Mars rock pictures baffle scientists | CNN

Mars rock pictures baffle scientists
Researchers cautious about findings

Tuesday, February 24, 2004 Posted: 3:23 PM EST (2023 GMT)


This is a microscopic photograph of a
Mars rock taken by NASA's Opportunity
rover that has triggered excitement among
scientists.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Microscopic photographs of a Mars rock taken by NASA's Opportunity rover have triggered excitement among scientists, even if they aren't unanimous on exactly what they're seeing.

The images, posted on Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars rovers Web site, show a highly detailed surface on a rock dubbed "El Capitan" that has been undergoing examination by the robot geologist.

"They are just very beautiful things and it's not at all clear that we understand what we're looking at," mission official Rob Manning said in a teleconference with reporters on Monday.

"There is a lot of enthusiasm, probably as much enthusiasm as we've ever had by the science team and a lot of intense discussions over these last several days."

More at CNN

w/o a scale, it's impossible to tell if it's silt sized or acorn sized.

The Microscopic Imager images are about 3 cm across. So the spheres could be oolites ;) I believe its a fixed focus view, so all of the pictures should represent approximately the same area.

As you have pointed out before, there's no telling just from the pictures what kind of rock they are looking at. I can't wait to hear what the other instruments show about the composition. Of course I am hoping for some sort of sedimentary formation, but we will just have to wait and see.

I don't think they know yet. Possibly they are concretions (maybe something that formed in a watery environment, but not necessarily) or they could be melted material ejected from a meteor impact.

time to send people?

no really :)

They aren't sure yet. I just read several articles about them, and they appear to be a different material than the surrounding 'sediment'. There are several possible explanations, one requiring volcanic activity and luck, and another requiring the presence of liquid water and luck. The Mars people at NASA also said, 'There is no reason to assume life processes created these objects', so apparently that's been a topic of speculation as well.

I guess this rover will be studying them for the next few days (according to the articles).

I think the best thing about them is that they made a whole lot of scientists say, "What the HELL is that?" That's the best thing to hear from a scientist. :)

balls!

:-)

I hope the rover does not run them over and accidentally start an inter-galactic war!

Since all of our soldiers are in Iraq, we would be screwed!

...sorry if this is abstruse, ya had ta read the book SIASL...
:evilgrin:

Ashcroft has recommended to Numbnut that NASA can implement plans to shroud Mars.

good one!

Huh? Viking's LR (labeled release) biology experiment tested positive for microbial life but the NASA brass wrote off the findings as chemistry induced. The guy behind the LR experiemnets, Gilbert Levin, is an outspoken proponent of the theory microbes do exist on Mars and has been ostracized by the NASA community for it. Nasa consistently covers up any possible hint of ET life in any form. All the geology is great and fascinating, but these rovers could have EASILY included another simple biology experiment to settle the issue. The LR experiment Levin devised was brilliant and thoroughly tested in all sorts of climates on Earth, and consistently and reliably proved its worth. Check it out online, just do a google search for viking lr experiment. Why NASA wants to keep the cover up going when proof of life on Mars would bring so much public interest and $$$ for their programs is beyond me. Gives credence to the Majestic conspiracies, etc.

Here are some links on the LR data:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-00i.html
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-00g.html
http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/viking_life_010728-1.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/viking_labeledrelease_010905-1.html

Fuck NASA and their idiotic blatant cover-ups! Bastards!

gets soooo much money from the National Science Foundation compared to those of us that study life here on earth. If I were at work, I could give you some numbers for comparison. Sorry I have nothing to back this up at the moment!

As I understand it the results of the Viking experiments are inconclusive. They consensus for a long time certainly was that there were non-biological causes for the observed results. There is certainly room for debate as to what the results actually mean... which is how science is supposed to work.

I don't think there is any effort at all on NASA's part to suppress legitimate science. Indeed they would have a lot to gain if evidence of any kind of life on Mars was found, but hey need to be very careful about making claims. As GWB has discovered making exaggerated false claims do not do much to your credibility ;)

The express purpose of the MER Rovers is to look for water. They are there to examine the geology of Mars and try and find evidence of past liquid water, not to look for present day life. This is not part of any effort to cover up evidence of microbes on Mars, but part of a methodical exploration of the planet.

I hope that they do send further biological experiments in future expeditions. Even if it is concluded that Viking did not find life, that does not mean there is none anywhere on present day Mars.

You never know.

:evilgrin:

I love that little martian guy!!!

Thanks for the laugh!

:bounce:

a really ugly face.

The upper right looks like a frog to me.

i was wondering where it went.

Look like mushroom caps.

Has proven very adaptable to almost every enviroment on this world. Who knows what forms it could take in a martian enviroment.

...is that it would be very slow moving.

But I could be wrong.

The atmospheric pressure is so low that any liquid water would rapidly sublimate. Liquid water hasn't been present on Mars in any perminent form for 3.5Ga.

but one hypothesis floated to explain some of the soil observations is that liquid water might be present in small quantities in the subsurface sediment.

If the water had very high concentrations of salts it might be able to remain liquid even at low temps and in the subsurface interstices it might be able to maintain a partial pressure equilibrium. Don't know how strong that model is but it was a possible explanation discussed by the project scientists.

.

was a good book.

but the question I was trying to answer was whether those things could be mushrooms growing on the surface, and that is a big fat no because of sublimation.

LOL! I missed that part. Yeah they aren't mushroom caps!

why it is given there is no life on other planets until proven. Since we only really know one planet, and it is absolutely covered up with life, why wouldn't the opposite supposition be the valid one? That life will exist wherever conditions are, or have been favorable?

