New Mars Forums

I'm sure there are a lot of people here debating this image, so I thought I would follow the science of how this rock came out of no where to be where it is today? My guess is it is a crushed rock that popped out of one the wheels it was sitting under...

My colorized image from the RGB filter images

NASA suplied color image

Bob Clark your welcome, always glad to help.

One of NASA's little dark secret that if a good scientist or reporter looked deep enough into NASA's information that was already published they will find that Curiosity has organic identifying fluorescents that they used to take this image at night on Mars, a 365 nm light source. This is the right light source to look for organics. The original image of the one below is much more detailed and had hundreds of different dots about 1 pixel wide that is red, yellow and green, something you might identify as organic so those small dots may be either be organic or an artifact? I'm talking about the dots not those verticle streaks you see that are artifacts. Note this orginal image is 4.0 mb 1632 x 1200 pixels??.

The right UV light source to look for organics with Florissant's weren't on any other Martian Lander's or rover's, it was first suggested right after the MER Rover's landed, Phoenix Lander didn't have it either. I have a flashlight black light, UV, that I look for scorpions in my house at night, it is very effective in exposing organic compounds that can be later confirmed with their other instruments. Imagine them finding something crawling around under an upturned rock or in a drilled rock like this.

Here is a link to what a scorpion looks like in a similar UV black light source as Curiosities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nXYJRhxoIk

For kicks and giggles, I made a time lapse movie of several different images including the one above at different times of the night, here is what it looks like here:

http://youtu.be/CrRDQME5dAU

As you can see unfortunately we didn't make first contact yet...

Curiosity sol 160 - A lot of white stuff, most likely salts, under and in the covered up rocks?

Opportunity sol 3187

Back at Opportunity, they spied the "razorback-like" rock I showed above and focused into taking some more close up images of it.

Sol 3164

Here is something interesting at Opportunities site?

1P408357628EL7M1.JPG

Looking closer at the new image above there's a familiar looking rock found only in Endurance crater. The rock is the same kind of rock with "razorback" feature that the MER science team claimed showed recent activity relating to water flow in Endurance crater. Is there recent geyser activity at Endeavor crater, clays are also formed in geological active areas.

Drill here for water?

This "razorback" feature was photographed by Mars Rover Opportunity at Endurance Crater, Mars in July 2004. (NASA/JPL)

The 'Razorback' Mystery

"The pointy features in this image may only be a few centimeters high and less than 1 centimeter (0.4 inches) wide, but they generate major scientific interest. Dubbed "Razorback," this chunk of rock sticks up at the edge of flat rocks in "Endurance Crater." Based on their understanding of processes on Earth, scientists believe these features may have formed when fluids migrated through fractures, depositing minerals. Fracture-filling minerals would have formed veins composed of a harder material that eroded more slowly than the rock slabs."

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … 0716a.html

NBC report on "one for the history books"

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news … /#50002282

I posted this on a different post but I thought I will repost it here.

Imagine a world similar to earth early in its history where life was abundant on land, in the sea and underground, a world where an apocalyptical event much greater than the one that killed the dinosaurs off was about to hit the planet. Imagine the terror of Martian life forms looking up into the night sky when it happened. The planet shook from a large comet exploding after impact filling the night sky with 3 thousand degrees hot plasma, 8 million cubic miles of impacted debris and poisonous gas. A force over 1 million times greater than the power of the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima Japan just shook the planet impacting at the Hellas Impact basin area as a result the crater floor is now about 7,152 m (23,465 ft) deep extending about 2,300 km (1,400 mi) east to west.

Are we seeing its victims here?

https://picasaweb.google.com/1041440224 … kingRocks#

The above thought was followed with half joking images I showed people at space.com blog in 2004 about what looked like a grave yard of fossils at the Spirit rovers landing site, I even named the rocks. Spirit landed in a very low elevation that later was proven to be a dry lake bed. After looking at over 10,000 images from the MER rovers nothing looked like the fossilize looking rocks at the Spirit rovers landing site. Looking at the images too much I started thinking that maybe that they were fossils, this was before they verified water on Mars with other data that supports the possibility of life on Mars at sometime in its history.

Now at Curiosity Landing site lets revisit that thought, according to the Curiosity science team Curiosity landed in a dry river bed, are these fossilized rocks?

Dead Horse looking rock?

???

The consequences if they do confirm large fossils on Mars would be unimaginably huge, even confirming microscopic life on Mars would alter humans conception of the universe. As far as habitable zones for life our outer solar system worlds that get hundreds of times less light than earth does has the best chance outside Mars of finding life, habitable zone that far out in our own solar system would mean almost all the stars no matter how cold they are may have life.
 
