The Mystery of Mars' Bizarre Plumbing 62
astroengine writes "Hesperia Planum: once a Martian plain — a regular, no-surprises, run-of-the-mill plain. But now, thanks to researchers who used high-resolution imagery from the armada of satellites currently orbiting the Red Planet, Hesperia Planum holds a mystery. Sinuous rilles, a common feature in ancient volcanic regions on Mars and the Moon, appear across Hesperia, but they appear to have no origin and no destination. If they were formed by lava flows, wouldn't they originate near volcanoes? This oddity has led Tracy Gregg and her student Carolyn Roberts of the University at Buffalo to postulate an entirely different rille formation process that could make Hesperia Planum a whole lot more interesting than scientists ever thought."
Everyone knows the answer ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Done in one.
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Giant Sand Worms.
Yeah, I thought of Shai-Hulud too.
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Re:Everyone knows the answer ... (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, pass the bong already. :-P
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Excuse me? I control the spice. See my username.
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For some reason your username makes me think of a Dune/Life of Brian crossover.
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Every spice grain is sacred.....
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Every grain is great ...
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He's not the Kwisatz Haderach, he's a very naughty boy.
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Please forgive me.
Dunecat [lolcats.com]
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Giant Sand Worms.
Like the ones shown in the movie "Tremors" ?
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Re:Everyone knows the answer ... (Score:4, Insightful)
My life story.
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I hope you don't get sent to mod prison for this.
With that UID you've waited a long time for a sand worm story, and you should be given the latitude to have fun with it.
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Close, in my new paper I out the real cause, Prehistoric Intelligent Interplanetary Sand Kracken. How could it be anything else?
SD
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Crap, I've been going all the way to Arrakis for my spice. Those blue-eyed pilots must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
Canals are back! (Score:2)
In other news, Space Makes Geology Fun Again!
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Trenches, not canals. Mars' First World War was also their last.
The Waters of Mars (Score:2)
I blame the ice warriors....
XCOM: (Score:2)
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Sectoids are just flunkies and puppets. We all know the real threat are the Ethereals.
Whose bases are all underground. Probably interconnected by tunnels.
NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE!
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Sectoids are fine, but those little Chrysalid bastards...
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Yeah seriously, they will straight up murder your face. Then procreate in it, then use your husk of a corpse as a weapon against your naive friends until it reaches adulthood. Rinse, repeat.
Hey... bob, are you ok? You've been looking a little... weird... since that Chrysalid touched you...
Shield Volcanos? (Score:3)
I don't know much about the geology, but could it possibly be the result of a shield volcano?
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I think you only managed to emphasize my point there.
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Areology? Seems a rather oddly specialized subset of boobology.
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This is slashdot, martian nuclear holocaust ftw.
Re:Shield Volcanos? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know much about the geology, but could it possibly be the result of a shield volcano?
That's basically the current/default understanding - the rilles were created from subsurface flows of lava that left empty lava tubes, which collapsed leaving the rilles behind. Similar to what you see, on a much smaller scale, in places like Lava Beds on the Modoc plateau in Northern California.
This study points out that some of the rilles don't appear to really be starting or ending at identifiable volcanic vents/craters, and so they are questioning whether they are actually the result of volcanic activity. If you take a look at this photo [geosociety.org], you can sort of see what they mean. The feature pointed out with the arrows looks a lot more like a stream bed than it does a collapsed lava tube. It is hard to really form a strong opinion from the photo, though; it is difficult to tell if the feature is actually following topography like a gravity flow.
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The image you linked looks surprising like what I imagine this one would look like viewed from above...
http://www.earth-tours.com/wp-content/uploads/fountain-reflection1.jpg [earth-tours.com]
Another view of a different area...
http://photos.igougo.com/images/p90151-Yellowstone_National_Park-Mammoth_Hot_Springs.jpg [igougo.com]
Now I realize that both of those images are of formations created by living organisms, and I am not suggesting that is the case on Mars, but perhaps there is some other process that is creating similar features on a
Everyone does know the answer (Score:1)
Canals.
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Canali (Score:2)
FTFA: "The question I have is what made the channels,"; said Gregg. Was it water, lava, or something else? "
It's like deja-vu all over again. Makes you wonder what deep discoveries await behind this channel notation... not to mention how long it will take us to generate enough political will to invest what it takes to find out.
Hoagland Celebrates! (Score:2)
He can now squeeze a few more months of life out of his insane Mars conspiracy theories.
How insane, you ask?
Try this: Buck Rogers View-Master Reels [enterprisemission.com].
That's some mighty good crackpottery, right there!
Dust to dust... (Score:2)
So- from what I understand- they don't see the source of the lava to cause the rilles so they think water created them.
Maybe- or maybe all that remains is where the rilles were deepest- and the shallower parts have been filled in by dust.
Or... if it's formed from subterranean lava tunnels that collapsed as postulated... maybe the rest of the tunnel- the part that connects it to the volcano hasn't collapsed.
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Or the volcano itself has eroded away.
Seriously? (Score:1)
My bet is that Mars was "destroyed" by something. At least it's ability to support life. Maybe whatever asteroid hit earth 65 million years ago was part of a chain that hit mars and caused all the water to vaporize. Or maybe even something more spectacular like another planet between Earth and Jupiter blowing up, with mars being caught in the middle, and all the evidence we have left is the asteroid belt.
As they said in the article, it appears to be the border of two different geological periods
--
"Everybody
Time Cube (Score:2)
Barsoom shall rise again (Score:2)
So say I
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You think these are canals? (Score:1)
Why the teaser? (Score:2)
Why is this lead piece written as a teaser instead of giving us the punch line? This is at odds with most Slashdot leads. I hope this doesn't catch on as it has for abstracts for technical papers.
Plate tectonics? (Score:1)
Where's my tinhat,...