix "earth" with the nomenclature of a celestial body is somewhat perplexing and unnecessary. This practice is more plausible when applied to "Earth," our own planet with that capitalized "E" - for instance, the transformation from "earthling" to "marsling" is linguistically sound. Are we going to now "unmars" new data from these studies? Will potatoes grown on Mars have a "marsy" taste to them? Will this practice scale when we finally colonize the Solar System and have to replace these words for each and every planet or moon? Should "colonize" be called "elonize" the Solar System since Columbus is controversially bound to Earth history alone? /s
> Will potatoes grown on Mars have a "marsy" taste to them?
Probably will depend on whether there is a difference you can taste from earthy to "marsy" potatoes. Some experimental trials [1] have indicated that growing potatoes on Mars will be difficult, but possible.
Google is telling me Geosmin is the chemical typically associated with earthy odor and taste [2]. The mars regolith is apparently quite salty, so it's completely possible that "marsy" taste may become associated with some similar common chemical product of martian agriculture?
You're absolutely right! I've always thought it came from the Spanish "Colon" (Columbus), but it's from the Latin colonus ("tiller of the soil, farmer"). Elonize still makes, ahem, a great neologism.
