Rover spots the 'new thing' on Mars

Originally posted by youdidntseeme
These images are intriuging, not sure what to make of it though. I always love images from Mars, the moon, etc and just gazing at them knowing that i'll likely never see it with my own eyes, but hoping.

Unfortunately, until an astronaut/anthroplogy team actually makes the trip to study and excavate these findings, these images are all we will ever know about the new formation.

I think we'll know a bit more than the images. They have other instruments on the rover they can use to extract information about the composition of the rocks.

I am not a geologist, but as I understand it one leading hypothesis is that what we see here are crack fills. Mineral-bearing water was forced into the cracks, and the minerals precipitated out. How long did that take or how much water was involved? No idea.

reply to post by Tsurugi

Yep. 2.5 billion for some pics. Oh, and a small mountain of brand new scientific data that will keep teams of nerds occupied for the next 50 years and vastly expand our understanding of geology, solar and planetary formation, element dispersion, chemistry and metallurgy and....but I'm sure no one cares about that worthless crap.

If we spent that money down here trying to understand how we are behaving towards each other and this environment, I might be more inclined. That "worthless crap" is a lot more important than a 2.5 billion dollar slide show to me. Don't get me wrong, I love the pics too. Just when is enough enough? Well have all this wonderful extra terrestrial data to decipher in the future which down here, right now, is looking kind of bleak. We may not be around to enjoy the results in 50 years. E$pecially if we keep looking "el$ewhere".

And you are right about the non existent "eco sphere" the way I put it, just polluting another pristine environment in our hasty wasty journeys.

reply to post by SLAYER69




hmmm notice the reflection of the blue sky?

Hi,

Just wanna share the photo after playing a little with it and after o gave a little more realistic color to it...

Thanks for the original poster of the link !! :-)




cheers

c0d3r

i dont know anything about geolagy, is it normal for rocks of a similar size and shape to naturally arrange themselves in a straight line????

This is a pretty cool find. What we are looking at is likely a mineral vein, possibly quartz. These are formed by several other types of minerals that precipitate out of the rocks and collect within a fracture network, eventually solidifying. They eventually seal off the water-bearing fracture.

In my line of work, we see a lot of these seams deep within the Earth doing geophysic borehole scans. In short, this is further evidence of Mars having water for sustained periods of time. Geologic time, that is, so we're talking thousand upon thousands of years at a minimum.

I've include a similar vein below for comparison.

reply to post by dtrock78


nice pic
note the surrounding rocks.
now look at the original pic and the wider landscape.
Note the lack of rocks.
As a geologist, have you seen something comparable and do you have images/links for it?

reply to post by Aestheteka

now look at the original pic and the wider landscape.
Note the lack of rocks.

Do you men to refer to the Mars picture?

Did the concept of loose dirt never occur? Sand and soil can move, with the wind. Either obscuring, or revealing, features beneath.

Additionally, after millions or billions of years, any layer that was once more broad in scope could at this point in time be fractured, and reveal only a portion of the extensive rest of the layers....geologic processes can literally move mountains. Mars may have been far more geologically ("areologically") active in its distant past.

The fact of Olympus Mons volcano attests to this possibility.

Originally posted by MarkScheppy
This Forum is hillarious.

I guess hilarity is in the eye of the beholder...

The one time the UK does something right and a member has to voice their criticism at the one time when it is appropriate not to.

I don't understand what you mean, what time was that?

The Portugal space program should figure out what the rock is, their economy is rocking and rolling from what I've heard.

What's that got to do with the topic?

That face on Cydonia really hasn't been totally dispoved at a shadow trick yet, wouldn't that be the ideal place to send complicated Rovers with good photographic equipment.

No need for that, we already have good photos of it taken by HiRISE.

Originally posted by BRITWARRIOR
Maybe you should take the time out to watch an episode of time team online, there a really clever bunch using the best equipment & brains in the field, the day time team step on Mars is the day our government go "OH S**T we have been rumbled,

If they do create entire Roman villas based on less than six rocks they can only be using their imagination.

The picture you have provided could never in a million years be used to compare with those stones in the NASA pic, do you have a better match or a good theory on how such formations could have been made/created naturally ?

I thought it could, as both look like sedimentary rock and, based on that, could have been created in the same way.

reply to post by Aestheteka


I don't really understand your question. There are surrounding rocks in both pictures.

