Pat Flannery wrote...


Diane Wilson wrote:

Flatter, and weirder, too. Steve Squyres says he
won't even attempt an analysis yet; he's never
seen anything like it.


If you didn't know better, you'd say that that place
dried up yesterday, given what the soil looks like
close up.
What the hell is this all about? Wind-blown soil
shouldn't make patterns that small and hard-edged,
by a long shot...

Next time you're at the beach, take a snorkel and goggles and have a look
at the sand under the wave zone. In light oscilations of wash, small
defined little dunes form. When the big wave sweeps by, the definition is
erased and there remains more sweeping smooth-edged undulations. That is,
the surface texture is constantly changing. Mars' atmosphere is very
sparse and the wind direction is variable. And we don't know what the soil
particles are like... yet We'll soon know a lot more about what it
'should' be like.

- Peter