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Here is another one from the same area. It looks more like art than a landscape.
Here is a neat one from the South Polar Region. Looks like Inca writing.
Yes, the X-15 was on it way to being a space plane.
As much as I love the Saturn V, I can't help but wonder if it had something to do with the demise of the X-15.
I love the part of "The Right Stuff" where Chuck Yeager takes the X-15 straight up.
The Saturn V had a future. They were using it for more than Apollo. They had done all those docking test with the Russians. And then there was Skylab. I guess the shuttle had more promise, at the time. It looked futuristic compared to an old rocket.
Too bad the Saturns didn’t live on (kind of like the X-plane program. Had that continued, perhaps we would have planes flying into space by now). I have heard that to bring them back (With modern updates of course) it would take about five to ten years. We would almost have to start from scratch.
Tektites would also vary in size. The larger they get, the less they are spherical.
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.
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviation/a … -1,00.html
Venus having life sounds crazy, but after reading this very good article, it sounds convincing.
Many of you have heard the story about the story about the unaccountable absorption of UV rays in Venus upper atmosphere. This article goes a little deeper.
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.
This is very interesting. They appear to have a low density but a high hardness(In relation to the parent rock). I can’t think of any low density mineral on the Earth that has a low density but a high hardness. Limestone has a low density and what I would call a mid range harness. The strongest, low density mineral made objects I can think of are made of Calcium- bone, shells and coral- all made by life.
I wonder what the actual hardness of the spheres are? And are they really less dense than the parent rock, or do they somehow resist weathering better than the parent rock that is not based on their density? (Like chemical weathering). The parent rock could have a hardness of 1 or 2, while the spheres only have a hardness of 4 or 5.
The parent rock does not seem to last long while exposed to the Martian air. It dissolves quickly leaving the blueberries. Normally, rocks would be thrown all over the area like from the impactor that created Endurance, but yet we see no rocks scattered around. The only rocks we see around this area is where bed rock is exposed and where other rocks have been thrown there from impacters outside of the region.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … 44L7M1.JPG
Is that layering I see at the top of this picture in Endurance?
The image shows some sinuous channels, but It seems more likely that the impactors melted the subsurface ice and it flooded out carving the channels.
I had thought that, but if this is true, why have have I not seen this on the thousands of other pictures I have studied.
On Mars, when an impactor melts the subsurface ice, it forms a muddy mixture that flows out from all sides of the crater. To get a channel like these (Seems to be one per crater) the crater would fill with water until it hit breeched the crater at one point, and then flowing out this exit point.
What about after the impact event, the heat from the impact had melted some of the ground ice, and it starts to seep in the crater? Is that what you mean? I think that would be possible.
If you have ever emptied a can of Freon in your car or home’s ac low side line, or if you have used a bottle of propane, and you do it on a humid summer day, you’ll notice ice forming on the bottle.
This is due to the fact that as a gas expands it cools (And when it is compressed it heats up). It is also due to the dew point related to the air temperature. The warmer the air, the more moisture it holds. So on warm humid days, more water vapor is in the are for the ice to form.
As the fuel tanks of the rockets loose fuel, they would cool. Some rockets, like the Shuttle boosters, use cold liquid fuels, so the fuel tanks are already cold. As the liquid escapes from the tank, there would be more cooling, but the tanks are already so cold, I don’t think it would make much of a difference.
I don’t remember what the Saturn V used for fuel, but a quick search of the internet would provide the answer, I am sure.
Byron, I forgot to note that that was a September 2002. The impact was supposed to happen in 2003. I never heard about it happening last year so I don't know what happened.
Maybe I'll dig around and find out.
Hazer, have you read Harry Turtledoves, WWII books?
For those who have not read this 6 book set, lizard like aliens invade the Earth During WWII. The human race has to stop fighting amongst themselves and start fighting this new enemy.
When I first heard the premise, I thought, “No way. Aliens capable of Interstellar travel would easily kick our butts back in the 1940’s.” But Mr. Turtledove does an excellent job convincing the reader it is possible for humans of that era to defend themselves from the invading aliens.
These aliens are slow to adapt to new situations. They depend on slow, well tested, planning. They don’t like change. They also assume they are the superior race of the galaxy, so they are overconfident. They have existed as a society for over 50,000 years and have conquered two other planets with two semi-intelligent races. They figure they pretty much know all there is to know.
Probes they sent to Earth showed primitive humans who got around on horses and carried swords for weapons, so they planned the invasion force accordingly. Since they are held to the laws of physics and can not go faster than the speed of light, what they send will have to do for many years.
They find not only are humans more advance than the probes reported, they are also very clever. Their captured technology helps humans advance at an even quicker pace.
They come from a desert world, and the other two worlds they occupy are also more land than water. The idea of boats never occurred to them and they fail to watch the oceans- a big mistake. They also hate the cold climates, and they discover they become drug addics when exposed to ginger.
The aliens could nuke humans off the planet, but that was not in their plan, plus it would make colonization efforts difficult.
The humans, on the other hand, still have their own baggage dragging them down. Russia, Germany and America still don’t trust each other, even though they must work together.
It is a very good series of book. I still need to read the last one, for I do not know how it all ends.
Okay Cindy.
I am a native Houstonian, and the Saturn V over at NASA has been a familiar sight for as long as I can remember. I feel both fascinated and sad when I see it. Sad because it seems to cry, “Launch me!”. But the poor beast has been lying there, broken in segments and exposed to the elements for at least 30 years.
BTW, have you heard about the Saturn V booster that has been orbiting the Sun in a similar was captured by Earth;
I have wanted to see a Shuttle launch since they started launching them. I had a chance in 1984. I was there at the Cape and a shuttle was on the pad, ready to launch, but they scrubbed it during countdown.
