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The spheres were formed by diagenisis and are not concreations.They are all over the place where water was present and at both craters.
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Another recent thread of yours is named: "Spheres are concreations. Are they are hematite?"
:laugh:
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I changed my mind about it. I have not seen examples of such concreations here on Earth.
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I am still on the fence about this one. The one thing Mars is trying to teach me is not to jump the gun and to have patience. Not an easy thing.
The fact that the sphere seem to have a size limit leans me towards them being fossils.
I wouldn’t be wholly surprised at microfossils on Mars, but something evolving this large would surprise me, and this swings me back to the other side.
"Run for it? Running's not a plan! Running's what you do, once a plan fails!" -Earl Bassett
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Well, I have not seen a single example of such concreations here on Earth. If the scientists claim they are concreations then show at least one example here on Earth this size, and made of the same elements percentage wise. There are some bacteria here on Earth the size of these periods......that eat sulfur in our oceans. Perhaps, these are huge fossilzed bacteria on Mars that in the past ate the sulfur in the rocks long ago under water.
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I have been studying Geology for 2 decades and I have never seen anything like the spheres. The closest I have seen are fossils. But Mars is a different plant with a different history and a different environment, so I will wait for more evidence.
The size thing makes me say fossils because most life forms have a size limit.
"Run for it? Running's not a plan! Running's what you do, once a plan fails!" -Earl Bassett
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Yep, and concreations don't at least hear on Earth. Some of them are huge weighing hundreds of pounds. Fossils generally keep the same shape when diagenisis occurs.
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Yea but those are rare. These things are abundant. Billions of them.
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Notice the spheres around Endurance are the same size as those back in Eagle. Also notice many are attached by pedestals (berries-on-a-stick), be them erosional or biological in nature
They seem to have a size limit that I can not explain. They all seem to reach a certain size. Tektites would vary in size, and the larger they got the less spherical they would become. Concretions would also very in size and they would be layered.
Mollusks Fossils, here on earth, have size limits. I have found layers in limestone where all the shell fossils are similar sizes. I am not saying the sphere on Mars are fossils, but so far, that is the only way I can explain their similar sizes and their size limit.
What throws me away from them being fossils is that they are evenly distributed throughout the parent rock and are not restricted to certain layers. When I find shell fossils, they are usually in layers.
So, from what data I have seen, the spheres are not Tektites and they are not Concretions. They could be fossils.
IMO the 'blueberries' are the most puzzling thing discovered on Mars by the rovers.
"Run for it? Running's not a plan! Running's what you do, once a plan fails!" -Earl Bassett
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I agree with you on this. Through diagenisis these organisms could have been preserved for many years, and could have formed over a period of millions of years with in different layring of sedimemtary deposits. The organisms could have had many years of life if these deposites kept coming from time to time as the sediments kept layring. Organisms do eat sulfur rich rock which these sediments are. It is already proven right here on Earth.
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I saw a link somewhere to a site where the martian blueberries were compared favourably with small fossil sea urchins found here on Earth.
O.K. A fair enough hypothesis as far as it goes, I guess.
But so far we've found literally billions and billions of these things on Mars, and no indisputable fossils of anything else! Were small sea urchins the dominant form of life on Mars, to the exclusion of all other life forms?!
It doesn't sound reasonable to me.
???
The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down. - Rita Rudner
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There are other sulfur eating organisms on Earth Also . Perhaps,they can find others in Endurance. It will be neat if they can go down in there, and see other possible fossils.
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Another thing that points to these things being fossils. They appear to have a low density (They stay atop the sand and dust) but that are harder than there their parent rock. Unfortunately, I don’t know what their density is or the their harness, but if they do have a low density and a high harness, that could indicate they are fossils. I don’t know any natural mineral that have a very low density, but a high hardness. Shells, Coral and Bone, made of calcium, fit this description, and with coral and shell fossils, when in Limestone, are harder than their parent rock.
When I say harder than their parent rock, I mean more resistant to weathering as well as actual hardness.
"Run for it? Running's not a plan! Running's what you do, once a plan fails!" -Earl Bassett
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Those Blueberries
...They stay atop the sand and dust due to saltation and low-density...
I'm not an expert of Saltation, but couldnd't you also suppose that the blueberries stay atop the sand and dust merely because the dust is being removed from beneath them by wind action? There probably isnt much soil sorting going on here. Any sand grains or dust next to a blueberry just gets blown away, but the blueberries remain. You might have some sand dunes covering over blueberry fields from time to time as they migreate, but generally the blueberries slow dust removal by acting like desert pavement, they stay at the top merely because everything else blows away, otherwise there should be lots of dust being kicked around in this area.
Closely related question: Are wind measurements being taken by the rovers? I haven't heard a peep about this...
"I think it would be a good idea". - [url=http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mahatma_Gandhi/]Mahatma Gandhi[/url], when asked what he thought of Western civilization.
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Check out these new microscopic pictures from Opportunity.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … _m125.html
If I saw this rock on Earth, I would say it is limestone, and it has fossils. But this is Mars and we know it is not limestone, but I v=bet is formed in a similar fashion. As for fossils, I see many little fossil like objects in the rock, but they are probably just an artifact of weathering.
