NASA Rover Spots Unreal Mars 'Flower' Formation

Thelasko shares a report from CNET: NASA's Curiosity rover snapped a gorgeous, delicate formation on Mars that looks like it could be a branching piece of ocean coral. It's not coral, but it's worth contemplating how we see familiar Earth objects in random shapes on Mars. The miniscule Martian sculpture invites poetic comparisons. It resembles a water droplet captured at the moment of explosion against a surface, or the tendrils of an anemone in a tide pool.

The image comes from Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (Mahli) instrument, which NASA describes as "the rover's version of the magnifying hand lens that geologists usually carry with them into the field." So the formation in the image is quite small. Abigail Fraeman, a deputy project scientist for Curiosity, tweeted a helpful visual guide that compares the object with a US penny to give an approximate sense of the scale. Fraeman writes that the image "shows teeny, tiny delicate structures that formed by mineral precipitating from water."

Fractals

[srussia]

They're the same everywhere!

Oh shit!

[Tablizer]

More odd stuff to trigger conspiracy theorists. They'll have a field day with this.

Their last China rover "rock hut" conspiracy turned out to be a dud [reddit.com].

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

The Chinese moon rover Yutu recently found some small glass balls on the moon. They were not unexpected, but still very interesting.

https://www.inverse.com/scienc... [inverse.com]

Sadly the rover doesn't have the right instruments to do more investigation. Apollo 16 brought some similar ones back to Earth.

Re:

[TrumpShaker]

"Celestial objects with glass balls shouldn't throw stones" - ancient proverb, Galaxy 4sB, universe 129.

Re:

[RockDoctor]

While I'm waiting for the source PDF [elsevier.com] (lots of dodgy tokens associated with that URL ; stripped) to download, I think back to the first time I heard about tektites, and was it the late 70s or early 80s. About then.

A quick scan read ... and I don't see anything particularly stunningly new here. Anorthositic composition of the general area (from reflection spectroscopy) and that's somewhat different to the general area of the Apollo landings.

In terms of size, they're not wildly outside the recognised range f

Re:

[nightflameauto]

That looks so very close to a coral formation that I'm sure the lunatic brigade will cook up a "proof of an ancient ocean" theory in a few days.

Re:

[RockDoctor]

Optimist.

Minutes.

Oh goody!

[dogsbreath]

Is it near the Martian Pyramid?!?

Size:

[Gravis Zero]

It's about a centimeter in diameter. It's strange they that placed the image of a coin for it's "approximate size" but didn't list any actual measurements. I mean, the rover literally is there to take measurements and it's not holding up an old penny for scale.

Funding

[ISoldat53]

It's a way to get more funding from the wackos in Congress.

Pretty pictures

[WaffleMonster]

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl-raw-... [nasa.gov]

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl-raw-... [nasa.gov]

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl-raw-... [nasa.gov]

Helictites

[RockDoctor]

I take it that the good (?) people (?) at CNET haven't heard of - let alone seen - a helictite [wikipedia.org] before. They're not wildly common compared to straight up-and-down stalactites, but by no means rare. Exactly what combinations of fluid chemistry, air (for Martian meanings of "air") speed and direction variability are involved here it's hard to say, but it's not exactly without precedent.

I'd suspect that there is a below-sand structure to this, probably extending down to the water (plus solutes) source somewhat