"The Sphere": Curiosity Sol 610...

a reply to: letmeDANz

i don't understand why people are finding it so hard to understand the point being made here.

Exactly!

Some people here are "Official Resident Debunkers" (some other are "something else") and they fight and are upset for any thing that goes a little Beyond their nose.

originally posted by: Arken
a reply to: letmeDANz

i don't understand why people are finding it so hard to understand the point being made here.

Exactly!

Some people here are "Official Resident Debunkers" (some other are "something else") and they fight and are upset for any thing that goes a little Beyond their nose.

And yet his post is filled with errors about Mars and the Solar System. How can we learn the truth and deny ignorance if we don't learn the known facts first?

originally posted by: letmeDANz
As per our 'complete' understanding, earth is/was the only planet with water in the ENTIRE universe, so as per this hypothesis, water erosion is ruled out.

It is widely accepted that liquid water existed on Mars in the past. There is plenty of evidence of flowing water and sediment deposits.

There apparently is no atmosphere on Mars, so WIND erosion?? how?

There is atmosphere on Mars. It's very thin, but it's there, and it's filled with fine dust. Mars also had a thicker atmosphere in the past, when it had flowing water.

Here I am again, debunking and correcting.

Back on the topic, this rock is interesting, and I'm sure any geologists and planetary scientists that noticed it have a geological explanation for how it came to be. That's who we should be asking. A few Curiosity pictures won't solve anything.

a reply to: wildespace

As per our 'complete' understanding, earth is/was the only planet with water in the ENTIRE universe, so as per this hypothesis, water erosion is ruled out

Well this is scary that some still think this...

A few Curiosity pictures won't solve anything.

But a few more pictures of a curious object would have been nice

a reply to: letmeDANz

Just to make it clearer, letmeDANz, because it is really exciting once you know this: Gale Crater, in which the Rover is roving, was once filled with water. It was either a very large lake or a body of water of ocean size (the crater is three miles deep).

The destination of the Rover are the foothills of Mount Sharp. Mount Sharp is not a mountain, it is a sedimentary fill created by the lake. It has layers of sediments, which the Rover will either explore or test chemically, and with its laser.

Water, water, everywhere.

originally posted by: letmeDANz
i don't understand why people are finding it so hard to understand the point being made here..

As per our 'complete' understanding, earth is/was the only planet with water in the ENTIRE universe, so as per this hypothesis, water erosion is ruled out.

There apparently is no atmosphere on Mars, so WIND erosion?? how?

and for it reach an almost spherical shape indicates a long time of natural erosion...

Thank you for your threads Arken..
not many may not agree with them all, but it certainly peeks your interest to know that we really know nothing about the place we hold in this space..

Uhm, no.

Please do some reading before you make statements like these that are very untrue.

First, Mars does indeed have an atmosphere (how else do you think the skycrane worked?). It's thin, about the same pressure as if you were 30 miles up in the air here on Earth, but it most certainly does have an atmosphere still (and was much thicker in the past), and even has weather on it.

Earth is the only body in our solar system that has liquid water on it's SURFACE. Let's get that straight right now.
There a many other bodies in our solar system that have water. Either frozen solid, both on their surfaces or under them. Some even have liquid water under their surfaces.

Mars has show with out a doubt, that it has had large amounts of liquid water in it's past, before it's atmosphere became too thin to support liquid water on it's surface.

With as much water and more atmosphere in the past, there is no reason why rocks would not have been weathered and eroded then. Much more than now. However, even now, erosion and weathering does still happen on Mars.

Where would the rocks that have been weathered and eroded long ago disappear to? They would still be there. They would not disappear.

Well yes i agree with all of you..
Merely pointing out what we are told to understand about the systems around us..
and that's where the issue lies..
the reality is very different from the 'education' being drilled down..

so if you look at this rock in that perspective, it would be quite surprising..
Plus, add the fact the time or the number of eons that this rock must've been eroded by natural phenomenon, which only means that our planet is not very unique in terms of having atmosphere, water, etc.

a reply to: Sremmos80

hey man, i thought the sarcasm in that statement was quite evident

a reply to: letmeDANz

lol well sarcasm can be missed rather easily on forums. Seems like we all missed it
i like to use the when I am not sure if the sarcasm will come across.

a reply to: Aleister

Water, water, everywhere.

Exactly, Aleister.


In my Opening Post I just asked HOW much the puppeteers of the JPL are curious for an anomaly like that arouses their interest. That "Sphere" can be anything: a stone, a fossilized sponge, or something else. Its particular feature, so uncommon, is an anomaly that deserve a more accurate inspection to know what really it is.

Frankly the intensity of the rejection of the evidence of some members, it makes me think of something else, now.

