Mars not a "red" planet?...Coast to Coast AM

I started listening to Coast again when topics of interest come up or I need something that will kill a lot of time while doing a boring chore. Anyway, yesterday I was listening to the coast podcast, and there were a couple of guys on that have a new book they are promoting. Basically, what they were saying is that NASA is a big lie, and that there is really a "shadow" space program.

I don't know about any of that, but they were stating that Mars is actually an "arizona" like planet in the sense of it's topography. They said that NASA has been filtering all of the images to be red in color, and that some of the first pictures received back even had a blue sky indicating an atmosphere.

They said that it is apparent not only in the unaltered pictures, but also in the fact that you can use things that should be certain colors on the rover in order to "calibrate" what the proper colors should be.

This has me curious, so I went to this guys website

www.enterprisemission.com...

I just cannot figure out if this stuff may be the real deal, because the site looks like some reptilian agenda site.

Can someone here kinda give me the lowdown on this theory and what evidence there really is to back it up. The coast show was not very good, as they did not actually discuss any facts. They just kept talking about their sources, and how once everyone reads the book they will be amazed...yada yada yada, without really giving much in the way of specific facts, dates, times, etc. Now I understand everyone must make a living, but it seemed like these guys were simply trying to bait the audience and sell as many books as possible before everyone realized this was total unsubstantiated garbage.

Thanks

If you go with the presumption that NASA is faking everything, then it's pretty easy to make claims such as this. If there is any evidence to the contrary, then you can just say that it's fake and leave it at that.

That being said, there is a kernel of truth in the blue sky thing. When Viking photographs were released, they showed a blue sky, but were later deemed incorrect and were later tweaked, making the sky pink as a consequence. This wasn't because they decided that the sky "should be" pink and had that happen; it was done by taking a harder look at the way the Viking camera captures pictures. Color calibration on Mars is a very, very tricky thing, especially when the camera doesn't capture the same wavelengths of light that a normal camera on Earth would use. Planetary scientists are much less interested in having grand vistas with accurate colors than in getting detailed images with good contrast, etc.

Anyways, the general consensus is that the Martian sky is a pinkish color because of all the fine dust suspended in it. If not for the dust, it would be a pale blue. This isn't because of a thick nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere identical to Earth's or anything; it's because of en.wikipedia.org..." target="_blank" class="postlink">Rayleigh scattering, which happens with many different gases, including carbon dioxide.

The fact is that scientists don't look at colors to determine atmospheric composition. Landers have had pressure sensors, mass spectrometers, etc, and orbiters/fly-by craft have had sensors too. I'm pretty sure that the thin Martian atmosphere was discovered in 1965 with Mariner 4's flyby. Every single other orbiter and lander from the US and Europe has agreed with the fact that the surface pressure is around 6-7 mbar on average. In fact, landers have been built around this fact. Atmospheric entry is a very tricky process, and very tricky on Mars due to the thin atmosphere. If it was as thick as Earth's, then the airbags/thrusters as seen on all past, present and future landers would be completely unnecessary.

Of course, you could dismiss all this evidence as some massive joint NASA/ESA cover-up, but ask yourself this: which is more likely?

Interesting, thank you for the reply.

In fact, what you just said is even jogging my memory a bit. I believe I remember hearing many years ago something similar.

This is a great site. These pictures are automatically generated using the information from the NASA website. The result is much more colorful pictures.

areo.info...

Thats a great link, thank you, I could spend years on that site

It had been I while since I'd been there. I just ran into this:

areo.info...

What do you think that is?

I assume you are referring to what looks like a small alien skull?

The thing is, you can also see a face in the larger rock to the right of it.

I would still assume it is just a rock with some neat shadows. Too bad the sundial of the rover is not visible in that shot to determine if it's shadow, emptyness, or color variations causing the image.

reply to post by TheStarMan


Actually, it's the other way around. The larger skull looking thing in the upper right section is more interesting. I suppose the small one could be a result of it's offspring.

Well if you look at the larger one, which would look quite humanoid, until you actually take into account what the actual structure is. Look how bone itself would be forming the mouth right down to the lips. You have to remember the amount of tissue in a human skull, and kinda overlay that on this thing. I would say it's just a rock.

"You have to remember the amount of tissue in a human skull"

This would be true if it were 'human'. So far humans have only been found on earth. If this is a skull of some sort, it would have to be alien or should I say martian. It very well could be and in fact probably is a rock. It is interesting how many rocks turn up on mars that look like skulls. I wonder if any one has compiled a collection of skull lookiing artifacts in mars photos. Personally, I have seen several, but I haven't kept them.

Well I agree with you on that point, that certainly you can't rule something out simply because it does not look like us. I guess I am just using the reference since this skull does look somewhat humanoid.

as far as the number of skull shaped rocks, I do agree there seem to be a lot of faces and skulls on mars, but how many are there if you just start taking random photographs of rocks on earth.

For instance, someone might say that this was proof of an ancient giant civilization if it was put on mars

skull looking rock

I don't know about that, but it sure does point to the possibility that we had some enormous babies here on earth.

Hmm. However, if you look at Mars in the late night sky at the moment, you will see it has a nice red colour. Look at it through a telescope and you will see the dark brown deserts. Lighter red areas. MY tlescope shows it all rather well. This clashes horribly with these superfluous NASA lied theories.

Here, Damian takes some wonderful CCD images of Mars. They're rather like the NASA/ESA ones aren't they?

www.damianpeach.com...



[edit on 16-10-2007 by timelike]