Many of the rocks observed on Mars are now believed to be sedimentary in nature thanks to the great shots the rovers have beamed up over the past couple years. These are rocks that are formed by deposits of sand, silts, and clays that solidify over time. Sandstones, siltstones, etc. These rocks are also one of the weakest types of rocks, most of which you could break in pieces in your hand. As a result, they weather and erode much faster than harder substance, such as quartz.

So it is not uncommon to see large quartz veins sticking out of the side of eroded hills, mountains, etc, since the weaker material around them has been removed eons ago. This is what appears to have happened in the Mars photo.

reply to post by Aestheteka

Obviously, in the case of Roman structures the design can be based on extant structures or the remains of such but much of it is still guess work until certain artefacts

Then do not assume such for Mars. Because we do not have any pre-existing structures from there. You cannot assume anything.

For Rome, they ALWAYS built the same way. It was their logo virtually. It's virtually near impossible for you to find anything not up to expectations for Rome.


Therefore, no, you are false in stating they can reconstruct something from a few things. Because they are simply taking a structure that exists and seeing which one fits the slot. It's no different than children's shape toys.

You can do the same thing for virtually any sky scraper in any modern city. All you would need is a trace of what was there, some basic understanding from either story or drawing, and an understanding of architectural reason, and you pretty much can guess what it looked like.


There is not only no reason to assume anything earthly for architecture in different gravity and materials, but it's plain simply ignorant to assume you can do it to some culture you've never heard of nor seen before.

Originally posted by wulff
I wish it were more but I think it is just a natural rock layer.. what I really would like to see is something like the "glass tubes".. even if the 'tubes' are natural I can't imagine a scientist that wouldn't want to study those up close!!!

The tubes aren't tubes. This is just a perceptual illusion - our brains imposing 3-D interpretations on a 2-D image. They are just dune fields in troughs.

reply to post by dtrock78


Probably not quartz. I don't know what it is, but I'd bet on something more like gypsum.

reply to post by ProudBird


Thank you for that reply. I enjoy conversing with you much more than I do ATH911. Don't let him draw you in too deep. Pull ripcord....

Originally posted by intrptr
If we spent that money down here trying to understand how we are behaving towards each other and this environment, I might be more inclined. That "worthless crap" is a lot more important than a 2.5 billion dollar slide show to me. Don't get me wrong, I love the pics too. Just when is enough enough? Well have all this wonderful extra terrestrial data to decipher in the future which down here, right now, is looking kind of bleak. We may not be around to enjoy the results in 50 years. E$pecially if we keep looking "el$ewhere".

Hmmm....yeah, we could pull NASA's funding and apply it to various social concerns. We have plenty of them, I agree with you there.
But...would it be worth it? For instance, NASA's total budget for 2007 was about $16.143 billion. Federal social spending for the same year was $1.581 trillion...and that's only at the Federal level, which doesn't take into account the state and local levels. Adding NASA's budget to that amounts to less than a drop in the bucket(or, since we're talking about social spending, maybe a tear in the sea would be more poetic).

Honestly, I think that enough people are awed and gratified and amazed at the massive amounts of imagery NASA produces from various projects--radio telescope images of quasars, Hubble's latest jewels of the universe, pics of red dirt and rocks from Mars, the high res images of the moon from the lunar cams--lots of people see this stuff, and for a moment, they forget their worries and troubles here on Earth, their minds take a trip to distant realms in the majesty of space, and for a moment, they behold eternity.

That, to me, qualifies as socially healing and constructive.

you can see the one on the left is thiner.
so I bet its man made.



or in the middle of this pic.

reply to post by Tsurugi

That, to me, qualifies as socially healing and constructive.

OK...

Intrptr

Originally posted by boomerdude
Is that a blue-white sky and mountains reflecting of the Rover?

I don't think so, I haven't seen any noticeable reflection in any of the rovers' photos, and as for the blue sky, it's possible, we also get red sky on Earth during dust storms.

Originally posted by ArMaP

Originally posted by Aestheteka
If anyone's ever seen the UK series Time Team, they manage to reconstruct entire Roman villas on less evidence than that....

If they did then they were using too much imagination.

That really looks like a natural formation, and very similar to the one on the image below.

haha look in the background of that picture...doesn't it look like a building...like a white house kind of thing or soemthing...im sure its rocks but cool photo anyway.


Edit: sorry i may have missed where this pic came from and they may indeed be an intentional building