Ocean on Mars? Explain these images

I'm sure there is an explanation that what I'm seeing is not water, but it certainly looks like water. These canyons are almost identical to what you might find on earth, obviously carved by water over time. If you open the IAS viewer image, it seems that there are ripples on the water everywhere as if the winds on mars are whipping across the surface constantly, like the ripples you will see under a helicopter as it hovers over water.

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Larger image

There is obvious sand and dust being kicked up over the "water", the same direction as the ripples. If this is merely sand and not liquid water, then why isn't it also white like the dust being blown onto it?

[edit on 15-7-2008 by super70]

That doesn't look like water at all to me. It just looks like a barren landscape that has the telltale sign of erosion in the past.

Originally posted by super70
There is obvious sand and dust being kicked up over the "water", the same direction as the ripples. If this is merely sand and not liquid water, then why isn't it also white like the dust being blown onto it?

[edit on 15-7-2008 by super70]

I don't see dust being kicked up, all I see are ripples in dirt, perhaps with different dust on top of it. It isn't the same color as the rest of the sand because HiRISE is designed with CCDs filtered for specific parts of the spectrum designed to see differences in the minerals of the dirt. Darker dirt just means it has different minerals so it may represent an old laval flow, for instance.

There are 10 red CCDs, 2 blue-green, and 2 infrared. The resulting "color" images are "false color" so blue does not mean that there's really a blue ocean there. One of your images was greyscale but the other one was false color.

[edit on 15-7-2008 by ngchunter]

reply to post by BlueTriangle


I tend to agree....I think at one point there were flowing rivers and maybe even large oceans on mars were figuring all this out now...but im w/ him i think that its either A. erosion from past water on mars B. Your looking at a barren landscape w/ alot of sand that has been blown into this formation...just my dolla fiddy...im definitley no expert and dont claim to be so i could be wrong, but thats just my gut feeling...thanks

Good Day
Skept!cal

Could the ripples not just be sand dunes? Not that I don't believe Mars has water, I just don't see oceans in these pictures.

like this one from the earth from space website. The dunes show the same effect.

reply to post by super70


Your Avatar rocks by the way...i know its off topic, but i have to give you props its cracking me up hard!!

Good Day
Skept!cal

reply to post by super70


i think what most people tend to forget is that even though it's relatively thin and weak, mars does have a slight atmosphere. there are winds there, great dust storms and the like. very few of the features on mars attributed to recent water forces by a lot of people, seem to me, to be anything more than wind erosion and particulate build up over time.

Those are not ripples, they are dunes.

If you follow them you will see that the "ripples" change colour when the ground changes, so they can not be ripples on any liquid.

People usually forget that most characteristics we identify with water are just characteristics of fluids, and very fine sand behaves as a fluid, that is why the original Diesel engine could also work with coal dust, because it behaved as a fluid.

even more martian scenery...

[edit on 15-7-2008 by reject]

One question: What is so special about Mars that the ocean has holes in it?

Explain that and I will be happy to listen further.

There are sand dunes that look like oceans and lakes like this one from Mars Opportunity on Sol 1382. The ripples haven't changed from on forward

Hi.

Perhaps these areas were once oceans that have disappeared, and have left behind these formations, which look like exposed, dried seabeds.

Maybe?

Originally posted by scobro
Hi.

Perhaps these areas were once oceans that have disappeared, and have left behind these formations, which look like exposed, dried seabeds.

Maybe?

I think scientists pretty much agree that at some point there was free flowing water on Mars, but at whatever point, when Mars... well... died, basically, most of either got frozen at the caps, or was lost through the atmosphere.

Found these on websites over time and in my lay opinion, since i am not a geologist/planetary scientist, it sure looks like shorelines to me. Especially the later pictures seem to show the submerged parts of icebergs and the like...

www.msss.com...

www.msss.com...

www.msss.com...

www.msss.com...

www.msss.com...

www.msss.com...

www.msss.com...

www.msss.com...

Enjoy

Stellar