Second Mars Rover's findings so far...

Mars Under the Microscope

This magnified look at the martian soil near the Mars Exploration
Rover Opportunity's landing site, Meridiani Planum, shows coarse
grains sprinkled over a fine layer of sand. The image was captured by
the rover's microscopic imager on the 10th day, or sol, of its mission
and roughly approximates the color a human eye would see. Scientists
are intrigued by the spherical rocks, which can be formed by a variety
of geologic processes, including cooling of molten lava droplets and
accretion of concentric layers of material around a particle or
"seed."

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Since they are looking in a crater, why would they even begin to think
that those spherical rocks would be made by any other process than the
explosion caused by the meteor? I mean, an impact causes extreme
heating. Wouldn't that cause the effects seen at this site? I thought
it was a given that they would find tiny pieces of melted bedrock in
the sides of this crater. If there was iron in the soil (shown by the
spectrometer) and it was heated to thousands of degrees by the impact,
wouldn't that make hematite? Wouldn't molten hematite be thrown for a
large distance in all directions by this event?

Ookie Wonderslug wrote:

Since they are looking in a crater, why would they even begin to think
that those spherical rocks would be made by any other process than the
explosion caused by the meteor? I mean, an impact causes extreme
heating. Wouldn't that cause the effects seen at this site?

No, the crater they are in is far too small to have that kind of heating.
That level of heat from an impact would form a crater something more like a
few hundred meters across or larger. There are lots of even bigger craters in
the region which could have produced a lot of fine heated ejecta, although as
the press conference, several other sources were also suggested (volcanic fire
fountains, water "accrection", ect.). Its a little too soon to say what the
origin of these little pebble-like objects are. Clear skies to you.
--
David W. Knisely
Prairie Astronomy Club: http://www.prairieastronomyclub.org
Hyde Memorial Observatory: http://www.hydeobservatory.info/

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Hi Ookie I'm looking at the Lowell crater as I type. It was taken by
the Mars orbiter. This crater has a diameter of 126 miles.The picture
shows smaller creates,and they all have a ridge,and a flat
floor.(surface) Ookie this is easy to understand now that we know about
Mars global dust storms. Over time the crater oval holes got filled in,
The younger craters have a bowl shaped floor,but in about 25,000 years
they to will be filled in if not sooner. Bert