We all agree that the rover graze on the bottom of a lake / sea.

And that with high probability, in my opinion, in its wanderings it has found, and will find biological traces of what was once the fauna and plants in those waters.

a reply to: Arken

Just in the very same image there are several stones that also look rather round, up on that hill



This one is rounder than all the others, and looks to have rolled down the hill at some point in the past.

Forgive me if I'm not too spooked out by a roundish boulder.

a reply to: Rob48

Yeah, I noticed that earlier too, but didn't want to post it (although it may not have rolled, there are no tracks or marks which would probably have made an imprint). Now that you have, yep, roundness is the new oblong.

A round object on Mars may not be that unusual, but Arken's is a pretty good example for its size.

a reply to: Aleister

Is there any way of figuring out the size of this thing? Are there maps plotted showing the location of the rover at a given point, distances to landmarks etc? With no known objects for scale it is pretty well impossible to get an idea of size.

(As for the lack of tracks, I'm not suggested it rolled recently. Some time in the geologic past, maybe, in which case any tracks would have long since eroded away.)

by Arken

That "Sphere" can be anything: a stone, a fossilized sponge, or something else. Its particular feature, so uncommon, is an anomaly that deserve a more accurate inspection to know what really it is.

It looks to be the same colour and type as, and not too distinctive in shape from, a whole heap of rocks up there on that hill. If there were an obvious "erratic" (to use the geological term) that didn't appear to match its surroundings, then sure they should take a look. But a big rock that totally matches the other big rocks nearby, apart from being a bit more rounded, is not something worth wasting time on, surely.

a reply to: Rob48

What an eye opener! Thank-you Rob48 for pointing out the other "roundish" boulders up on that hill. I suppose over a few million years, our big bowling ball boulder will be joined by a few others as they wear, and also as the sand on the hill is slowly eroded from beneath them.

Why do people think that NASA has to investigate everything that they think is weird? A round rock... they MUST go and send the rover there or its a cover up.

NASA is full of extremely clever people, I'm sure they know when they do and don't need to investigate a rock.
(I'm not saying they're always telling the truth, of course.)

Amazing find Arken I would say the Martians also prepare for World championship Soccer...

It's one of these, seeing how it's already driving us crazy.

Amazing find Arken I would say the Martians also prepare for World championship Soccer...

Same thing I've thought when i saw that Ball... "Brazuca"...
The Rover is in Brazil...

originally posted by: Aleister
As to formation, maybe it was near a very active part of Gale Lake (Gale Ocean, if the entire crater was full up to the three mile mark), and water erosion carved it out. As the water receded maybe the levels went into river-size water flow which would have again, depending on where the rock was in the river/lake water flow, created the rounding effect seen from this particular angle.

Thinking on this possibility on others. Fact of the matter is that it is there in front if it and appears to be the only one arround (something I consider strange in itself) and I would think Nasa would be very interested in at least looking in it it. OR maybe they already know where it came from and don.t want the public to know of the giant mars bunnies crapping everywhere.

a reply to: Rob48

Yes actually there is a way to determine it's size and distance.

Clark Andersen, wrote a Photogrammetry and RangeFinder Application that works with several of the different rovers on Mars.
Here is a link to the application that can be downloaded and installed:

AlgorimancerPG

However, it will not work with Mast Cam images, but will work with the Nav Cam stereo pairs.

So I went and found the stereo pair from the Left and Right Nav Cams and found the rock in them, here is a link to the stereo pair:

Right B Nav Cam

Left B Nav Cam

Here are those images:





Compare them to the Mast cam image to make sure we are looking at the same rock by identifying the same land marks:



So yes, it is the same rock.

Download the Left and Right pair, then use the App to find out how far away it is:



Based upon the calculations, the rock is about 37 meters away from the rover.

Now that you know how far away it is, you can estimate it's size, which in this case means it is at least a couple of meters across.....so instead of rock, we should be saying boulder now.

Hope this helped.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Thanks for that, very helpful. If that distance is correct, though, then I don't think there is any way that the rock as big as a couple of metres.

The navcams have a 45-degree field of view. So at a distance of 37 metres I make the field of view to be 2 x 37 x (tan 22.5°) = 30.6 metres. (It's late and I don't have a pen to draw the diagram so forgive me if my trig is way off beam here!)

I am not near my computer now so I can't measure the rock but there's no way it is one fifteenth of the width of the picture. Can anyone with a graphics program measure the pixel width of the rock, divide by the total pixel width of the image and then multiply by approximately 30? That ought to give the rock's rough diameter in metres.

(I notice now that the program above also gives an estimated size per pixel at that distance of approx 3cm, so there's another check.)