The only life forms we know of are carbon based as a result have organic chemicals. Our understanding of whether there is currently life on Mars or that there was life on Mars in the past is due to what we can extrapolate out of all the data we currently know about life on earth and information we get from exploring Mars. We currently know that there is water in the soil, the reason I said soil instead of regolith, regolith = similar to soil but without the organics, because I am sure there are organics on Mars although none to this date have been found -- see first post above that adds proof to this and the fact that Earth got all its water and organics from space, asteroids and comets, then why shouldn't Mars have some too since we know that it now has water ice. Water-ice and organics is abundant in our outer solar system away from the high UV's. Organics directly on Mars surface in high UV's would be destroyed so we have to dig it up to find it.

"In 2010 The discovery of the highly reactive chemical perchlorate in the phoenix Lander led NASA's Christopher McKay, an astrobiologist at the Ames Research Center, and Navarro-Gonzalez to test whether the perchlorate had skewed the Viking results that showed no sign of organic material on Mars.
Perchlorate, which consists of chlorine and oxygen, actively absorbs electrons from surrounding compounds when heated. "It could sit there in the Martian soil with organics around it for billions of years and not break them down," McKay said. "But when you heat the soil to check for organics, the perchlorate destroys them rapidly."

The Viking Lander dug some up but because it also dug up perchlorates that have a high amount of oxygen in it then as soon as they heated it up to check for organics it destroyed the organic before we could find it, the Phoenix Lander did the same thing. So to-date no organic has been found on Mars, without finding organics they will never admit to ever seeing something that looks like life on Mars, the phoenix Lander science team found a lot of perchlorates in the soil so they also couldn’t confirm organics because they didn’t anticipate this. NASA now knows what to do and not to do with curiosity and what to test for to confirm organics. So that big announcement that they will soon make, “"one for the history books.” may not only confirm organics they may also confirm advanced organic chemistry that is the precursor of life.

With that being said don’t hold your breath on a soon to be released "one for the history books announcement; it may not come this early in curiosities mission.

NBC report on "one for the history books"

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news … /#50002282

Since we will not know what they are talking about at Curiosities site for another two weeks "for the history books," it leaves us some more room to speculate. What if they found an active warm geyser field, as speculative as that may seem they are surprised by the high temperature in the area at this time of year.

They already recorded temperature as high as 40 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, warmer than any time ever recorded on Mars but Curiosity landed at the end of winter time, it shouldn't be that warm yet? To back some of my logic up is these images just released of porous rocks with larger holes in them on sol 107. Yea they look like volcanic rocks maybe even pumice but the higher temprature readings may mean they are still active warm areas on Mars???

Curiosity team to announce new " "for the history books" announcement to be made within two weeks.

http://www.space.com/18565-mars-rover-c … stery.html

My guess is that they will finally confirm organics in the soil the next step is confirming extant (still in existence) life on Mars that they also found at the Viking and Phoenix Landers site. Viking Landers found organics, the Phoenix Lander discovered it but couldn't verify it because of perchorates in the soil skewed the results, it will be confirmed that what Chris McKay said in 2010.

"In 2010 The discovery of the highly reactive chemical perchlorate in the phoenix Lander led NASA's Christopher McKay, an astrobiologist at the Ames Research Center, and Navarro-Gonzalez to test whether the perchlorate had skewed the Viking results that showed no sign of organic material on Mars.

Perchlorate, which consists of chlorine and oxygen, actively absorbs electrons from surrounding compounds when heated. "It could sit there in the Martian soil with organics around it for billions of years and not break them down," McKay said. "But when you heat the soil to check for organics, the perchlorate destroys them rapidly."

Something is interesting in the dunes???

Curiosity dug 6 trenches in the sand  so far, what is so interesting there, is it this bright object we saw earlier???

sol 93

On the other side of mars Opportunity is in Endeavour Crater.

sol 3119

There is a posiblility that the ding marks were done during landing as someone else pointed out on a different blog, but as I told them:

I thought of that too, that is why I looked at the wheels before it moved. On sol 3 they took images of the wheels before it moved, there were no ding marks or any other marks on the wheels, however with that being said the bottom of the wheels was not visible at the time they took images of the wheels. These ding marks are on most all of the wheels on all the visible surfaces so although it is possible that the damage was done on the bottom of the wheels at landing time when it first fell from the sky, it is more probable that the ding marks were made during its short drive.

Here is what the wheels looked like on sol 3 before it moved, see below: