Mars Exploration Rovers Update - February 13, 2004

"Thomas Lee Elifritz" wrote in message
...
February 15, 2004

George wrote:

As long as you make clear that you are speculating or making asumptions,
you
are probably going to be fine. It is when you make lots of assumptions
and
then make definite conclusions based on them that you and I get in
trouble.
Am I wrong?

Yes. But only you are in trouble. Conclusions are called falsifiable
hypotheses, crackpot. You test them, with experiments, and further evidence,
to produce more conclusion and hypotheses. It's called the scientific
method. However, being the crackpot that you are, you ridicule, then
dismiss, and and remain skeptical, without offering any evidence, except
that you still remain a crackpot.

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


Gee, I haven't felt the need to do this in a long, long time. So it gives
me great pleasure to say to you PLONK!

Hell why look for just primitives.......

How about a fossil Pisces feces facies ... :-)

like in the Phosphoria. ;-)

Bob


"Rich Webb" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 14:59:26 GMT, "Sir Charles W. Shults III"
wrote:

[snip...snip...]
If c) is true, then we have found what we are after. I notice that
many
of the spheres have odd characteristics, such as "tapered" ends, or small
depressions. Could these be traces of some structure that an original
organism had?

Sponge-like critters would seem to be a possibility. They evolved very
early here and have fossilized remains that are similar to some of the
fragments.

http://www.colossal-fossil-site.com/...07porifera.htm
http://www.colossal-fossil-site.com/...06porifera.htm
http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/children/fossils/sponges.htm

Of course, there's always the "Face on Mars" problem: Look at enough
chunks of rock and eventually you'll see something recognizable.
Would be cool, though...

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

February 15, 2004

George wrote:

Am I wrong?

Yes. But only you are in trouble. Conclusions are called falsifiable
hypotheses, crackpot. You test them, with experiments, and further evidence,
to produce more conclusion and hypotheses. It's called the scientific
method. However, being the crackpot that you are, you ridicule, then
dismiss, and and remain skeptical, without offering any evidence, except
that you still remain a crackpot.

Gee, I haven't felt the need to do this in a long, long time. So it gives
me great pleasure to say to you PLONK!

Crackpot keyword : 'plonk'.

Another crackpot down, 6 billion more crackpots to go.

Too bad they are breeding like ... rabbits.

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

In article ,
says...

snip

But we see the same phenomenon in landslides in desert regions on the earth.
There is evidence that some large landslides will behave as a fluid due to
the creation of a layer of compressed air between the landslide material and
the ground upon which it is sliding. Such a layer acts like a lubricant
that reduces friction, and will allow the slide to behave as a fluid. In the
case of Mars, the air would consist of the CO2 atmosphere. Now, I am not
saying that water doesn't exist on Mars. Obviously it does, at least at the
poles. And of course, we have all seen some evidence that there may be
ground water, and/or frozen water in the subsurface. What I am saying is
that there are other explanations for the fluid appearance of these
landslides on Mars.

OK, George, I'll buy that. Now, explain to me how you get a landslide
on what appears to be topography that is extraordinarily flat for miles
and miles in all directions? As I mentioned before, there are no large
craters that would create these "splash" landforms as ejecta, at least
not in the right place to have caused the effects visible in the DIMES
images.

I'm not saying that water has flowed over or under this surface
recently. It may have been more than a billion years since water flowed
over this surface. But I believe it's very possible that water HAS had
a hand in the sculpting of the surface we're observing, even at very
high resolution.

Doug

In article ,
says...

snip

The spherules found at the Apollo14 site, and at Opportunity are close to
the same size (no larger than a few milimeters). The spherules at the
Opportunity site are smaller than you must think they are. Note that rocks
at the Apollo 14 site were similar to the bulk composition that appears to
be seen at the Opportunity site: That is there is lots of olivine, which
indicates that there is a basaltic source rock somewhere in the vicinity.
The plagioclase at the Apollo 14 site no doubt originated from the basaltic
rocks in which the craters in the region were formed.

Well, there you are dead wrong. The plagioclase on the Moon was formed
when the early Moon, just after accretion, developed a "magma ocean" in
which plagioclase flotation resulted in an anorthositic crust.
(Anorthosite is a rock made up mostly of a single mineral, plagioclase.)
The plag at the Apollo 14 site was excavated from the highland materials
(i.e., the brecciated remnants of the original lunar crust) in the
target area of the Imbrium impact. The Fra Mauro formation on which
Apollo 14 landed is a huge splash sheet of ejecta from the Imbrium
impact -- very little (if any) rock from the original local surface
remains on the surface at the landing site. According to the experts
who have studied the Apollo 14 rock samples, not even Cone Crater was
deep enough to punch through the Imbrium ejecta. So everything at Fra
Mauro was originally located somewhere in what is now Mare Imbrium.

