Mysterious Streaks/Tracks Detected by the Rover... Curiosity Sol 540.

The image on the left in Phage's link is unusual (to say the least) in that you can clearly see tracks made by the outside edge of the dust devil like it was a set of tracks made by two wheels. Of course I am not saying this was made by a vehicle with wheels joy-riding, but I think that a load of dust picked up, rotated and moving over the ground would not form such a definite centre circular clear area and a more dense outside area needed to make these dark circles on the ground. This looks like a giant cookie-cutter has passed through.

The larger, darker circles I assume are created because the dust devil has stopped at those places for longer? Otherwise if the dust devil kept moving, it would have created a fairly uniform track across the plain rather than a series of circles on the ground. These look as if the base has been placed on the surface, then picked up and placed on the next position and the rotating dust has made the circle-like shape.

In my opinion the image on the right shows a 'shadow' which assumes that the vertical dust devil will not get wider at the top but is a straight column of dense dust(due to the dark thin shadow). Dust rotating is probably going to create a vortex-like shape. So I supect a small amount of press-release photoshopping. It would be nice to have original links to these images too.

I understood that the force of the wind was weak and we would be seeing a cleaning effect at best. Phage, maybe you want to read the thread I linked to above about what others have said - about the wind in that thin Mars atmosphere and how it blows fine dust around on the surface and is not strong enough to move anything much larger than grains of flour-sized dust?

reply to post by qmantoo

Phage, maybe you want to read the thread I linked to above about what others have said

What makes you think I haven't?
Maybe you want to read the second post in it (as well as my others).

Phage, the dust devils you pointed out in that last link on the kids' site are about 200m across. I'm pretty sure these are small several cm streaks in the sand. I'd love to see some kind of evidence of tiny dust devils on Mars.

Can you - or anyone else - link to a better / scientific article? I've read a few about the larger tracks.

While I want to believe they are living, alien dust devils (or just sneaky floating aliens teasing Curiosity and us humans) I understand it's "more likely" to be a naturally occuring phenomenon.

Having said that, real scientists don't like to rule everything out - they often just "go silent" if something doesn't fit with their hard-science perspective (otherwise, they lose power). What they really should do is keep an open mind - we are looking at an alien planet after all and the air is very weak for such tiny eddies. It looks more like rock movement / scraping to my (untrained) eye.

It does seem that Curiosity has been detecting quite a bit of similar local interest for a while now. Here's a BBC Science news article from 2012.

It's a great little situation for alien believers though, innit lads? Suddenly a rock appears and next there are tracks in the sand. Let's get Sherlock Holmes up there. I'm loving it. Wispy wind aliens or run-of-the-mill dust devils - who cares?

It's fascinating that we can even see the stuff the US military regime (poor, poor Obama) wants us to see.

S&F!

reply to post by objectman

I'd love to see some kind of evidence of tiny dust devils on Mars.

Sort of a classic disconnect here. There are large dust devils on Earth and there are tiny dust devils on Earth. But for some reason, even though there are large dust devils on Mars, there can't be tiny dust devils on Mars? They are caused by the same conditions but, for some reason (Can you provide it? What is it about the conditions on Mars that would preclude it?), you want "proof" that there are tiny dust devils on Mars.

www.youtube.com...

The MLS/Curiosity Team seems very interested to this particular Area...


Other of your "tiny Dust devil"....






AND...


THE REAL "DUST DEVIL" that leave those tracks...

reply to post by Arken


Those boulders and rocks with the blue (and then green?) coloring wrapped around them, is that supposedly a transparent octopus-like creature of some kind (the dust devil tracks continue past the transparency and run up to the boulder, so you can see through it)? Was it green or blue on the original photo? And did it have an outline? Thanks.

These are the times that try men's souls (and by men I mean Martians).

I'm liking all the vids and pictures of the dust devils. This area has been like this for xxx amount of years, so the odds of dust devils traveling along it at least a few time seem highly plausible. I've never seen a well-formed mini-tornado dust devil, the fellow in Phage's video was lucky to get that one on camera.

reply to post by Aleister

Those boulders and rocks with the blue (and then green?) coloring wrapped around them, is that supposedly a transparent octopus-like creature of some kind (the dust devil tracks continue past the transparency and run up to the boulder, so you can see through it)? Was it green or blue on the original photo? And did it have an outline? Thanks.

Color added by me. The original image is black and white

reply to post by Arken


Thanks. I think if I saw a well-formed dust devil traveling slowly near me I'd run into it, to see what it felt like. I've seen little ones dancing along but never a really good one (almost saw a tornado once, but it didn't form, although it was enough to fulfill my interest in seeing one someday).

Phage
reply to post by objectman

 

I'd love to see some kind of evidence of tiny dust devils on Mars.

