Massive Cave Found on Mars 310
mrcgran writes "Space.com is reporting a very deep hole found on Mars: 'The geological oddity measures some 330 feet (100 meters) across and is located on an otherwise bright dusty lava plain to the northeast of Arsia Mons, one of the four giant Tharsis volcanoes on the red planet. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) used its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument to draw a bead on the apparent deep hole — a feature that may cause more scientists to ponder about potential subsurface biology on Mars. Because the spot lacks a raised rim or tossed out material called ejecta, researchers have ruled out the pit being an impact crater. No walls or other details can be seen inside the hole, and so any possible walls might be perfectly vertical and extremely dark or — more likely — overhanging.' The original image and its cutout at full resolution can be found in the HiRISE site."
Purity (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously though, the absolute absence of albedo in the visible spectrum is stunning. I wonder if there are multi-spectral images of this site? I expect this location will be of intense study in the future as there is little more than a complete absence of something to stir the human imagination.
However, I have to disagree with the analysis in that you can see shallow walls at the very edges of the crater if you stretch the image some and examine the profiles. It also appears to match the brightness of the elevation changes from one rim of the hole to the other which should give some idea for how tall the lip of the hole is to where the "blackness" starts presuming they know the angle of the sun and lat and long. Depending upon how far up the sun can get in the sky at a different season, there may be a possibility of seeing further into the hole, presuming of course it is not a giant pool of Purity....
Intmosphere?! (Score:1, Interesting)
Has anyone coined a term?
Maybe it's an "intmosphere" and the hole is the entrance.
Re:Purity (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmmmm
Oh oh
We're doomed I tell you. (Score:5, Interesting)
Weird (Score:5, Interesting)
No light is reflected back, which is kind of spooky. What can be inferred about the depth? How deep would it have to be for the HiRES camera stop sensing the light that is reflected?
It's nice and round, that's unusual. There is no crater ejecta so I'm guessing nothing hit it. I'm not a geologist, but aren't giant round holes in otherwise homogeneous flat terrain a bit uncommon?
Is there any radar in orbit with enough resolution to bounce a signal down one of these? I'm just so full of questions and awe.
I'll be checking unmanned spaceflight [unmannedspaceflight.com] for theories to these questions. Awesome site.
I feel they're missing at least one obvious option (Score:3, Interesting)
It could be a structural collapse, but it's awfuly round.
Re:Purity (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Is this a story ? (Score:1, Interesting)
Not wind, because the surface appears to be fairly flat, and I'm not aware of wind ever punching a hole straight down into the surface like that (at least not without other nearby protrusions to force the wind into some sort of vortex). Not a surface river, because there are no flow indications on the surface. Possibly a subterranean river or something which has eroded the material from the surface, leaving behind a thin crust on top. An impact would then break through the surface and not scatter ejecta around. But what exactly caused the erosion of the subsurface material?
Re:Deep enough? (Score:3, Interesting)
To increase the pressure to a survivable few 100 mBar would require several kilometers...
The Great Blue Hole [Re:Weird] (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Blue_Hole [wikipedia.org]
Could be lots of things. (Score:4, Interesting)
At this point, as far as I can tell, there are a huge number of possibilities and no information to distinguish between them.
Cenote? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't buy it. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Cenote? (Score:2, Interesting)
Seems extremely odd. I'm beginning to wonder if this isnt just a photoshop/publicity stunt..
Re:Actually, it's not pure black... (Score:2, Interesting)
The black part is not pure black, actually. There appears to be some structure inside the hole.
I ran the HiRISE cut-out image through photoshop (using a stark black-white striped image gradient) and some structure appears to come out in the black region. It's way down on one side of the color spectrum, but I'm able to see about 4 layers of gradient in the black. Perhaps a professional image analysis could bring out more.
With my limited imaging experience (undergrad astrophysics) it doesn't seem to me like the data that comes out is merely random instrument noise. It looks sort of like broad hilly terrain variations of a scale size similar to those outside the hole.
Here is the original image from HiRISE site [arizona.edu].
And here is the enhanced color version [imageshack.us] that I got by using a high contrast color gradient in photoshop.
That stuff at the bottom looks like lumpy ground a lot like what's outside of the hole.
I bet a high fidelity image enhancement of the original data could bring out a lot more detail though. There's probably already someone doing a paper on it as we speak.
-b