Reefs, Outcrops, Craters and Gemmules

February 26, 2004

If you take a look at some of the orbital imagery of Meridiani, you
will see that there appears to be quite a bit of reef and outcroppings
around, but if you look very carefully, you notice that most of these
are the eroded away circular remnants of earlier cratering. Eroded as
in melted, slumped or subsided, as in ice and water.

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e13_...8/E1801275.jpg

Now think about what a putative or hypothetical 'porifera jonathanii'
would have to deal with in surviving. Not only would it have to deal
with extreme environmental fluctuations, melting and thawing of ice
sheets, runoff etc., but it would also have to deal with the
occasional incoming impacts. A better way to propagate itself *and*
deal with random impacts in such an environment, is to leave millions
of hardened, impact resistant, aerodynamically stable gemmules laying
around, ready to ride the (shock) waves into the next quadrant.

If you choose the water and ice hypothesis then you have to start
thinking about life, and fossils. If you choose the fossil hypothesis,
you have to start thinking about natural selection and biology, in
addition to planetary geology.

Here is a modern paper on gemmulation and oogenesis. It describes the
'launch pad' very nicely. I propose that many large, robust, spherical
gemmules could be a result of natural selection.

http://www.bio.pu.ru/win/embryo/art/haplosclerida.pdf

Just a thought.

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

On 25 Feb 2004, Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:
|If you choose the water and ice hypothesis then you have to start
|thinking about life, and fossils.

It looks like the violence that is characteristic of Mars' past history
rules out anything beyond 'precursors' to life being generated, over and
over again - and as quickly rubbed out as created.

|If you choose the fossil hypothesis, you have to start thinking about
|natural selection and biology, in addition to planetary geology.

Now, if only the rovers could dig into the surface a little deeper, we
might have some reason to entertain a hypothesis or two about fossils...

February 26, 2004

Matthew Montchalin wrote:

On 25 Feb 2004, Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:

|If you choose the water and ice hypothesis then you have to start
|thinking about life, and fossils.

It looks like the violence that is characteristic of Mars' past history
rules out anything beyond 'precursors' to life being generated, over and
over again - and as quickly rubbed out as created.

Earth would not be much different, and life started here ok. It has
been
estimated that Mars started out with an ocean 600-2700 meters deep.

http://www1.elsevier.com/pub/9/10/top25.htt?jnl=yicar

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...aa5bbe8671b50b

That is a considerable amount of water, and not 'bone dry' and the
press
describes it.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-general-04i.html

Space Daily is notorious for misrepresentation of the evidence and
promoting crackpot theories.

|If you choose the fossil hypothesis, you have to start thinking about
|natural selection and biology, in addition to planetary geology.

Now, if only the rovers could dig into the surface a little deeper, we
might have some reason to entertain a hypothesis or two about fossils...

That seems to be in contradiction to your previous statement. First
there is no life ever, then you are digging for fossils.

Let's look at it my way, there is evidence for hundreds, perhaps
thousands of meters of water in the past, there is current orbital
imagery evidence for massive subterranean ice sheets, and it takes
life only several hundred millions years at the most to get
established. Furthermore, there are the metazoan evolutionary stresses
to consider, which may very well have been glaciation fluctuations in
addition to chemical burdens :

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...aa5bbe8671b50b

It certainly appears that glaciation stress had something to do with
human evolution.

To ignore or dismiss the fossil hypothesis if pretty foolish at this
point. I am also willing to entertain the glacial impact melt debris
and volcanic ashfall origin of these structures, but until I get more
data, Jonathan's gemmule identification is unambiguous. Perhaps
geology is playing a trick on us, but biomineralization and
bioprecipitation are certainly feasible. Jonathan has a lot to learn
about science, but his gemmule identification is first class, and is
certainly a viable hypothesis at this point.

Spectroscopy would surely help right about now, but NASA is still up
to its old tricks and games. They haven't learned a thing about PR,
and spew the same old BS. It's the greatest geek-o-rama on Earth, and
I, for one, am sick and tired of it. This is still the same
organization that crashed two shuttles.

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