Sort of a classic disconnect here. There are large dust devils on Earth and there are tiny dust devils on Earth. But for some reason, even though there are large dust devils on Mars, there can't be tiny dust devils on Mars? They are caused by the same conditions but, for some reason (Can you provide it? What is it about the conditions on Mars that would preclude it?), you want "proof" that there are tiny dust devils on Mars.

www.youtube.com...

edit on 2/13/2014 by Phage because: (no reason given)

That's a great example of a small dust devil in a thick atmosphere on Earth!

We don't know anything about Mars. Rocks do look like rocks and I suppose, based on that one can make some assumptions, but to say this is dust devil activity is a (surprising) guess to my mind.

I looked but couldn't find any tracks like these (this short / small) on Earth. Anyone? It might be a dust devil. I think it's something else, but don't know. If I were a scientist, I suspect that hunch would launch me off to study other stuff like miniature plate tectonics, past water movement. Maybe Curiosity will sniff something out and (perhaps) we'll all get to know what they really are.

Heress a thread I started back back a few years ago with a possible worm like culprit !!!

What do you think ????

Same thing ?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Did you see them
Heress a thread I started back back a few years ago with a possible worm like culprit !!!

What do you think ????

Same thing ?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Interesting image in your thread.


Resemble something like this...

reply to post by Arken


When thinking about it (again), I'm not really comfortable with the dust devil explanation. Perhaps it's still wind-related, but in a more general sense. What also bothers me is the concentration of such 'trails' in some (locally limited) places as well as their different length - some are very short - their width and overall characteristics (eg. criss-cross alignment). I could imagine some explanations that could account for all that, but are wind, sand and dust really the culprits here? Or Sailing stones? Hmmm ...

Or perhaps it's indeed finer sand that settled in cracks on the surface (caused by larger blocks in the ground) as someone mentioned earlier in this thread? Still looking forward to expert opinions on this!

reply to post by jeep3r


Hi Jeep3r.
This is the latest image taken by curiosity in that particularsmall area...


The "tiny" dust devil don't fully convince me. Some of those tracks seems "fresh", as a "tiny" dust davil was right there only few days before the Rover and rumbled and crossed ina few meters square before vanish. Hmmm... What a lucky guy...

reply to post by Arken

Any word from NASA on this?, they must be speculating to or have come to a conclusion on it.

Do they actually come out with any comments on the pic's taken?

reply to post by Arken


Here's a pic that symptomoftheuniverse posted on the anomalies thread (to point to the "machine part" just left and down from center) but it shows lots of these tracks as well:

Hey peeps some more tracks from way back sol 389 mars.jpl.nasa.gov...

reply to post by Arken


NASA/JPL are probably going to comment on that during the next "mission briefing", but I don't wan't to wait that long! We do have at least one geologist on here who frequently chimes in, perhaps he/she'll be able to enlighten us with his/her best guess?!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll get some more input on this & in the meantime I'd say: "Happy Anomaly Hunting!"

Mianeye
reply to post by Arken

 

Any word from NASA on this?, they must be speculating to or have come to a conclusion on it.

Do they actually come out with any comments on the pic's taken?

edit on 13-2-2014 by Mianeye because: a

I really don't know, Mianeye.

And however, lately, I firmly believe not to be particularly likeable to the NASA guys.....

Aleister
reply to post by Arken

 

Here's a pic that symptomoftheuniverse posted on the anomalies thread (to point to the "machine part" just left and down from center) but it shows lots of these tracks as well:

Hey peeps some more tracks from way back sol 389 mars.jpl.nasa.gov...

Good catch, Aleister.
Again I've miss it!

Why these streaks appear to me like tracks left by.... liquid... water?


And, What about this at the left top of the image

Not sailing/tumbled stones, and not dust devils. There are no stones in most of the track to account for either sailing stones and/or wind tumbled rocks which was my first assumption. Unless there is some kind of extreme minute dust devil event that takes place in that environ (possible I guess), I can't buy the dust devil argument one bit.

However, whatever it is seems to be caused by dragging or focused airflow. Natural explanations might include some kind of cracks in the ground that have been filled with dust by the wind or streaks of geologic material (sand) running through a harder material that is kept exposed by vibrations of the earth (smal earthquakes) and acts like as an area of liquefaction swallowing any new stones periodically.

Another possibility might be channels of material where underground air currents or forces from geothermal air vents cause the same kind of liquefaction like activity in those same sandy striated areas.

Finally, it could be martian crab, worm, martian kid dragging a stick, or heavily traveled mouse, lizard or large insect trail.

reply to post by Halfswede


Personally I think that your meaningful comment and possible explanations deserve an answer about these anomalies directly from the source: NASA