A pictorial case for life on Mars.

The expectation should be that life found a way
on evolve on Mars. Any mystery should be in
why it ...didn't evolve. Imho.


Compare these two pictures below, one shows a very old site.
The other shows a very ...young Meridiani site, no rocks at all.

A typical lag deposit of an ancient site, lots of weathered our rocks.
http://areo.info/mer/spirit/526/tn/2...5L6L6.jpg.html

A very young site, the difference is plain to see.
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/069...5L5L6.jpg.html


In fact the only large rocks at Meridiani turn out to be meteorites.
Like this one
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/200...5L5L6.jpg.html

This is because Meridiani is the bottom of a 'recently' dried up ...ocean.
Only an water or ice can create this horizon.
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/405...5L5L6.jpg.html

And water melts out and flows on the surface of Mars....TODAY.
This animation (a couple of clicks down) shows water flowing now.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_918860.html

And this dark soil coating Meridiani is...clay-like. Clay means water
and ...recently. But clay coating an ocean floor topped by a /thin crust/
of /uniform sized/ spheres? That's a very curious find. How can these
be wind blown dunes if they're topped with a thin crust?
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/842...5L5L6.jpg.html
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/al...P2955M2M1.HTML


And the spheres also come in .../two uniform sizes/...and
only two, no matter where they form in the highly ..salty
Martian soil.

Large
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2907M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2933M2M1.HTML

Small
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/a...0P2956M2M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML


BIOGENIC STRUCTURES FROM A HYPERSALINE LAKE
IN THE BAHAMAS.
Lunar and Planetary Science XXXII (2001) 1068.pdf

" Our FE-SEM analy-sis indicates a range of microbial life forms
on the fractured stromatolite surfaces. Spheroidal features are the
most common, with four distinct populations, characterized
by their highly uniform intrapopulation sizes:"
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2001/pdf/1068.pdf

Spheres amidst slash-like 'vugs'. Whatever filled those slashes
were softer and eroded away first. Wonder what they were?
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2933M2M1.HTML

Lunar and Planetary Science XXXVI (2005)
PROCESSES OF FORMATION OF SPHEROIDAL CONCRETIONS
AND INFERENCES FOR "BLUEBERRIES" IN MERIDIANI
PLANUM SEDIMENTS.

"In summary, simple nucleation controlled growth will form clumps
or bands of cement not spheroids. Spheroidal nodular concretions
on Earth result from spherical diffusion of products of
diagenetic reactions involving organics"
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/2148.pdf

And btw....

Mars has a /currently existing/ frozen ocean the size of the North Sea.
Some 900 km by 800 km in size, and some 45 meters deep.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1741.pdf


They say these are concretions that formed in a wet substrate.
If Mars has been dead for a billion years plus, why are the
spheres so pristine?

Various micro imager pictures of spheres (field of view postage stamp size)


http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...nity_m014.html
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...nity_m182.html
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2933M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2953M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2953M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2957M2M1.HTML
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...P2956M2M1.HTML

Various wide angle images of spheres

http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/186...L4L5L5L5L6.jpg
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/180...5L5L6.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/012...5L5L6.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/505...5L6L6.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/123...L2L5L5L6L6.jpg
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/183...5L7L7.jpg.html
http://areo.info/mer/opportunity/533...5L5L6.jpg.html


.................................................. ......
There's plenty of open questions on Mars, and
plenty of people that think we...should find
life there.


NASA Technical Memorandum
WORKSHOP ON THE SOCIETAL IMPLICATIONS
OF ASTROBIOLOGY

"One of the reasons for this is a sense of urgency: confirmation of
extraterrestrial life could occur at any time and in any of a number of
ways. When it occurs, we may have only limited control over the
situation." page 36

"The discovery may stimulate a worldwide resurgence in religious activity."
page 29

" .... it is extremely important for us to be highly knowledgeable
about the likely reactions of different constituencies (the press, various
religious groups, political leaders, and the general public).
We would be foolish and negligent if we did not study such reactions
well ahead of time and make state-of-the art preparations for major
discoveries." page 6
http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/wor...tal_report.pdf



For the conspiracy minded, the above link has been active for at least
six or seven years. I used to quote it often, but not for the last couple
of years. I checked the link on Thursday when I posted it somewhere
else, and it worked fine. But the next day it went dead and has been
dead since then.

Someone saw my post and took the page down the next day....hmmm!
Curiouser and curiouser!