The interesting thing is that there seems to have been a fair amount of
mare basalt in the Imbrium target rock, since many of the clasts and
some of the matrices in the breccias collected by Shepard and Mitchell
are indeed basaltic, and analyze out at anywhere from 3.9 to 4.1 billion
years old, considerably older than the age of the Imbrium impact itself
(which is somewhere between 3.83 and 3.86 billion years). But the
impact melt itself, as collected at Fra Mauro, is predominately noritic
(anorthosite with some admixture of olivine).

I'd like to see a cite for these "spherules" from the Apollo 14
collection -- I've seen a lot of discussion of the breccias from the
site, and seen it noted that ALL of the Apollo 14 samples are indeed
breccias. Perhaps you're thinking of spherical clasts within the
breccias? I'd love to know which sample numbers you're speaking of...

Doug

Doug... wrote:
OK, George, I'll buy that. Now, explain to me how you get a landslide
on what appears to be topography that is extraordinarily flat for miles
and miles in all directions?

But just how flat is it? Have you seen the Opportunity landing bounce
reconstruction? The initial bounce was to the north, yet with each
successive bounce the path curved dramatically toward the west. I
suppose this could have been caused by a strong easterly wind, although
I'm a bit skeptical that such a thin atmosphere could cause something so
massive to alter course that much. East is also not the typical wind
diection given the plumes on the craters.

Perhaps the terrain isn't as flat as it appears to be? Perhaps there is
a slope to the whole plain, or perhaps there is a more localized slope,
maybe from the ejecta from the large crater to the east. I suppose the
answer is in the MOLA data, or perhaps in a 3-D ME image of the area
(although I'm not aware of one of these yet).


--
Greg Crinklaw
Astronomical Software Developer
Cloudcroft, New Mexico, USA (33N, 106W, 2700m)

SkyTools Software for the Observer:
http://www.skyhound.com/cs.html

Skyhound Observing Pages:
http://www.skyhound.com/sh/skyhound.html

To reply remove spleen

" George" wrote
I think it is safe to say that the analysis it made is
representative of the area as a whole.

FWIW, here is a great montage Doug Ellison made of part of the outcrop, with
the blueberries resplendent & some idea of the variation.

http://mer.rlproject.com/index.php?a...pe=post&id=111 (warning:
big file)

Joe

"Greg Crinklaw" wrote in message
...
Doug... wrote:
OK, George, I'll buy that. Now, explain to me how you get a landslide
on what appears to be topography that is extraordinarily flat for miles
and miles in all directions?

But just how flat is it? Have you seen the Opportunity landing bounce
reconstruction? The initial bounce was to the north, yet with each
successive bounce the path curved dramatically toward the west. I
suppose this could have been caused by a strong easterly wind, although
I'm a bit skeptical that such a thin atmosphere could cause something so
massive to alter course that much. East is also not the typical wind
diection given the plumes on the craters.

Perhaps the terrain isn't as flat as it appears to be? Perhaps there is
a slope to the whole plain, or perhaps there is a more localized slope,
maybe from the ejecta from the large crater to the east. I suppose the
answer is in the MOLA data, or perhaps in a 3-D ME image of the area
(although I'm not aware of one of these yet).


--
Greg Crinklaw
Astronomical Software Developer
Cloudcroft, New Mexico, USA (33N, 106W, 2700m)

SkyTools Software for the Observer:
http://www.skyhound.com/cs.html

Skyhound Observing Pages:
http://www.skyhound.com/sh/skyhound.html

To reply remove spleen


If you look at the topographic map at the following link, you will note the
the site does slope from northeast to southwest.

http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/dataViz.../HematiteWest/

Also note that the region is a large filled crater. Now, there may be
landslides buried under the sediments. Given that it was formerly a large
crater, I do not think there is a doubt that you could find landslide
deposits within the crater. However, since the northeastern quadrant of the
crater has been completely filled, and appears to be filled nearly to the
center of the crater, I find it highly unlikely that the Opportunity site
and vicinity would contains surface exposures of landslide material, unless
you looked deep into some of the larger craters. It will be interesting to
see what Opportunity finds when it makes its journey to the larger crater in
the coming weeks.

