Dried Up Lake On Mars?

Looking at this picture from NASA's Mars rover, there appears to be a 'dip' in the land. The surrounding area is full of big rocks, but in this dip, it's just smooth. Clearly there's a difference in the landscape.

This is the 'dip' I'm talking about:

Zooming in on this area, it'll look like this.

Notice the "waves" (I'll just call it this because that's what it looks like) in the sand.

This area is a dip, and different than the surrounding landscape in terms of the rocky sandy surface vs smooth sandy surface, and we all know water puddles in these 'dips' or areas of lower elevations.

Could this have been a lake long ago and dried up? The patterns in the sand looks sort of like a liquid moved it around.

Then again, it could have been wind patterns doing that, but I suppose it's possible, right?

Anyway, I thought it was interesting. Apparently some would rather look at shadows on rocks that form human or life like images rather than studying the land scape and finding signs of erosion or other natural formations found on Earth and caused by water.

What do you guys think?

(I apologize if this has been posted already. Please delete if it has. Thank you.)

It's very possible that it's a dried up lake, but more possible that it's an old crater from a meteorite. I'm pretty certain it's been established that there was once an abundance of water on mars, so the possibility of it being a dried up lake are not far fetched. Lots of them on mars.

I don't see why it couldn't be a lake...there's dried-up riverbeds and probably oceans all over the place on Mars.

reply to post by NovusOrdoMundi

This is Bonneville Crater, and I'm pretty sure it's an impact crater. That doesn't mean that a long time ago it didn't have water in it...I suppose it is possible.

However, as you alluded to in the OP, the rippled sand is meaningless -- there is rippled sand all over Mars caused by Martian winds blowing the sand around, just like the rippled sand dunes in the deserts of Earth. The sand probably collects at the bottom of a crater since it is relatively sheltered from the wind by the crater's rim, thus less of the sand gets blown back out from the crater floor.

[edit on 2/20/2008 by Soylent Green Is People]

What's that metal looking chunk..upper left from middle of pic??

reply to post by Roz47


Yep see it too... is it the casing of the rover or what is it?

Also another thing sticks out. If you look at it in photoshop the coords are: x 214, y 13

Bright area that I wouldn't call pixelation. So either a rock more whitish than the rest or something with a highly reflective surface.
If you check the direction of the light, this would fit if the surface is angled sligthly towards us and maybe something like 45-60 degree upwards.

[edit on 20/2/08 by flice]

reply to post by NovusOrdoMundi


As I understand it, what happened is:

Mars used to be a water planet similar to earth. Mars lost its magnetic field (don't know why possibly a natural process of planet aging?), The magnetic field protects against bombardment with all radiation, notably cosmit rays and without that protection its water dissipated and went into space. No water means no clouds to protect against heat loss so the planet cooled and lost its means of supporting most life.

My guess is that when we finally get there and do a little digging we will find fossil evidence of life similar to earth.

reply to post by flice

This is the landing site for the Spirit rover, so parts of the lander and other debris are visible in this 360-degree panorama....

The bright object at the rim of the crater is the heat shield from Spirit's lander. The other thing (to the left of the crater, in the distance) is probably the lander itself, since that is the approximate location of Spirit's landing site (about 200 meters from Bonneville Crater)

This was all discussed in another thread, along with links to NASA's annotated photos which describe the scene: www.abovetopsecret.com...'

[edit on 2/20/2008 by Soylent Green Is People]

Originally posted by plumranch
Mars used to be a water planet similar to earth. Mars lost its magnetic field (don't know why possibly a natural process of planet aging?), The magnetic field protects against bombardment with all radiation, notably cosmit rays and without that protection its water dissipated and went into space. No water means no clouds to protect against heat loss so the planet cooled and lost its means of supporting most life.

A lot of the reason Mars is dead is because of its size. It's not big enough to have maintained a very hot iron core, like Earth, which would affect its magnetic field. It's gravity is also just enough less than ours that any relatively heavy molecules bouncing around in the atmosphere will by solar radiation and random Brownian motion develop enough speed to attain escape velocity, and the atmosphere would quickly dissipate.

reply to post by plumranch


I agree. I think there was life on Mars at some point. Intelligent life? I'm not sure. But I think it's very plausible that there was life.

I have no proof, of course. I wish I did. But it doesn't seem so farfetched to me. There's nothing on Mars, such as all of these deadly gases like on Jupiter or Venus, that makes it unlikely to have supported life at some point. I wouldn't recommend walking on it without a space suit and protection against the radiation, but aside from that, it's basically just a cold dry planet.

On another note, that'd be awesome to be one of the first people to walk on another planet. I can't even describe how cool that would be. It's cool just looking at pictures on the ground on another planet. But walking on it?

