ESA official Mars foto with visible growth!

ESA official Mars foto with visible growth!

esamultimedia.esa.int

I found this image and thought that it looked like some kind of growth on Mars. Would really appreciate your thoughts on this one..
Hope this thread makes it!

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is my first post so be nice!
I tried copying the image in the post but doesn't work...

esamultimedia.esa.int
(visit the link for the full news article)

Ok, ill be nice...

Thats a nice photo, and while i havent seen that SPECIFIC ONE, i have seen MANY of the same type here on ATS...

And have heard a myrid of diffrent theories on what they could be...



My thoughts... we will never know, until we actualy land near one of these beasts...

It looks like a burn out area to me, but then again the picture is not close enough to see exactly what it could be.

I tried sending it to the marsanomaly research site, but he said that it is not a science picture because I found it amongst the wallpaper foto's so he couldn't comment on it ...it's an official foto taken by the European Space Agency..what more do you want? I would love to hear your thoughts.

It looks like some kind of plant life - but I'm sure the skeptics will point out several alternatives...

Great find!

Looks like some kind of black grass.
Sorry about the one liner.

put it in a graphics program, turn up the gamma correction or the brightness, and look around. that's a very interesting picture.

Yes, we've seen this or a very similar photo since I've been here. It was explained by some posters as being similar to a volcanic vent leaving soot trails depending on the prevailing winds or soot particles on the ground naturally coalescing into straightish line patterns. The dark color does appear to emerge from craters on the surface of the planet.

It could be life similar to bacteria/fungi/plant and at the least looks worthy of further investigation.

This is a link to the HI-RES version of the image, for those who want to take a closer look at it.

esamultimedia.esa.int...

The image can be found at ESA Mulitmedia Gallery, this site:

www.esa.int...

WOW! I don't know what else to say. That's the first mars image I've seen that does actually look like plant growth.

I don't think it looks like plant growth at all, it looks more like dark dust getting blown around by wind to me.

If those are craters then these must be huge things.

Any idea of the scale?

I was baffled when skipper from Marsanomalies said it wasn't a valid science picture because it was in the wallpaper section...to me it looks like growth and I'd love to hear your opinions and ESA's opinion! It definitley doesn't look like volcanic ash, volcanoes are big and you would know if there was a volcano under the growth. Could this be proof that they are trying to slowly release pictures? I have seen obvious water on Mars and now they are saying that it is possible that there is water and that there could be life on Mars..I could have told them that! They need to stop pussy footing around the fact that there is life out there.
I think their problem is they don't know how to spin it and use it to their advantage, or they can't agree about how to go about it, so they keep quiet about it. Twats!

I don't know the scale just found the pic by chance. Someone said it looked like dust??? No it is not dust, look at their shape, dust just blows all over the place, in this picture you can actually see where the "tubes" come out of the ground and where they end and you can see groups of these growth like things, dust wouldn't do that. But I agree they must be huge.

Can anyone get a sense of scale on that image?

I mean how long is that black, sooty residue were looking at?

Wow!

Plant life, no. It seems to be in low lying and higher Terrain . If it is plant life, it would need to low to absorb water. Judging by placement Seems to not be effected by any coordination with the sun.

Smokers, No. streaks are in different directions. (see high res pic). It does not seem to have height.

Smoker debris, no. If this substance has settled why does it seem to gather on both higher and lower terrain?

Oil or water no. Due to the directional streaking and "high low" thing.

It's not coming out of the crater. There is an elevated crater on a ridge right next to one lower in elevation. Seems both have just as much stuff, seemingly emerging. This does not make sense.

Shadow, no.


WHAT IS IT? I am fascinated!


~Hypno

I think it's dust of a different colour, a blueish dust that is common on Mars but that looks greenish in the photos from Mars Express.

It looks more as dust in this larger version (6MB).

I haven't found any scale for that photo.

Edit to add:
This should have been posted in a different forum, Breaking Alternative News is not the best place to post it, I think Space Exploration would be better.

[edit on 2/8/2008 by ArMaP]

It is caused by frozen CO2 sublimating into a gas and shooting up as geysers out of the martian soil, but its kind of interesting that the subsurface sand is so dark. It could be some kind of organic material that is growing under the surface where there is dry ice and possibly water. There are better pictures of this kind of structure and it looks like its painted on the surface. Notice all the streaks are pointing in a similar direction, which is caused by the material blown downwind as it is sent airborne by the gas jets. The dark material jetting out could be life related though.

If it's dust...why would there be a randomly od colored dust laying in the middle of nowhere on the planet?