Sea Nodules or just Martian Rocks??

great pic archangel, more and more, I am leaning towards the belief that this area in which opportunity is exploring was once completely submerged and more than likely there is still water under the surface of mars.

Was noticing that the Sprit pics didn't seen to have these "Nodules", only Oportunity..

Why?

Because Oportunity landed in a Metor crator, and the impact of the metor could have also caused these formations...

www.lpl.arizona.edu...

The most distant form of impact fragments come in the form of tektites or microtektites. These are on the order of millimeters in size and can travel hundreds or even thousands of kilometers to form strewn fields. These are typically shocked rock and mineral fragments or solidified melt rock that can be elongated, tear drop shaped, or any number of different shapes created by the forces imposed by rotation and interaction with an atmosphere

gisp.gi.alaska.edu...

[Edited on 10-2-2004 by Yoda]

[Edited on 10-2-2004 by Yoda]

what you saying? a meteor can't hit an ocean???? it had to have been dry land?

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..............escargot..........*drools*

what you saying? a meteor can't hit an ocean???? it had to have been dry land?

Where did I say that ?????

All I'm saying that it could have the meteor, dry land or ocean what the difference ????????????

the difference to me, is that those little round rocks, nodules, whatever you wanna call them, are attached to the larger rocks are precarious angles just like underwater barnacle type creatures on earth do....so even though we are in a meteor crater, that meteor crater could have been under an ocean.

I think the ones on the surface in various sizes are probably from a meteor effect or sea nodule theory but the ones attached to larger rocks are odd to say the least.

Well...

Just a few interesting articles...

Spherules and Heating: Material melted in
or condensing from the vapor plume of an impact
will tend to condense as small spheres whose
size is limited by surface tension�s ability to overcome
aerodynamic stress [5] and the spherules
can be deposited as thick, uniform beds. More
energetic events (higher velocity impact) produce
smaller spheres : for Mars, with lower escape
velocity and further from the sun, such velocities
are lower than for Earth, and so spherules are
larger. For the 2.5km crater event discussed
above, the corresponding particle diameter would
be 300 mm [1].

www.lpi.usra.edu...


The spherical pebbles are among the mix of particles spread across the crater floor. How these rounded pebbles formed remains a puzzler, but they could be the result of accretion under water. The objects upon microscopic study, however, show apparent pores suggestive of other alternatives, like meteor impacts or volcanic eruptions.

www.space.com...

NASA on the Nodules:

"This is wild looking stuff," said Steven Squyres, principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project from Cornell University, referring to microscopic images revealing the rocks layers and embedded spherical grains.

At a press conference today, Squyres said the layers of the rock are made of fine material, probably either dust or sediment, and not sandstone. Each layer is just a few millimeters thick.

The tiny spherules, as they are called, are embedded in the layers "like blueberries in a muffin," he said.

The spherules are clearly made of a different material than the rock's primary layers, or matrix, Squyres said. The matrix is tan or buff in color, he said, and the spherules are very gray.

"That's a hint that they may be different in composition," he said.

Millions of years of sandblasting in the harsh Martian environment have exposed many of the spherules. Some have dropped out of the rock and others are hanging on like a child's loose tooth. This makes them ripe for observation.

The spherules are tougher material than the rock matrix, Squyres said. Some are "strung like beads" along a crack in the rock. But his team does not yet know what they're made of or how they formed.

There are three leading hypotheses:

The spherules might have formed when ash from a volcanic eruption was suspended in the air, stuck together, and fell from the sky. That idea is rapidly falling from favor, Squyres said, because it would tend to produce spherules made of the same material as the rock's main matrix.
They might have formed when molten rock -- either from a volcano or a meteor impact -- froze in mid-air into glass beads.
Most interesting, they might be "concretions," which form when a fluid, possibly water, carrying dissolved minerals flows through a rock and "precipitates" a grain that typically grows into a sphere.

www.space.com...

Very good...

I'm not discounting any one of those three, like I said in a previous post, that those could also be caused by water erosion (just couldn't find a link to it )...

The problem is that we don't know when that crater happened...was it before the water went away ( possibly underground ), or after...

just my opinion here again:

but I lean towards the theory that the meteor crater was underneath an ocean, lake or sea. This particular area probably has the possibility for life, (the green stuff from ESA's pic)algae maybe (the missing crab thingy?) and... I believe there is water underground, perhaps lending to the "muddy" consistency of the soil in that area (look at the tracks).

those spherules as NASA calls them are also said to be of a different material from the rock. (different shading of color) Again thinking out of the box since we don't know how life could have evolved there, perhaps these are encased fossils of some early bacteria or micro-organism that lived in water.

Well...

I tend to lean the other way, for now ( always subject to change if new info pops up )...

As far as the "green" in the Gusev Crater region, it's quite possible that it could be a mineral called olivine, which can be green in color...

This was released in 2000...

speclab.cr.usgs.gov...

And this for more reading...

www.psrd.hawaii.edu...

Just thought of something...

[silly time: on]

They also could be Horta eggs

[/silly time: off]

Just joking

[Edited on 10-2-2004 by Yoda]

lol...think you been watching too much star trek reruns

horta eggs! lmao

Fine desert sand moves in much the same ways as water or seas. Deserts are often refered to metaphorically as seas. Like the kamel is the "ship of the desert" and so on. You can say that water imitates air, while sand imitates water.

Blessings,
Mikromarius

It looks like thers a lot of mud around in the seconf picture

just felt like saying...told you so

just kidding

Originally posted by worldwatcher

In this thread...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

looks like wet crap to me....ever seen a goat take a crap? they leave little balls all over the freakin place.

I thought you decided these were "goat turds" ?

lmao, I didn't decide they were goat turds....just said they LOOKED like goat turds...big difference there