From what evidence I have seen, (Nasa wont tell you anything and will keep it from you). Mars could very well have a thin atmosphere with little oxygen, I dont think theirs enough oxygen to actually put 2 million people on mars and everyone start taking any breaths of it, but it might be enough to support life on it, as some of the pics I have seen of Mars from John Lear and other sources including Hoagland, theirs water flowing on mars, even though its minimal, theirs also trees and vegetation on it which seems to support the idea that maybe Mars has oxygen on it and a breathable atmosphere. People report that mars has 500 million people living underground on mars, which I dont know if its true but it wouldnt surprise me none based on evidence, well the question is why they living there? Its either 1 of 2 or even both of these scenarios.

#1 Humans cant live on its surface

#2 The Great War which happened with Mars drove them underground to avoid future conflict.

But if you live underground, is their oxygen? does ET's need oxygen like us humans do?

I would think underground is more livable on mars then anywhere else, from pics we have seen underground tubes, we have seen water seep out of cracks, we know plants exist on its surface in remote locations, and if theirs little atmosphere on Mars to create a greenhouse effect, the temperatures below its surface would have to be much greater I would think, so the theory seems to be there about what goes on underground of the planet.

Imagine going underground of mars and living there where water is not frozen, oxygen is present, and temperatures would be around 50-70 or more degrees, it makes sense when you think about it. We cant do that on earth though for reasons that, it be too hot, plain and simple, but mars is the perfect planet to live underground.

reply to post by sarentack

But if you live underground, is their oxygen? does ET's need oxygen like us humans do?

HI saren,

I think you are mostly correct. If there are Martians, they are underground and probably breathing an O2 mixture.

It is pure speculation, of course, but I'd like to believe they are there underground and in those large pyramid structures near the face. If no other reason than to prove John Lear, Lazar and sleeper correct. Sleeper said more than once that our Bigfoot creatures are simply Martians on vacation. Linda Moulton Howe has reports of their being transported by craft, very much like they were enjoying the ride and part of the phenomenon.

As you say they are probably not there in large numbers but my guess is they have technology on their side and are probably a factor of thousands of years ahead of us. The fact that they are not talking to us says a lot!

reply to post by plumranch


The Eyes of Mars.

I'm taking 3 steps back and relooking at Viking images to see what I can find.This is called Viking Snow. I can show why I believe they've been digitized and masked. The way to tell if the animals are alive is simple.Look for eyes,mouth,noses.If they are all ponted toward the camera,Viking Lander,then you have a 99 percent chance that animal is staring at the hulking machine,transfixed. The faces are simple ones,and not all easily seen.That's not the point of this post.This is just to consider that these relatively small front row animals are all staring and the sheer number is amazing when you see them masked as rocks and have to wonder now ,"well then which are live Martians,which are Mars fossils,which are just rocks?" This is me 30 years later giving back because I felt so low back then that Mars was depicted as a barren wasteland which was deliberately misleading,a lie.It was a BIG LIE that lasted decades for independent people to shoot holes in the BIG LIES. Most people continue NOT to care. forget about seeing them clearly right now,and just get a sense of their sheer numbers and how they are mixed species coexisting side by side in harmony,like they were attending a show. As you'll soon see THEY are the SHOW.

The atmospheric pressure on Mars is LESS than 1% of Earths ( 0.7% to be exact.) Of that tiny amount of pressure, the majority of the "air" is carbon dioxide. More than 95% CO2. When Mars lost its atmosphere millions of years ago, some Oxygen bled off into space and some chemically reacted with the soil. Today, the soil of Mars is both highly oxidized, and highly oxidizing. This information has been confirmed by several missions, both NASA and the ESA.

While VZE loves to live in the delusions of imagination (rocks are just rocks after all, not creatures), we should remember to stick to the evidence at hand. There is basically no atmosphere to speak of. Cosmic radiation bombards the surface at a deadly rate. The soil is so oxidizing that it is self sterilizing. Any life there would have to be quite hardy and hidden safe from the cosmic radiation. Perhaps microbes in the soil.

As for the dry lake bed.. I think it has been correctly characterized as a wind blown, sand filled crater.

This has been gone over quite a bit. Search out the "Forests on Mars???" thread. something like 60 pages of clouds, water, lakes, trees, monoliths....and in the bottom of almost every single crater are these ripples.

Some say that they are because of dried water. Some people contend that it is fluid dynamics at play on superfine dust. I think that Willy Wonka has little fella's that keep it landscaped like that for us.

Also, if you want to see a slightly more abridged version of the same information, click the link in my signature. Look for Bluebirds files. She had a lot of good stuff on there. And Zorgon (with other contributors) rounded out the collection fairly well.

The above Viking Snow pic from Keith Laney www.keithlaney.net...