Mars Spherules with stems grow in the ground like potatoes

"Matthew Montchalin" skrev i en meddelelse
...

snip

|Can you predict a mechanism that can explain the creation of the
|balls, whether by a biological process, or any other?

Why can't
|a small grain roll around, perhaps buffeted around by the wind, and
|gather other particles, adding onto itself like a snowball does?

It would more likely produce an oval or cylindrical object.

snip

Is there ever enough loose sand to form a one foot high dune?

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/themes/DUNES.html

Enough
for a windbreak, or a rise sufficient to keep the sunlight away from
places where brine could percolate up, and not sublimate away? Then
if the wind shifted, ball-like kernals could roll down the dunes and
closer to the cracks where moisture might be found. The rolling motion
might make them roundish, where previously they might have been nugget-
like. If wind makes things round on earth, could not wind make things
round on Mars?

It would still tend to make an oval or oval/flat object as ordinary
erosional processes does (see pebbles in seasurf, alternatively aeolean
artefacts). Further more, the spheres seem developed in-situ, not deposited
in the sediment.

|If high moisture levels can be detected in the vicinity of the
|cracks, as by upwelling from a briny solution deeper down, or
|by precipitating from above, as from some kind of damp fog, that
|should encourage 'berries' to rock back and forth in the area,
|increasing their mass just like 'snowballs' increase mass.

The meteorology shows a very low H2O% in the atmosphere, but the
dew-point-temperature is equally low so the extreme 'dryness' is somewhat
semantic - I do not have the picture where water or CO2 ice-crystals cover
the ground, but it happens and should fuel speculations as to what
implications it would have on the structuring of the surficial sediment. I'm
not about to calculate the meltingpoint of a brine in low temperatures, but
I think that it could be acceptable that small droplets of brine may
develop.
To extend this speculation to the actual circumstances will take a
consideration on the nature of the matrix-sediment. I have defended a wet
origin as far as observations has provided no other clues - in my opinion,
the outcrop consist of dust, probably sedimented out in subaerial
duststorms. The mineralogical contents points to evaporites - I'll take that
as a hint that wet degradation over a prolonged period of time has evolved a
large stock of salts/evaporites to be distributed by wind.
On the above link you will see the 'ordinary' or sand-grain
wind-distribution that equals processes and constituents known on Earth.
I would like to elaborate a bit on the 'dust' that apparently has different
structural properties than the normal dunes formed. Without additional
adhesion dust could settle in large incoherent 'puddles' with an extremely
high porosity and low density. If electrostatic attractions are added I
could expect some dynamic that resembles what fx happens around the
abrasion-tool on the rowers. I do not find it very speculative that the
dusty sediment can get some additional coherency to produce rigid
sedimentary bodies - as fx the outcrop. I'm trying to omit a later
diagenetic compression as the outcrop in itself is surficial and probably
never has been buried.
If frozen dew falls on such a surface and makes a droplet with a saltcrystal
under a warm daytime temperature, this droplet could be sucked into the
porous dust. Would it necessarily disperse evenly in the porous sediment?
Can a viscous (low temp) brine self-organize into a spherical shape in a
perhaps hydrophobic sediment? I don't know, but if it can, it may well
dissolve and reprecipitate minerals in a spherical aggregate. It's
speculative, but the presence of moisture/brine may well provide a spherical
crystallization-front from a central dissolvable grain.
IMO, I'm a Mars-amateur.

The following link shows (to me) a 'young' dust that has filled a vally. It
is surrounded by a 'dust' that has undergone some diagenetic process that
has consolidated the rock.

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/09/22/

The foot may be dissolution/reprecipitation mediated by frosty dew - in
particular if the initial minerals are a product of precipitation from
whatever 'moist' available. This also applies if the moist has an origin
from the soil.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...EFF0544P2953M2
M1.HTML

Carsten

Eric Chomko wrote:
|: Are you discussing living plant matter?
|:
|: Yes of cause, IMNSHO (In My Not So Humble Opinion) one has to be
|: REALLY blind not to wan tto see the roots coming out of teh sperules.

They looked more like they fell off the ends of stalks, and fell into
the wind. A round shape is consistent with the need to travel long
distances, fortuitously driven by the wind.

|: There are several picts, and even in one I did see the roots were in
|: a stair formn under the ground, but the pattern still visible.
|: The discussion is abpout REAL LIVING plants!
|
|Feeding on what? Can Spirit and Oppurtunity resolve cell growth or the
|like with its current mircoscope-like camera?

What makes you think there should be cells? Can't the stuff
preferentially deposit itself as the wind makes the stuff available
to it? If this were the case, the 'growing' process would be more
like the growth of a crystal. Like a sodium straw, but with some
other mineral. Airborne particles of 'near-ice' (whatever that
may be, it's pretty salty stuff, isn't it?) would strike the ends
of 'straws' and the particles would temporarily attach. In the
daytime, the ends of the stalks might even be lucky enough to go
above the freezing point. That would allow minerals to precipitate
out of solution, extending the lengths of the stalks. It doesn't
do anything to show that there are any 'cells' responsible for
carrying energy from point A to point B, let alone exchanging energy
in a photosynthetic sort of reaction.