I did see it launch almost life-size on a six story IMAX screen with car-size speakers roaring away. It looked, sounded, and even felt real.
Adrian, I hope kids and teachers are that interested in Mars, and the rest of the Solar System, that they would post here.
Kids do have it easy when it comes to reports. I wish the Internet had been around when I did school reports, including college reports. We actually had to go(get out of the house) to libraries(Buildings with books- sort of like search engines) and look up books (big things made of paper with information and pictures- sort of like web pages).
And we had to type them on these horrible machines called typewriters(looks like a keyboard merged with a printer). There was no such thing as Word. If you messed up and you were lucky, you could correct it with correction tape or whiteout. But don’t use whiteout while the paper is on the typewriter, or the teacher will have a fit. Then you had to line up the paper in the typewriter to correct the error.
I wouldn’t go back for anything. Give me Word and a Printer.
Interesting. They are not very dense (Make sense, since they lie on top of the sand and dust), but they are harder than the parent rock they are in (They don’t weather as quickly). Reminds me of bone, or coral.
When the year 2000 came around, they were showing predictions from the 1950’s on what technologies we will have by the year 2000. Not only was the Internet not even heard of, neither was the personal computer. They did predict that the housewife would be able to order items remotely on her TV set, kind of like homeshopping. This was sort of a vision of the Internet.
I remember staying up to watch the first Apollo Moon launch. It is one of my earliest memories, for I was 3 at the time.
They are made of hematite, but how they formed is still under question. I feel more ‘comfortable’ with a geological process, more than a biological process, but I have yet to see a good geological process.
If they were formed via precipitation, then why don’t they have a banded structure, and why don’t they differ in sizes? They seem to have a size limit. And what is with the ‘stems’? Are they a product of weathering, or something else?
So many questions.
So I am still puzzled that all the spheres are the same size. A biological explanation seems to work better than a geological one- but this is Mars.
Even more puzzling is the even distribution of the spheres throughout the rocks
When we look at the layering in the rocks, the bottom layers were deposited first from the ancient sea (assuming they were deposited in a seabed) So we have ‘blueberries in the older layers.
If we move up the rock layers, the deposits get younger, yet we have sphere in those layers as well. This means that sphere are being evenly deposited (Or formed on the seafloor) in each time period, and the ones on the bottom are older than the ones on top (And if life did create them, then they have not evolved).
Or the spheres are all the same age and they formed after the layers were deposited.
What if we started seeing normal stars going nova around a certain area of the galaxy? Perhaps the casualties of some Interstellar war?
Or what about normal stars going dark? Was it from a war, or did intelligent life build a Dyson Sphere?
I have read through this topic and I want to say a few things.
About finding humanoid life out there. This might be possible, but it is probably unlikely. A similar environment like ours may produce a similar form (Think about the fish in the porpoise. Similar environment, similar form).
I have been studying Geology for a couple of decades now, and I am at a loss for an explanation. Leave to Mars to come up with something new.
The one explanation that I keep pushing away, but it keeps creeping up the back of my mind, is that (let me make sure no one is looking and whisper it to you) is that they have a biological origin. The skeptic in me says that there has to be a Geological explanation, but the things are evenly distributed in the parent rock, they are of a different composition from the parent rock, they are spherical and roughly all the same size, and they are found in a fossilized shoreline environment.
The even distribution of the spheres and being the same size just seem odd for a geologic explanation. There might be one, but I don’t have it. Mars has surprised me more than once. I am sure I will be surprised again.
The fact that they are all around the same size is really the kicker. Tektites would vary in size. So would sphere formed by other geological process. Why are these roughly all the same size? True, in some rocks, like granite, crystals will be of similar size because of the cooling rate and the amount of minerals in the solution, but it is nothing like this.
I just don’t know. I keep coming back to life. You can go to the beach and find seashells of the same species that are similar in size.
The problem I have with the spheres being formed from life, is that they are evenly distributed. Like with tektites, I would expect sphere, formed from life, would be in certain layers, unless they formed after the sediments were deposited. I would love to see a well cut cross-section of the layers.
Could some ancient mars life have tunneled into the layers during the last time the area was flooded?
At this point, I am not ruling out anything. Mars has fooled me before. I’ll wait for more evidence.
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Before the wife and kids came along, I would say, “sign me up.”
I might like to retire there. A oneway ticket would work.
Earthfirst, you have it right.
When it comes to a world’s atmosphere, mass and temperature both play an important roll. As solar temperature goes up, so does the required mass to hold onto an atmosphere go up. As you get farther from the Sun (or parent star) the mass for a world to hold onto an atmosphere goes down. But then we reach a point where the atmosphere starts turning to a solid and size doesn’t matter (Except the larger mass worlds like Uranus and Neptune, who’s atmosphere is kept as a gas because of internal heat- I think this is true. If we could kill the internal heat, would the four gas giants stay gaseous by the Sun’s energy, or would they freeze solid? Jupiter and Saturn would stay gaseous without internal heat, but I am not sure about Uranus and Neptune.)
Mars and Mercury have the same gravity. If they switched places, Mercury could hold onto a mars-like atmosphere, and mars would loose its atmosphere- like your example of Ganymede and Titan.
If Titan was warmed to an Earth-like environment, it would start loosing it atmosphere. The atmosphere would last for probably millions of years. Same is true of our own Moon (Whose gravity is similar to Titan). If we added an Earth-like atmosphere to the Moon, it would last for at least a million years before it all leaked back into space.
Atomoid, that is one of my favorite Viking pictures. (I have thought about going over the old Viking pictures and, with our new information from Spirit and Opportunity, seeing If I can find something overlooked all these years)
I think you are right about the 'white' stuff. THe bedrock around Eagle Crater seems to weather quickly, leaving the dark blueberrys.
