Kirkwood Outcrop on Mars Remains A Mystery: Is This A Glimpse At Past Martian Life?

originally posted by: Ziath
Past life? How about a little present life...

encrypted.google.com...

I'm not claiming to know these are trees.

But come on.

It's not nothing.

I've always wondered about those. It deserves it's own thread

Looks like concretions from the deep of the ocean. They have nothing in common with organic life. However it mean there were deep oceans on the surface of Mars but this was already proven and official so nothing interesting.

Concretions on earth. Evidence of the Ocean in this place in the past.
desertexplorer.files.wordpress.com...

originally posted by: Opraks
Concretions on earth. Evidence of the Ocean in this place in the past.
desertexplorer.files.wordpress.com...

Thanks for your alternative viewpoint ... may I ask you to be more specific? The detail level in your link is not exactly the same as in the Kirkwood images.

From a distance, I can't really make out the morphology of the concretions you're referencing. Thanks in advance!

a reply to: smurfy
Was the chemical or spectroscopic analysis of the ground up debris in this suspected Crinoid ever completely published?
Not just the elements found, but the typical spectroscopic map? I have never seen it, and wonder if it is available. Anyone know?

originally posted by: smurfy
Maybe it's another Crinoid as Ex-NASA man, Richard Hoover has talked about elsewhere on Mars.

Amazing, I'll have to watch this when I get home.

a reply to: hoghead cheese

What an excellent video. I had not seen that interview, thanks.

a reply to: jeep3r

Those fossilized crinoids are interesting as well, and a great stereo pair. Nice job.

In this thread I showed a fair bit of evidence that these concretions or blueberries were in fact fungus of a sort. Not all are, but some are. Personally, I think this gives some of the answers you are looking for on this thread.

It also gives a reason why we see so many 'blueberries' in some areas but no rocks from which these things have come. There should be images of rocks with a little pile of blueberries at its base where the wind has eroded these from the soft rock. However, I have not seen anything like this in all my years of examining MER photos, there are no rocks with a pile of concretions at its base and a load of pock-marks where they all fell out.

In some areas on Mars there are literally thousands of blueberries, yet where are these rocks? If they were fungi fruiting bodies, then that would give a believable explanation.

originally posted by: smurfy

So far I find what Hoover is saying, is pertinent in his mind at the very least, and refreshing and talking numbers. Then ask yourself, why is NASA going to use Opportunity to re-evaluate past sites?

Do you happen to have any link regarding the information that Opportunity is supposed to return to past sites? I must have missed details about the planned route for MER-B ... thanks in advance!

originally posted by: jeep3r

Do you happen to have any link regarding the information that Opportunity is supposed to return to past sites? I must have missed details about the planned route for MER-B ... thanks in advance!

Ah! Now I get it,
I thought you had already seen that because that info is with a source picture of that series at NASA. So here's the NASA paragraph,

"The spherules at Kirkwood do not have the iron-rich composition of the blueberries. They also differ in concentration, distribution and structure. Some of the spherules in this image have been partially eroded away, revealing concentric internal structure. Opportunity's science team plans to use the rover for further investigation of these spherules to determine what evidence they can provide about ancient Martian environmental conditions."

And the link.

www.nasa.gov...

originally posted by: charlyv
a reply to: smurfy
Was the chemical or spectroscopic analysis of the ground up debris in this suspected Crinoid ever completely published?
Not just the elements found, but the typical spectroscopic map? I have never seen it, and wonder if it is available. Anyone know?

I haven't looked for any results, but in the video you will hear Hoover mention about David McKay, (R.I.P. 2013) a colleague of Hoover's telling Hoover than it was destroyed while looking for Carbon, something Hoover considers as unnecessary. (McKay was the team leader of the meteorite fossil findings, of which Hoover also a member).
BTW, that video is the third post, first page in this thread and very enlightening. In fact I think it is because Hoover made such a big stink of that possible fossil, that NASA is going to return to the area, of course they are not going to say that Hoover had any influence. What is interesting though, is by virtue of this possible Crinoid fossil turning out to be just that, it could also mean that Hoover is correct about the meteorite fossils, of which he also explains his reasons very clearly in the video.

originally posted by: smurfy

I thought you had already seen that because that info is with a source picture of that series at NASA. So here's the NASA paragraph,

"The spherules at Kirkwood do not have the iron-rich composition of the blueberries. They also differ in concentration, distribution and structure. Some of the spherules in this image have been partially eroded away, revealing concentric internal structure. Opportunity's science team plans to use the rover for further investigation of these spherules to determine what evidence they can provide about ancient Martian environmental conditions."

And the link.
www.nasa.gov...

OK, now I see what you mean. I did come across that paragraph at some point, but I think it relates to the extended period of time that Opportunity spent at Cape York (and Kirkwood). Here goes an annotated traverse path incl. sols and waypoints based on a KMZ file I found at UMSF:



According to that map, Opportunity is heading further to the south, leaving Cape York/Kirkwood etc. behind.

Now the paragraph you referenced dates back to sol 3064 (or end of September 2012, respectively) whereas the enlarged feature in the OP was imaged on Sol 3247. This means that Opportunity was investigating that area for about 200 sols.

The last update on the webpage you linked was on November 2012. That's why I think that the further investigation (mentioned on that page) had already been completed in the weeks after that image was published. So I don't think the rover is going back (although I wish they would return to Kirkwood for a more thorough investigation) ...

Does any of that make sense to you or am I (perhaps) misinterpreting that information?

originally posted by: jeep3r

Does any of that make sense to you or am I (perhaps) misinterpreting that information?

No that all makes sense, and I even mention about the last update on that page back a few posts, and it's because there have been no more updates to that page that kinda bugs me, it's begging for an update in the last two years since the story line is unfinished, so if they did go back, no one is saying what the result was. The other thing is, late 2012 is very close to when Hoover first looked at the 2004, 'Crinoid' picture, he didn't know about it before that.