Nice sphere. What is that little donut object to the lower left of the sphere?
"Run for it? Running's not a plan! Running's what you do, once a plan fails!" -Earl Bassett
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Forgot the link to the nice sphere picture with the donut to the lower left;
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … ...M1.HTML
A word of caution. Beware of possible fossils at the pixel limit. A good example, look at the smaller picture and see what looks almost like a spiral shape to the left of the sphere. Now zoom in to the larger picture and you can see that it is not a spiral. I am always wary of artifacts at the fuzzy pixel limit.
And I am still perplexed by the spheres. I want to know how they formed.
"Run for it? Running's not a plan! Running's what you do, once a plan fails!" -Earl Bassett
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And I am still perplexed by the spheres. I want to know how they formed.
Do you buy into the "concretion" theory?
It seems to make the most sense to me, but I'm not aware of any such places on Earth where you have concretions very much like these especially in such abundance, you'd expect such simple features to abundant on earth since the conditions necessary to create them dont seem that different. Or maybe they do exist on Earth and I just dont know it. Or maybe they dont last very long in watery environments like Earth, even though it required water to create them...
In a more fanciful vein they could also be diagenesis formations in vacancies left by fungi like someone else in this forum was suggesting...
"I think it would be a good idea". - [url=http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mahatma_Gandhi/]Mahatma Gandhi[/url], when asked what he thought of Western civilization.
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I don't know what they are but they seem to be some kind of rock to me. Their surface is not perfectly smooth like a snail shell, it has the roughness that a concretion would have. I know it is a martian creation, whatever it is, so it does not have to have the exact type shell an earth snail has but I am still skeptical.
Maybe they are some kind of round fossil that somehow sediment formed a limited shell over?
Why doesn't NASA run one over, like the one in the picture in the post above. Run it over to see if the rover can collapse it so we can see the inside.
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I don't believe the concretion hypothesis has as much merit as the concept that the spheres are a glass-type material similar to the "Apache Tears" volcanic glass spheres.
The fact that the spheres on Mars are seen within a rock-like matrix, as well as free on the surface, may simply mean that the 'rocks' they are seen within are simply accumulations of volcanic ash (or high energy release impact debris) laid down at the same time the spheres were being laid down.
This in no way excludes their having been exposed to water at some time during their existance, as some 3D views produced with the microscopic imager seem to show surface etching. (while also showing that some of the image details of select spheres seem to be bubbles near, but within, semitransparent surfaces.)
Rex G. Carnes
If the Meek Inherit the Earth, Where Do All the Bold Go?
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I don't believe the concretion hypothesis has as much merit as the concept that the spheres are a glass-type material similar to the "Apache Tears" volcanic glass spheres.
The fact that the spheres on Mars are seen within a rock-like matrix, as well as free on the surface, may simply mean that the 'rocks' they are seen within are simply accumulations of volcanic ash (or high energy release impact debris) laid down at the same time the spheres were being laid down.
it seems likely that the sulfur found in the bedrock has a volcanic source, but i think it was carried by water, mixed with other soils and laid down as sediment layers and the dissolved minerals had to precipitate out as conditions changed and the mineral saturation point was reached, probably all in a relative short timespan which could be why they are all similar size and evenly distributed, so we have these concretions, which are those minerals, distributed all through the rock layers and left at the surface as the rock erodes and blows away from around them.
As to the spherules as being volcano-strewn glass or meteorite-strewn tectites, they have cut through many of them in situ in the bedrock and they dont seem to be composed of such material. they also dont get crushed by the wheels they just get pushed down below the surface soil. the spectra points to hematite, but i havent heard what the interiors are (the exterior hematite could be merely a surface coating).
"I think it would be a good idea". - [url=http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mahatma_Gandhi/]Mahatma Gandhi[/url], when asked what he thought of Western civilization.
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Atomoid, and others,
As to the spherules as being volcano-strewn glass or meteorite-strewn tectites, they have cut through many of them in situ in the bedrock and they dont seem to be composed of such material.
As to the hematite contents, or coating, I work (at my day job) at a company which does research on specialty glasses. I have seen many examples of magnetic coatings of metallic oxides on glass microspheres caused by imputities in our source materials. They were identified as magnetic simply because they were removed from our product by a magnetic separator.
We also make iron phosphate based glasses which by appropriate modification can be as insoluble as silicate glasses or can be tailored to degrade in an environment (alkaline as in concrete, or biological as in temporary bone replacement) at a given rate.
Some of these glasses can contain enough iron and/or other magnetic materials to be magnetic in themselves. I have a sample of glass shot produced in some of our experiments which shares some of the appearance and morphology of the spheres seen on the surface of Mars, and am hoping to work up a paper on the similarities in the near future. Some Mossbauer measurements have even been done, but I may not have ready access to those.
Anyway, don't rule out thermally produced glass as a possible candidate for the makeup of the "blueberries".
Rex G. Carnes
If the Meek Inherit the Earth, Where Do All the Bold Go?
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