Weird Geological Features Spied On Mars 99
astroengine writes "The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera carried by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted a strange geological feature that, for now, defies an obvious explanation. Found at the southern edge of Acidalia Planitia, small pits with raised edges appear to hug a long ridge. So far, mission scientists have ruled out impact craters and wind as formation processes, but have pegged the most likely cause to be glacial in nature."
Re:Canals? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just root canals. (Score:2)
Actually it's the mouth and those are the teeth. Mars is just a big orange PacMan.
Is it dead or did it just decide to hibernate until quarters were invented and sent into space? More Research Needed (tm).
See the cover. (Score:2)
Also: See the covers of the Hitchhiker's Guide books for examples of similar features.
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Not palsas. Palsas are formed on bogs, as peat is necessary for summertime insulation. Because all vegetation (if there ever was any)—and with that all the peat—has long since left Mars, any former palsas shouldn't really leave that visible marks.
Palsa formation usually requires not just a peat bog, but also snow cover. Ice lenses are formed underneath the peat layer on spots where winter freezing occurs unusually rapidly e.g. due to a thin spot in snow cover. (Palsas have been deliberately crea
It Appears (Score:1)
"to have been deliberately buried." [youtube.com]
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Deliberately buried!
Wormsign! (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I'd like for it to be burrows or casings...
Didn't A.C. Clarke note this spot? (Score:1)
I recall that when Clarke was still alive he noted several geological features which were of personal interest to him, one of which was a "sandworm" type of feature very much like this one.
It's easier to find Clarke's off-the-cuff remark that some features look like banyan trees, but I know he wrote another piece about features other than those. Hive mind, can you please provide the citation that I cannot?
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Archive.org to the rescue. Maybe the 9-June-2003 issue of Marsbugs (#23), page 5, "Martian Spiders"?: http://web.archive.org/web/20080725114636/http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/volume10old.html [archive.org]
Man, just realized how long ago Spirit and Opportunity were.
Re:we don't know (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the blurb on the HiRISE page say "but for now this is a mystery," I'm not seeing any evidence of scientists being scared of saying they don't know. In fact, making a high profile general public article highlighting stuff you don't understand seems like the exact opposite of the scientists being scared to point out what you don't know.
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Agreed the recent trend is to pay a specific public representative to tell us what they are not ;p
However, We don't know, or "Don't think its that" is a perfectly valid answer =)
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Yea, I mean, seriously 4.4 billion years old? It could just as easily be 4.5 or 4.3 billion years old.
Re:we don't know (Score:5, Funny)
"Yea, I mean, seriously 4.4 billion years old? It could just as easily be 4.5 or 4.3 billion years old."
Precise Dating is everything.
Some tourists in the Chicago Museum of Natural History are marveling at the dinosaur bones. One of them asks the guard, "Can you tell me how old the dinosaur bones are?"
The guard replies, "They are 70 million, four years, and six months old."
"That's an awfully exact number," says the tourist. "How do you know their age so precisely?"
The guard answers, "Well, the dinosaur bones were 70 million years old when I started working here, and that was four and a half years ago."
Re:we don't know (Score:4, Interesting)
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hahahah... mod parent up!!!!!
Re:we don't know (Score:5, Funny)
The earth is 4,500,000,027 years old.
They told my it was 4.5 billion years old when I took high school geology back in 1986.
Fault line? (Score:2)
A fault line, with small volcanoes following along it?
Re:Fault line? (Score:4, Informative)
No tectonics. The planet's core is supposed to be frozen, because it it so much smaller than Earth.
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No tectonics. The planet's core is supposed to be frozen, because it it so much smaller than Earth.
Supposed to? You mean, they are guessing?
I'm not saying it's aliens (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not saying it's aliens, but that "ridge" was clearly a space craft docking terminal used by ancient aliens and their flying saucers.
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OK, so it's not aliens. Then it is precisely who that is building spacecraft docking terminals on Mars?
Scientologists?
North Korea?
Give us a couple of hints, please.
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Re:I'm not saying it's aliens (Score:4, Funny)
James Cameron is the dude most likely to build a film studio on mars so he could produce an authentic looking set.
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The motherfucker is going to ruin Mars forver too?
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Nazis.
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Nope, they're on the moon. Didn't you see the documentary?
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Oh. Thought those were whalers on the moon.
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http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7kj29OPoq1qeerh6.png
SFW
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Bah! (Score:5, Funny)
Those are acne scars from when Mars was much younger, you insensitive clods!
Moles (Score:1)
They're a pain to get rid of. Probably what led to the extinction of the Martians.
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Or gophers. [wa.gov]
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Maybe. Ice could melt, even evaporate due to the low vapour pressure and leave a void behind. Viola, sinkhole without groundwater.
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Looks like the kind of ice and snow that remains on the shadow side of a mountain or ridge. The ice slowly melts, so the water gradually creates a depression on one side and deposits mud at the bottom.
Simple (Score:1)
it's just a sandworm (Score:2)
It's a sandworm, there is probably lots of OIL on Mars and they will need to fight sandworms soon.
electrical (Score:1)
Old site used to make... (Score:1)
So ... (Score:2)
toxic refinery? (Score:1)
Looks like the toxic refinery to me.
Weird is subjective. (Score:2)
Just because it came from Mars doesn't mean it's automatically weird.
Silly humans.
Roads (Score:2)
Aren't they just roads?
clearly (Score:2)
It's just a response to one of the rovers drawing a giant penis. Martians are responding saying theirs is bigger.
Worm Tracks (Score:3)
Huh. (Score:1)
Subliminated ice boulders (Score:3)
If you figure each put was made by a chunk of ice, which laid on the surface to trap blown debris, then subliminated away, you'd get something like that. The one to the right with ones inside of on pit would have been made by a ice boulder fracturing apart then its parts sublimating away.
Eroded Fault line, (Score:2)
looks like to me.
Re:Eroded Fault line, (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:San_Andreas_Fault_Aerial_View.gif [wikipedia.org]
Looks like a job for religion (Score:2, Funny)
There's a strange thing! I don't understand it. You don't understand it. Top Men don't fully understand it, or are divided on some fine point.
ERGO, [non sequiter crackpot hypothesis unsuggested by the data]! See? Finally, I have been proven right.
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Hm... Do I give Hoagland 9/10 Ickes, or give Icke 9/10 Hoaglands? Decisions...
Perhaps I should give give 'em both 9/10 Timecubes.
Hot Springs (Score:2)
No Scale (Score:3)
They might be Kettle Holes (Score:3)
There are quite similar to the depressions in Moreux Crater (image PSP_010695_2225 [uahirise.org] ; 42 degrees N / 44.6 degrees E). They might be Kettle Holes, formed when a retreating ice sheet or glacial flood leaves behind huge chunks of debris rich ice that later melts (or sublimates) creating distinctive hollows in glacial sediment.
Moreux Crater Kettle Holes [arizona.edu]
Ob (Score:2)
Ulla!
Siberia (Score:1)