It's homo- and geo-centrism you know. That's all it is. And someday it will be seen to be as quaint as the notion "scientists" of the day had that the universe revolved around the Earth.

.

You're right, our planet is covered with life and therefore we should expect to find life elsewhere in the universe. We see no evidence of life in the rest of the Solar System but that hasn't stopped us looking. The Viking landers carried experiments intended to look for signs of life. The MER rovers are looking for signs of past water on Mars because wherever there is water an an energy source on Earth there is some form of life. The search for (at least) past life is a fundamental part of the interest in exploring and understanding Mars.

by the time NASA finds life on other planets, it will be speaking Chinese. I have no faith at all that our space program as currently constituted, could find life at Cape Kennedy, nor is it meant to. I think their pupose for many years, has been to siphon off the enthusiasm many of us feel for space exploration ("I don't know what it is, but it's beautiful"-Gosh! blink, blink) into a belief that we are doing everything we can, given budget restraints. Our efforts at exploration are actually laughable. Ask yourself: If Bush and his fundamentalist backers found life on another planet, would we be told? I just doubt it. Just enough is thrown out there to keep the space nuts out of the streets. And I am sick of NASA's rock-naming participation in what can best be described as a charade!

If they were really interested in the search for life and space exploration, there would have been a base on the moon twenty years ago at the latest, and regular ferry service to Mars, by now. They have known since 1969 about Helium 3 and it's abundance on the moon-and that should have been all the reason we needed to go. (Do a Google on Helium 3 and fusion!) They have purposefully been wasting time.

Over the years, I have become convinced that any real effort at space exploration by this nation, would necessarily be clandestine. How many probes have we and the Russians supposedly "lost"? Evidence of extraterrestrial life would engender a paradigm shift in thinking on this planet, and the 'Powers that Be' sure don't want that. It would threaten their control.

No, someday the American govt's. role in space exploration will be seen as equivalent to the Catholic Church's in early astronomy...and I mean no insult to the Church.

Neither Bush nor his fundamentalist backers are looking for life on other planets so they can't find it and then not tell us about it. NASA's budget problems long pre-date Bush so you can't blame him for that. NASA has always been a political football from Cold War posturing to having human space flight for the sake of having human space flight.

I disagree 100% that NASA is deliberately dragging its feet when it comes to doing science.

It would be great to much more in space but unless Congress provides the funds there's not much they can do. Instead of looking to NASA for some conspiracy to keep us in the dark, you should be looking at why the Congress won't provide more money for NASA.

They are a political football. And they also don't have the freewill to conduct a space program as it should be, nor the funds. But don't think for a minute that if an alien lifeform landed on top of their main office building, that there would be a link to the event posted here on DU. It would be covered up. And I blame the Amereican govt. for that, not just one agency.

Those cutesy little rovers they send to Mars are nothing more than a PR gimmick-to make you believe they are actually doing something. They are not. I keep waiting for them to just go ahead and manufacture them in the form of a small robotic dog-or buy them at walmart, for all the good they are doing. That way our "Rovers" will actually LOOK like puppydogs, friskily bounding over the surface of the red planet. For science and space exploration to work, we need to send people. We can't send people to Mars yet, due to cost.

Nope. I think NASA is freighted with too much negative baggage and should be scrapped. Fire them all and get new people. Clean out all the old heads and dead weight that way.

Start completely over with young new people...and put a base on the moon. This is something we CAN do. Cut funding for everything else till the moonbase is complete, selfsustaining if possible-then decide what to do next. We could do it in 10 years, with not much loss in "science"...probably learn more practical science in the endeavor than we forgo elswhere. Think of the telescopes alone! Think of the array we could build on darkside!

That we haven't done it before now does make me wonder if they are afraid of something. Or perhaps it's the Bible...where God gives the earth and its creatures to man? The heavens were not given. Maybe thats it. I know I am getting impatient (which you can probably tell by now, lol). I want results. I want focus. I want a moonbase.

Sorry about the rant. I know Nasa Still has it's strong defenders, but sadly, I am not one of them.

I have to disagree 100% about the rovers. The rovers were sent to examine Martian geology and specifically look for signs of past liquid water and are well equipped to carry out the mission. Why do you think they are just "PR"? Looking at Martian geology is incredibly useful as the layers of bedrock at the MER-B "Opportunity" site potentially represent millions of years of Martian environmental history.

I wish they could send a dozen rovers at one time and a dozen landers with biological experiments on them and I guarantee you the scientists and researchers at NASA and the JPL and dozens of other institutions involved would love to do so also.

Helium 3 on the moon is common knowledge and a potentially important reason to go back to the moon. I say "potentially" because so far we have not been able to develop sustainable fusion reactions that actually produce net energy! There is no point to go just for the He 3 as we can obtain enough on Earth for research needs. If we can figure out sustainable fusion then the concentrations of the isotope on the Moon would represent a very good reason to go back.

> I have never understood why it is given there is no life on
> other planets until proven.

Aww C'Mon, you know the answer to that one!

Sing along with me...

"...cause the Bible tells me so!"

Atlant

But then again, everything looks like stardust to me.

and I understand the value of them,

I guess I'm not as excited as everyone else because they are almost identical to most of the scenery on my way to and from work in the areas surrounding Las Vegas!

they have no clue what these are. may be related to water, life, vulcanic- or impact activity, or something else.

Got this from APOD then converted to 3D
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

I hope there will always be money for pure science.

Slartibartfast?

the Mons Venus is my favorite, though not as spectacular as Orion's Belt.

He had been away from his wife for some time when he named that work.

.