"Greg Crinklaw" wrote in message
...

Jan Panteltje wrote:

Oh it is you! Well keep dreaming boy.
READ IT AGAIN what I wrote.
Look at some pics.
get a sense of reality.

Sorry, read it three times now and it's still nonsense.

A word to the wise, you have been arguing with
a troll who is best served in the kill file.

"Thomas Lee Elifritz" wrote in message
...

Introducing, liquid water on the surface of Mars :

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/.../21/index.html

Try again.

"Pedro Rosa" wrote in message
om...
Salted
water can have a wide range of states, depending on the properties of
salts. Try to find data on Lake Victoria Antarctida. BUT! For the
fast-runners I warn immediately that the lake there is abiotic by the
most (under what I presently know). Are there similar lakes in Mars?
Yes, there is a pond, a few meters large in a region between Elisyum
and Olympus, between 40-55 degrees North latitude. Unfortunately I
found it at a time when IBM did SOME GREAT #@%@$@%#$ HDDs... And the
thing crashed a few days after the discovery. Could those ponds be a
base for Life?

Sorry. You'll have to do better than that.
You need to post a link or reference to an actual
image of this pond before it will be reasonably believed.
Your search area is simply too large to cover to look
for a pond a few meters across. No one will do that
kind of legwork for you and no one will believe you if
you don't.
Trust, but verify - and all that.

"Chosp" wrote in message news:w0h8c.2107$wl1.952@fed1read06...
"Pedro Rosa" wrote in message
om...
Salted
water can have a wide range of states, depending on the properties of
salts. Try to find data on Lake Victoria Antarctida. BUT! For the
fast-runners I warn immediately that the lake there is abiotic by the
most (under what I presently know). Are there similar lakes in Mars?
Yes, there is a pond, a few meters large in a region between Elisyum
and Olympus, between 40-55 degrees North latitude. Unfortunately I
found it at a time when IBM did SOME GREAT #@%@$@%#$ HDDs... And the
thing crashed a few days after the discovery. Could those ponds be a
base for Life?

Sorry. You'll have to do better than that.
You need to post a link or reference to an actual
image of this pond before it will be reasonably believed.
Your search area is simply too large to cover to look
for a pond a few meters across. No one will do that
kind of legwork for you and no one will believe you if
you don't.
Trust, but verify - and all that.

I am not here to make anyone believe on something you know? I am not
the Holy Priest of the FUSSY FACE of Mars. As I said I lost it, thanks
IBM very much and their #@$@#$$ 15Gb disks... 2Gb of precious
information, and not only that photo but two years of my professional
work down the tubes. You know how am I ****ed off till now? But I saw
it and that's enough for me... Your problem to take this into account
or not.

Sincerly I tried to find it again... Unfortunately I only noted it
after download as a broad view of what's going on in those zones. I
wasn't minimally interested in details of that region. My preferred
regions are Acydalia Planitia, Arabia Terra and NW of Hellas.

The thing is not quite visible. It's a dark streak coming from a hill,
it hits a few rocks, run down slightly, and concentrates in a small
depression between the hills... The depression possessed two tones,
one dark grey and another more to the center, nearly black. Who finds
it tell me what it tastes for... Note I don't like mineral sulfated
waters, keep for yourself!

Chosp wrote:
| Salted water can have a wide range of states, depending on the
| properties of salts. Try to find data on Lake Victoria Antarctida.

hmmm

| BUT! For the fast-runners I warn immediately that the lake there is
| abiotic by the most (under what I presently know).

Wait, it was my understanding that early all *terrestrial* glaciers have
an interface of liquid water just under them, don't they? They trickle
out from below, and are the sources for creeks that trickle out from
under the 'feet' of these glaciers and feed our creeks and streams.
Like the glaciers around Mt. Ranier in Washington and Mt. Hood in
Oregon, they are all in their own ways the sources to the creeks and
streams that surround them. In short, it sure isn't surface runoff that
gives rise to the creeks and streams adjacent to them. Although that
helps in the summer time. The trickle is not going to be that visible
above ground, but if you dig a couple feet down from where the glaciers
seem to begin, you are going to find water. Look at Ptarmigan Glacier
on the south flank of Mt. St. Helens, for instance. The edge of the
glacier can be measured in feet, not just yards, and there you go,
dry ground in one place, nice beautiful snowy ice in another place,
and that is in summer, only feet apart. But 'liquid' water is available
a few feet down. It may not be a gurgling creek that is "picture-perfect"
but it is water, and the nature of the rocky soil in that area guarantees
that it becomes liquid in the cracks that are predictable enough in that
area.