Opportunity Sees Tiny Spheres in Martian Soil

Now, you see? What we need is some lateral thinking here! Everyone
wants to talk about the controversy but every is also missing the big chance
to do something really cool!
I'm talking about automated crop circle producing robots!
And if we do a really great job on them, then we can take up a
collection and send a few of them to Mars and really give them something to
look at! Big geometric patterns dragged into the Martian dirt, complete
with the imprinted plywood patterns. Or we could draw a whole body (a la
Nazca lines) under the "face on Mars".

Cheers!

Chip Shults

On a related note...
If you look at the image at
http://www.lyle.org/mars/oldmars/marstrue.jpg

in the lower right quadrant, just below the middle of the airbag drag
marks, there is a series of oddly regular pairs of white dots in the
martian soil

Some people I have shown this to agree that it might be a fossil,
others are skeptical.

Can anyone think of a way to enhance the image to better discern its
origin?

Could NASA be convinced to send Spirit back for a close-up?

JRU


"Carsten Troelsgaard" wrote in message . dk...
snip

NASA's Opportunity has examined its first patch of soil in the small
crater where the rover landed on Mars and found strikingly spherical
pebbles among the mix of particles there.

snip

wrote in message
om...
On a related note...
If you look at the image at
http://www.lyle.org/mars/oldmars/marstrue.jpg

in the lower right quadrant, just below the middle of the airbag drag
marks, there is a series of oddly regular pairs of white dots in the
martian soil

Some people I have shown this to agree that it might be a fossil,
others are skeptical.

Can anyone think of a way to enhance the image to better discern its
origin?

Could NASA be convinced to send Spirit back for a close-up?

JRU

I increased the resolution and looked at them more closely. Sorry to
disappoint you, but they are just angular rocks. No fossils evident there.

Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote in message ...
February 5, 2004

Ron wrote:

The shapes by themselves don't reveal the particles' origin with
certainty. "A number of straightforward geological processes can
yield round shapes," said Dr. Hap McSween, a rover science team member
from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. They include accretion
under water, but apparent pores in the particles make alternative
possibilities of meteor impacts or volcanic eruptions more likely
origins, he said.

Hint : Hap McSween, as in Harvey and McSween, the well known
anti-mars-life geology crackpots.

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

Don't beleive him the Martian Crabs have taken him over:

http://www.martiancrabs.com

Carla Schneider wrote in message ...
George wrote:


The only problem with that idea is that lightning has never been observed on
Mars, depsite the hundreds of thousands of photographs taken of the planet.

If there were a lightning on Mars, we would not see it on a photograph
of Mars Global Surveyor or Mars Express, execept maybe one single bright
pixel, because these pictures are recorded line by line, and the time
a lightning lasts is too short to be seen in more than one line.
But lightnings could be easily detected by the radio waves they emit.
I have no Idea if such observations have been carried out on Mars.

Well it's a moot point:-
Quote:- "Dust adhesion/cohesion, atmospheric transport and
electrical storms on Mars may all be aspects of the same phenomena:
the electrical activity of the suspended dust. Investigations are
underway in the Mars simulation laboratory, which can quantify this
electrification with the use of Mars analogue dust. "
Endquote.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=ca...hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Endquote

"George" wrote in message
.. .

"don findlay" wrote in message
m...
(Ron) wrote in message
. com...
MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Guy Webster (818) 354-5011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Donald Savage (202) 358-1547
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

NEWS RELEASE: 2004-051 February 4, 2004

Opportunity Sees Tiny Spheres in Martian Soil

The shapes by themselves don't reveal the particles' origin with
certainty. "A number of straightforward geological processes can
yield round shapes," said Dr. Hap McSween, a rover science team member
from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. They include accretion
under water, but apparent pores in the particles make alternative
possibilities of meteor impacts or volcanic eruptions more likely
origins, he said.

(Wild guess: fused iron and silica from electrical zaps like you get
with 'crop circles')
df.

Despite the fact that crop circles were a hoax perpetrated on the public by
two English scientists?

Two Englishmen came clean about their nocturnal practices in 1991. Doug
Bower and Dave Chorley, two men in their 60's at the time, claimed that they
were responsible for the crop circles that everyone was talking about. Armed
with planks of wood, garden rollers and string, the men would stomp and mark
an area of a field, thus creating crop circles as we know them.



Not to mention the obvious give away, that every crop circle photo
shows the circle intersects some path or hedgerow leading to the
edge of the field. So the perps can get in and out without leaving
tracks.

skrev i en meddelelse
om...
On a related note...
If you look at the image at
http://www.lyle.org/mars/oldmars/marstrue.jpg

in the lower right quadrant, just below the middle of the airbag drag
marks, there is a series of oddly regular pairs of white dots in the
martian soil

Some people I have shown this to agree that it might be a fossil,
others are skeptical.

a fossil of what?

snip

/Carsten

"Carsten Troelsgaard" wrote in message
k...
Some people I have shown this to agree that it might be a fossil,
others are skeptical.

a fossil of what?

You can't really tell, because of that stand of trees in the way.




(ROTFL. Sorry. I usually do better at self control.)

--
Randy M. Dumse
www.newmicros.com
Caution: Objects in mirror are more confused than they appear.

"John Curtis" wrote
Perhaps the silica was fused by the action of atmospheric oxygen
on the primordial silicon emanating from a volcano.
The pores remind me of pumice particles which may still harbor
a few intact pumice bubbles containing the primordial
constituents of the planetary interior.

Check out this colorized shot where the spheres appear blue (handy for
spotting them). They are evidently weathering out of the outcrop rocks, in
this case "Snout." Several can be seen jutting out of the sides of the rock.

http://www.copperas.com/astro/spheres.jpg

The rock looks very weak.

Joe

"Sir Charles W. Shults III" wrote in message m...
"George" wrote in message
.. .
snip
Despite the fact that crop circles were a hoax perpetrated on the public
by
two English scientists?

Two Englishmen came clean about their nocturnal practices in 1991. Doug
Bower and Dave Chorley, two men in their 60's at the time, claimed that
they
were responsible for the crop circles that everyone was talking about.
Armed
with planks of wood, garden rollers and string, the men would stomp and
mark
an area of a field, thus creating crop circles as we know them.

Well, realize that this is a red herring in itself- crop circles have
been reported all over the world and for centuries. I am certain that these
two gentlemen did not make them all. Not to say that other people did not;
that is the simplest explanation, certainly. But that is like soaping
fountains around your town and then admitting it; then having everyone
assume that all fountain soaping pranks were done by you.

Cheers!

Chip Shults


Most fountain soapinga are done by aliens.