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I guess that means Uranus' ammonia came from some other source?  Why the short half-life? Mars too hot? other gasses react with it?

OR, maybe the ammonia is just bound up in volcanic rocks and is being slowly released through erosional processes?
any geologists out there know if this is likely?

But, "no active hotspots"?   really?  didn't Oddyssey find http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/spac … 7.htm]some active hotspots in Hellas Basin?:

Funny, about a year later, I haven't heard any follow up or anything more about these hotspots. Was that MGS picture ever taken??

I remember when Sir Arthur C. Clarke brought up this idea of trees a few years ago referring to this same image. Intriguing idea but I think its just speculation like Hoagland's giant glass tubes (which just look like sand dunes in the bottom of ravines giving the illusion of convexity). There is a whole "http://www.martianspiders.com/]Martian Spiders" page devoted to these features. Guess well have to wait for MRO to get some better shots in 2007.

IMHO I don't think these formations (the "http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/fullres/divided/m08046/m0804688a.jpg]the "trees"") stick up above the terrain much at all. They're probably just small heaps and troughs in the soil created by freeze/thaw patterns causing soil expansion around underground reserves of something that outgasses/contracts during the warmer months, and expands during the winter.

CO2 might do the trick if its outgassing, Water ice might do the trick if its crystalization/expansion. The change in volume under the soil would allow the area to slump or mound up and create dendritic cracking patterns.

The light/dark difference is merely due to frost remaining on the smoother areas. If you take a picture of this area now, it will look much different due to frost accumulation/sublimation, although the "spider" forms are actual soil disturbances so they remain and get amplified every season. The "shadows" are probably either windblown dust or just frost-free areas (due to turbulent air patterns downwind of terrain features) that looks very dark in the exposure that was needed to not overexpose the light frosted areas.

Although (not to throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water), im fairly convinced that it is possible that there might be vast bacterial colonies slowly thriving inside these areas that are metabolizing compounds and releasing heat or gas, thus creating the very conditions that are allowing these formations to propogate.

The Sun, such a loud windy messy necessity. or just good old warmth and color thats destructive to volatile collections of matter.  Doom to the moons from the Sun!

I remember Harlan Ellison giving a talk in Los Altos last year about how if we could aim several comets to crash into our Moon at just the right angle, we could get it spinning fast enough to make a 24 day.  The comet water would, even in the low gravity, be enough to give it an atmospheric pressure even more than Earth's, and in the thick air you would actually be able to flap your arms and fly. The low gravity would still be enough to keep the air around for about 10,000 years...

you can always click on the image at MU http://www.lyle.org/mars/bysol/1-152.html]but here it is in lyle sol 152
the weird thing is the spiny ridges sticking up like dinosaur bones. its kind of like the decaying bread loaves at the Spirit pot o gold site where the rind remains after the rock weathers away. this non-geologist assumes that this kind of stuff suggests that the rocks were exposed to mineralization at a time long after they were formed, a rind forming in water or air over the ages, kind og like the process of desert varnish, a dark rindy coating which is mainly manganese and iron oxides forming with the help of moisture and sunlight on exposed surfaces of rocks on earth (non-sunlight exposed surfaces get an orange hue due to just iron oxides)...

also on this page dont miss the http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery/1M1416 … ]blueberry pedestal sans bluebery

made it, relief sets in... I was hoping for some first-ever images from inside the ring gap first-ever edge on, i dont see any yet.

those are some great http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/i … =27729]raw images

at first i thought those might be the sequence of "threading the gap" but put the thumbnails together and they just make up a mosaic (seems to be the same as the http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … mage]image from 6/29):

http://www.freewebs.com/atomoid/ringim.jpg]here
it looks liek they havent released an image from edge on, so is this the closest we got?

did anyone notice the "http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS02/N00000488.jpg]meteor flurries" in these images? what the heck?

Kayaking the tidal salt marsh http://www.elkhornslough.org/]Elkhorn Slough, I was repeatedly struck by how much the mudbank at the tideline resembles those termite galleries in the bedrock at Meridiani. I was able to snap off a few pictures of some of it, although I was unable to photograph the most compelling specimens in time. The best photo I was able to get does the comparison a little bit of justice at least...

I'm guessing that the similar "termite gallery" holes in the mud are created by crabs burrowing into the voids left by decaying plant roots (look in the lower left). Any naturists out there know more about this kind of stuff?

here's an "otherwise unavailable anywhere else" http://www.freewebs.com/atomoid/slopRox.JPG]3D anaglyph of some odd rocks from sol 168.
http://www3.zero.ad.jp/esuto/stphmkr/in … tereoPhoto Maker is great (and free).

awwww shux! the link times out... broken or just down for now?

This Spirit image of part of the rainCake or breadLoafWreckage or whatever it is http://www.marsunearthed.com/Spirit/Spi … htm]stands out real good in 3D
especially notable is the little "support column" stretched bwteen the walls inside the hollow of the "limestone drapery cave-curtain"
which, oh, okay, turns out to be http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery/2M1405 … ml]nothing too special

Without the moon Earth might look something much more like Venus (though perhaps not as hot), because it has no moon, Venus has no plate techtonics, about a year-long day/night cycle,

I've heard that the moon imparts a stabilizing effect, limiting the extremes of the procession of the equinoxes. Does the moon effects the interior magma flow of earth and perhaps stabilize the magnetic field as well?

Perhaps its not so uncommon in the universe for such planetoid impacts to occur and a good part of the time they end up forming a stable moon, given that the masses are in pretty close orbit and velocity since they originated in the same system, its just the slow orbital harmonics that slowly eases them together. Such a planetoid was probably in a somewhat, though not permanently stable orbit between Earth and either Mars or Venus until it was eased into collision, the resultant excess wreckage of this (the moon being almost entirely composed of Earth's crust after it was spalled outward by the impact vibrations on a 5-hour-day Earth), the impacting planetoid remnant might have wandered in another such orbit for eons until it impacted Mars i a simialr fashion. Im under the impression that Mars was likely hit by a large planetoid early on as well, from looking at the difference between hemispheres which dont happen to be aligned equatorially (a large impact could have imparted this).

Another fascinating decaying bread loaf remnant...
I couldnt find an anaglyph of this on http://www.lyle.org/mars/]the lyle.org site
so i whipped one up using the pictures i found in sol 159:

Blueberries at Gusev... synthomus in the #6 thread brought this up, pointing to http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery/2P1402 … .html]this image of what looks suspiciously like an ancient blueberry muffin remnant...

It looks like they've been investigating this object over the last few sols using all the filters they've got... certainly an odd rock compared to the other Gusev rocks, very Meridiani-like.
    http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery/2P1403 … ml]another side view or http://www.lyle.org/~markoff/processed/ … JPG]better yet Crotty color
    http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery/2N1404 … l]overhead view
    http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery/2P1404 … l]close-up overhread view
        http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery/stereo … 0-N.jpg]3D from away (3 rocks triangle in middle, the far one is the weird layered flake rock).
        heres]http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery/stereo/2-140490139-F.jpg]here's a similar 3D view looking at it from a bit more to the left.
        http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery/stereo … 9-N.jpg]3D from above

This could be a key discovery, hope to hear something official soon...