Undisclosed Finding by Mars Rover Fuels Intrigue

[Tribrid Vampire]

Undisclosed Finding by Mars Rover Fuels Intrigue

The Mars rover Curiosity has found something

[Blue Frost]

Little Microbe Martians
I would bet there was some kind of life there at one time even if microbial

[Gary Oak]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/geekquin ... 13071.html

I doubt that ET came from Mercury but maybe there is ssome microbial life forms on Mercury

[Blue Frost]

I thought years ago they found ice there, but maybe they are just making it official now.

[Gary Oak]

http://bluefrost.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=301

These first ever night time photos from the Mars rover Curiousity are something to see

[Blue Frost]

Wrong link Gary

[Gary Oak]

http://exopolitics.org/is-that-a-lizard ... sa-silent/

It may just be a freak rock formation ...but....

[Blue Frost]

I like how they enhance the rock in the video adding color, and more shading.

[Gary Oak]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 54319.html

This is a bit interesting

[Blue Frost]

I guess Olympus Mons, and the shield volcano around it has family
I wonder if there is more not seen like our calderas.

[Gary Oak]

What is the true explanation of this light ?

Is it really just a 'shiny rock'? Nasa claims to have solved mystery of the light on Mars

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z2yiKCcs6S
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... -Mars.html

[Blue Frost]

I like the rabbit, and of course thats where the big holes come from

[video][/video]

[Gary Oak]

Take a look at the slide show. That spiderish looking thing does appear to me to very possibly be a creature. That one circular formation doesn't look very natural . I do expect that on a place as big as Mars there will be rock formations that will coincidentally look like things people recognise.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/644 ... n-illusion

[Blue Frost]

People will always see something familiar, I see faces in the tile on my bathroom floor

[Gary Oak]

By the looks of the photos and graphs it may be difficult to get a rover in there. Perhaps NASA can invent a digging climbing robot to search for life there. It does look promising. I can see how there could be a subterranean ecosystem on Mars.

Scientists have spotted a strange 'funnel' on Mars
And it could host the key ingredients for life.

Scientists have analysed a strange depression on the surface Mars, and say it could be the perfect place to search for signs of life, because it could contain three key ingredients for life: water, heat, and nutrients.

The funnel-shaped structure looks like the ancient 'ice cauldrons' we have on Earth, that formed when volcanos erupted under the ice sheets of Iceland and Greenland. If the same process occurred on Mars, it could have left behind a warm, nutrient-rich environment.


"We were drawn to this site because it looked like it could host some of the key ingredients for habitability - water, heat and nutrients," said lead researcher Joseph Levy, from the University of Texas.

The funnel is located inside a crater on the edge of the Hellas Planitia region in the southern hemisphere of Mars.

The Hellas Planitia basin is actually just one big crater itself - the largest visible impact crater ever found in the Solar System, in fact - but it’s pocked with many smaller craters, which suggests that it’s a very old formation on the Red Planet.

The funnel was first detected by Levy back in 2009, because of strange crack-like features photographed by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

He then found a similar structure in the Galaxias Fossae region of Mars, located in another giant basin called the Utopia Planitia.

"These landforms caught our eye because they’re weird looking," says Levy. "They’re concentrically fractured so they look like a bulls-eye. That can be a very diagnostic pattern you see in Earth materials."


It wasn’t until this year that Levy had the data to actually analyse the funnels properly, and thanks to new stereoscopic photographs - which allow researchers to extract three-dimensional information from two-dimensional image - his team could map out what they would look like below the surface.

Turns out, they're both shaped like funnels:

"That surprised us, and led to a lot of thinking about whether it meant there was melting concentrated in the centre that removed ice and allowed stuff to pour in from the sides," says Levy.

"Or if you had an impact crater, did you start with a much smaller crater in the past, and by sublimating away ice, you’ve expanded the apparent size of the crater."

Next, the researchers run a number of formation scenarios for the two funnels, and say the most likely result is that they formed in different ways to arrive at the same funnel shape.

They estimate that roughly 2.4 km3 and 0.2 km3 of material was removed to form the Hellas Planitia and Galaxias depressions, respectively - and this appears to have been predominantly water ice.

While the Galaxias funnel appears to have formed due to an impact on the surface of Mars, the Hellas Planitia one shows signs of volcanic activity.

The team found hints that rising temperatures from an ancient eruption could have melted or pushed away large slabs of ice to form the funnel - much like what occurs on Earth when ice sheets and volcanoes mix:

The team estimates that a whopping 105 m3 of magma would have been required to melt or shift so much ice, but it could have left behind so habitable conditions in the process, with ice melted to provide water, and the magma leaving behind nutrients and warmth.

"The possibility of liquid water formation during or subsequent to volcanism or an impact could generate locally enhanced habitable conditions, making these features tantalising geological and astrobiological exploration targets," they conclude in their report.

The hope now is that when NASA sends a rover to the Red Planet in 2020 to search for signs of life, this could be one of the places it investigates.

"These features do really resemble ice cauldrons known from Earth, and just from that perspective they should be of great interest," volcanologist Gro Pedersen from the University of Iceland, who was not involved in the study, said in a press release.

"Both because their existence may provide information on the properties of subsurface material - the potential existence of ice - and because of the potential for revealing ice-volcano interactions."

The study has been published in Icarus.

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists- ... h-for-life

[Blue Frost]

Cool stuff, I wonder what the mack up of the rock is,and the mineral composition is, that would tell a lot of the ability to hold life .

[Gary Oak]

I believe that earth has a number of life forms that could survive on Mars.

[Blue Frost]

That's why they take care not to contaminate it when sending probes there.
some of the extremophiles we have likely could live in many places on Mars.

[Gary Oak]

By the looks of the photos it does seem to be a stretch that they are ventilation shafts from an underground city but they could be something very interesting though. Signs of some kind of life larger than microbes perhaps ? That crator hole looks like it could be some kind of welt on the Martian surface.

Alien hunter: NASA photo shows ventilation roof of underground Martian city

Scientists say honeycomb formations surrounding a strange-looking Martian crater recently photographed by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are eroded sand dunes, but UFO hunters know better.

Those are no dunes — they're the superstructure of a ventilation roof for an underground city inhabited by tiny aliens, theorizes Scott C. Waring, author of a blog called "UFO Sightings Daily."

They would have to be on the petite side as the crater — which NASA describes as a heavily eroded mesa in Noctis Labyrinthyuson, a region in the western end of Valles Marineris — is less than a half kilometer in width.

There is a cross or, as some on the Internet are suggesting, a Christian cross in this image. Here's the details from NASA: Mastcam: Right (MAST_RIGHT) onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 508 (2014-01-10 04:33:13 UTC).© NASA There is a cross or, as some on the Internet are suggesting, a Christian cross in this image. Here's the details from NASA: Mastcam: Right (MAST_RIGHT) onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on…
Waring compares the striated valleys of the labyrinthine formation to the filter-like maw of a baleen whale.

"You see that below the baleen structures is nothing but blackness, so I assume that this a ventilation roof of an underground city," he writes. "With an environment as harsh and unforgiving as Mars, you want to be underground where the temperature is much more tolerable day in and day out."

It's worth noting that Waring has previously posted about NASA images purportedly showing a squirrel, ground hog and monkey hanging out on the unforgiving surface of the Red Planet.

NASA's boring — and far more plausible — explanation for the maze-like structure: "The layered mesa is probably comprised of sedimentary deposits that are being exhumed as it erodes."

Sand and boulders, folks. Baleen it or not.

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/ali ... ailsignout

[Blue Frost]

People will always find something in nothing, the so called art of today proves that.