"Doug..." wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...

snip

But we see the same phenomenon in landslides in desert regions on the
earth.
There is evidence that some large landslides will behave as a fluid due
to
the creation of a layer of compressed air between the landslide material
and
the ground upon which it is sliding. Such a layer acts like a lubricant
that reduces friction, and will allow the slide to behave as a fluid. In
the
case of Mars, the air would consist of the CO2 atmosphere. Now, I am
not
saying that water doesn't exist on Mars. Obviously it does, at least at
the
poles. And of course, we have all seen some evidence that there may be
ground water, and/or frozen water in the subsurface. What I am saying
is
that there are other explanations for the fluid appearance of these
landslides on Mars.

OK, George, I'll buy that. Now, explain to me how you get a landslide
on what appears to be topography that is extraordinarily flat for miles
and miles in all directions?

The simple answer is that you don't. The more complex answer is that the
region is a large filled crater, that indeed may have older deposts composed
of landslide fill buried deep within the crater fill deposits. Noting in
the following link that the fill material comes from the northeast, and has
nearly completely filled the crater to the center, and sloping to the
southwest towards the crater wall, I find it highly unlikely that there are
landslide desposits exposed at the surface in the vicinity of Opportunity.
The only likely place where you could view such landslide deposits would be
possibly within the walls and floor of a large crater that has breeched the
surface deposits of the plain. Such a potential crater, in fact is within
traveling distance of Opportunity, and I think they plan to drive there in
the coming weeks.

As I mentioned before, there are no large
craters that would create these "splash" landforms as ejecta, at least
not in the right place to have caused the effects visible in the DIMES
images.

They don't have to be close by. There are so many craters, both large and
small on Mars that any one of them, or at least most of the larger ones
could have ejected material that could travel completely around the Martian
globe, and even sent material into orbit. This material has to come down
somewhere, and just as often as not, it will land somewhere other than in
proximity to where it originated. I would not be at all surprised to find
that material from craters that do exist in the vicinity to have left
material at the Opportunity site. In fact, I would be very surprised if
they didn't.

I'm not saying that water has flowed over or under this surface
recently. It may have been more than a billion years since water flowed
over this surface. But I believe it's very possible that water HAS had
a hand in the sculpting of the surface we're observing, even at very
high resolution.

Doug



What features are present that leads you to believe that flowing water has
had a hand in sculpturing the landscape at the Opportunity landing site
and/or vicinity? And please try to restrict you answer to features that
could only have come from the flow of water, and nothing else.

"Joe Knapp" wrote in message
.com...

" George" wrote
I think it is safe to say that the analysis it made is
representative of the area as a whole.

FWIW, here is a great montage Doug Ellison made of part of the outcrop,
with
the blueberries resplendent & some idea of the variation.

http://mer.rlproject.com/index.php?a...pe=post&id=111
(warning:
big file)

Joe


Thank you for that link. That is quite a good montage. I must say that it
is quite annoying that JPL doesn't post these images in final form on their
web site. I guess my problem all along has been to rely on the spottiness
of their color image posts. And the fact that never having had to do the
colorizing myself also makes matters worse. It was only recently that I
even figured out how to do this, so thanks to whoever posted that
information. Having said that, I find the color of the outcrop to be very
intriquing, as it looks just like some rhyolites I've seen in the field in
the Western U.S. That doesn't mean that I think the rock IS rhyolite,
hoever, as I've never heard of rhyolites with concentration of sulfure that
this rock has. What software are they using to generate the color images?
I have several that could possibly be used (Corel PhotoPaint, Adobe
Photoshop, Corel Painter 8, Picture Window Pro, and Astrovideo,which is
great for processing black and white CCD astro photos into color using color
filters). Unfortunately, the art of colorizing is fairly new to me. By the
way, don't be stingy about posting links to great pics such as this one.
Since JPL isn't posting many color-processed images directly into their web
site, People like me are scarmbling to find them.

another annoyance is that they don't post higher resolution images. The
Mars Express site is posting images at 300 and 400 dpi, while we have to
rely on 72 and 96 dpi images. Screw the file size: I have adsl! I want
HIGH resolution! The larger, the better.

Again, thanks.

As an aside commentary, I find the purplish "reaction"? discoloration on the
rocks where there are "berries embedded in them very interesting, indeed.
Any comments on them?