wrote:
: January 24, 2005

: Eric Chomko wrote:
:
: : Spirit Daily Update
:
: : So, when confronted with bizarre Mars rock formations that defy
: : description and beg investigation, what does Squeers and his band
: of
: : geeks do? They drive right by, turn the camera the other way, and
: take
: : vast panoramas of endless barren landscapes nearly devoid of
: features.
:
: : It's NASAs new faith based space initiative, when confronted with
: the
: : unknown, or difficult terrain, drive right by and look the other
: way.
:
: I think you are being overly harsh on Dr. Squyres.

: I haven't even started on him. I will be a thorn in his side
: for a long time to come.

: During his talk about
: Mars earlier this month he was quite informative.

: Talking about date six months out of date, no doubt.

No, no, he spoke about both Spirit and Oppurtunity from touchdown right
up until that current week's observations, with great slides and good
science. You should have been there.

: The fact that you see
: something in the Martian soil equivalent to tea leaves and dinosaur
: droppings, doesn't make the scientific community actually exploring
: Mars
: remiss.

: If you show some geologists some rocks that they fully expect to
: be basalts, then guess what they are going to see?

Right, but in some cases they could noy explain what they saw and are
still working on it.

: You should have been the PI for your own probe.

: I am, they're called MER A&B. Unfortunately, our publicly funded
: institutions see fit to withhold spectroscopy data from their
: constituents.

Have you checked with a large university's library databases specializing
in space science, rather than simply google on the web?

: Have you had a chance to investigate the RAT tool's findings when
: used to
: scrape rocks?

: They're right here for everyone to see :

: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/micro_imager/

: Not so the spectroscopy. You can look here, but you won't
: find it anywhere, except data many months out of date.

: http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/ant...eran_title.htm
: http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/ant...eran_title.htm

: Now, what about those fossils? :

: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spi...PP2541L7M1.JPG

: Adjust the contrast to bring out the symmetry.

: And the rock monster tentacle :

: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spi...PP1765R0M1.JPG

: Notice the sheared off cross section structure
: sticking right out of the ground.

: Until I see some spectroscopy that definitively tells me otherwise,
: as far as I can tell, there sure as hell was something weird
: going on up on Mars, and until then, Squeers and his gang of geeks
: can sweat bullets, because I've got their number, and I'm going to
: be punching their buttons, until this is fully resolved.

I'm sure that they want to know as badly as you do.

: The signs of water and sedimentation are everywhere here.
: Something is extracting and reprocessing nutrients from
: the rock, and building structures which then subsequently
: dissolve, erode and dehydroxylate on the spot, leaving clear
: patterns in the rocks and on the surface of the soil,
: at both microscopic and macroscopic levels of organization.

Right, but that can be explained without the need for something organic
such as life.

: If you can't see that, you simply aren't looking.

Have you tried to contact someone from the JPL team about the
spectroscopy?

Eric

: Thomas Lee Elifritz
: http://elifritz.members.atlantic.net