It's still here though.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=...3ifHCume2j_nzw



Jonathan


s

A couple of comments. First, the lack of a decent moon should tend
permit the planetary axis
to wander. This if it happens should episodically raise CO2 in the
atmosphere and might
warm the climate some and certainly would move the local of cap both
CO2 and then even
the water ice cap. This might explain more 'recent' evidence. If one
wanders around the
surface of the antarctic ice cap surface, one thing found are the
remains of the incoming
and landed rocks from space ;-) Plus the ice cap depending on depth
can do interesting things
like raising the pressure over an area and then throw in some heating
from below and
then maybe there could even be liquid water.

As to finding some sort of microflora on Mars, I doubt it will change
the religious discourse.
The Neanderthal DNA may seem to say more than distant microflora or
microfauna. Has that
shaken the world order view en mass in the fundamentalist churches? It
is all more of a
drip drip affect on the common world view.

Times are interesting and that isn't so
pretty........................Trig

wrote in message
...
A couple of comments. First, the lack of a decent moon should tend
permit the planetary axis
to wander. This if it happens should episodically raise CO2 in the
atmosphere and might
warm the climate some and certainly would move the local of cap both
CO2 and then even
the water ice cap. This might explain more 'recent' evidence. If one
wanders around the
surface of the antarctic ice cap surface, one thing found are the
remains of the incoming
and landed rocks from space ;-) Plus the ice cap depending on depth
can do interesting things
like raising the pressure over an area and then throw in some heating
from below and
then maybe there could even be liquid water.


Below is excerpts from a great article on Martian
ice-ages. Turns out the lack of oceans mean Co2
would swing much more on Mars due to ice ages
than on Earth. And right now Mars in in the middle
of the warmer part of it's recent ice-age cycle


"Recent ice ages on Mars"

Mars, on the other hand, is characterized by a lack of oceans
in its recent past, an abundant and mobile dust supply, and
extreme orbital forcing factors. Its major atmospheric gas (CO2)
is in dynamic equilibrium with its solid phase, resulting in the
potential for significant changes in atmospheric CO2 abundance
and pressure.

Glacial periods on Earth are characterized by colder
temperatures at the poles on average, while on Mars, the
reverse is true. Over the past 10 Myr, Earth's obliquity has
ranged from 22 to 24.5, while for Mars the range was
14. to 48 degrees.

Similarly, the eccentricity of Earth's orbit varied from 0 to 0.06,
while for Mars the range was 0 to 0.12. The consequent changes
to insolation and seasonality at middle to high latitudes on Mars
have inevitably caused significant changes in the seasonal cycles
of carbon dioxide, water and dust. Thus Mars may have
experienced the most significant quasi-periodic variations in its
climate over the past 10 Myr of any planet in the Solar System.

Startling images show what appear to be very recent water-carved
gullies that occur preferentially in this region and have been interpreted
to represent groundwater sapping, melting of ground ice or
snowpack during higher obliquity

The very high near-surface water-ice content inferred from the
Odyssey g-ray and neutron spectrometer data
is consistent with a model of deposition of a relatively uniform
ice rich dust layer from the atmosphere.

Over the past 300 kyr the obliquity has remained relatively stable
within a range of 22-26 (Fig. 4). During this period, high eccentricity
causes differences in seasonality of the northern and southern
hemispheres (for example, the southern hemisphere today experiences
shorter, warmer summers and longer winters than the northern hemisphere)
while retarding of Lp causes the seasonality difference to reverse
every 25 kyr.

But earlier than 300 kyr ago, obliquity regularly exceeded 30,
totalling 15 discrete excursions over the past 2 Myr,
during which each excursion lasted of the order of 20-40 kyr.
When obliquity exceeds 30, water ice is stable in the near surface
down to the lower mid-latitudes.


We thus conclude that the emplacement of the ice- and dust-rich
mantle extending from polar regions down to low mid-latitudes
represents the equivalent of an ice age on Mars. If such an ice
cover had occurred on Earth, it would have reached southward to
latitudes equivalent to Saudi Arabia, North Africa and the southern
United States.
http://www.ocean.washington.edu/peop...N549C/head.pdf





As to finding some sort of microflora on Mars, I doubt it will change
the religious discourse.
The Neanderthal DNA may seem to say more than distant microflora or
microfauna. Has that
shaken the world order view en mass in the fundamentalist churches? It
is all more of a
drip drip affect on the common world view.

Times are interesting and that isn't so
pretty........................Trig