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Interesting Structures On Mars
fear writes: "Meta Research has just released a new report on what they call 'Artificial Structures on Mars. Much of it is obvious nonsense ('animal-like shapes,' for example) similar to seeing things in clouds, but some structures look interesting: spots, tubes 1, tubes 2, track, 'vegetation', 'trees', triangles, strange lines, T. Which geological and climatic processes cause the formation of such structures?" Though I see no trees or vegetation, these are still fascinating images of Mars, and Meta Research looks like an interesting, off-beat site to check back to.
It's obfuscation, all right, but not where you think...
Keeping the mystery alive about the 'face' does two things: keeps interest in Mars high, and keeps all the conspiracy theorists from spending their time looking for the real conspiracies.
It's like Area 51 -- The government being all cloak-and-dagger about it keeps every high-powered telescopic lense focused on _it_, rather that the _real_ top-secret anti-gravity alien-technology aircraft flight test center, which is probably somewhere north of Walla Walla, WA.
The enemies of Democracy are
Here's an example of the tubes -- look at the high res version, lower left corner.
One thing to note when we look at stuff that's come back from mars is that the most of the planet has not been viewed with the narrow angle camera at all -- for example, go here, select a region, then look at the clickable map -- the little light blue tracks are the places where the narrow angle views are available.
Came across this while randomly looking at the MSSS gallery -- view the "full size image".
Notice some parts look like the "tubes" that people show from mars photos, but when you see them merging into large dune areas they appear to be just sand dunes?
After examination, I still think it's a load of crap. I've had to make this point on other fora recently; it's getting silly.
Pick up any issue of Fortean Times. Examine its 'simulacra' section. Therein you'll find examples of everyday objects that look like people, things, whatever.
If it's got a beard, it must be Jesus
If it's got a quiff, it must be Elvis
Why is the "okay, so cydonia wasn't really alien. But this is" considered a valid argument for these structures being anything other than natural?
It's my job to look at satellite imagery of the Earth every day. And looking at these Mars pictures, I don't see many structures that I haven't seen in earth geology. The tubes (dunes or ravines), triangles (dunes), and other formations are all things you'd see if you looked in the right places on Earth.
The only features that did seem a little strange were the 'trees' images. While they could be lava flows, lava is usually not that fractal or inhomogeneous. They do look more like natural vegetation, although without scale on the images it's impossible to tell. So I'd dismiss immediately any claims of intelligent artifacts on Mars, but there may be some tantalizing possibilities for primitive forms of life.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
I can't get through to the site as well ("slashdotted", see other posts), but since I see Cydonia in the URL I doubt to see something really new there.
:-)
t m
Cydonia is the region of the famous "mars face" (which doesn't look like a face anymore on pictures with higher resolutions---thanks to Mars Global Surveyor) and there have been plenty of reports about the mars face and the other "artifical" structures around ("city", "pyramid" and so on.)
See here for an example:
http://www.psrw.com/~markc/marshome.html
Here's a mirror in Germany (if that's slashdotted also
http://home.t-online.de/home/zimmert/marshpge.h
Administrative contact: Michael Van Flandern
Technical contact: Kevin Van Flandern
Mouthpiece for: Tom Van Flandern, big-time Cydonia-face, um, "enthusiast".
Have yourself a browse through metaresearch.org and you'll find out all sorts of interesting things. Like, apparently the speed of gravity is "not less than 2 x 10^10 c", and therefore probably infinite.
Feel free to read some stuff on Jerry Pournelle's site about this guy.
Here's another URL that directly addresses the gravity-speed thing Tom Van Flandern loves so dearly.
If he were a bit more dedicated, he'd qualify as a real, quality, Usenet kook. I don't think he quite makes the grade, though.
Spots: ? Looks like they cranked up the contrast like crazy. Tubes 1: Pretty clearly barcan dunes in a valley.
Tubes 2: Ditto
Track: Ditto (ho hum)
Vegetation: Another one where it looks like they cranked up the contrast like crazy - these actually look like sunspots (?). If they're actually from Mars, they are lava flows.
Triangles: No clue - need to see in different light angles
Strange Lines: These are dust devil/tornado tracks - pretty cool, eh?
T: There are a bunch of these near Valles Marineris (which is a 10km+ deep version of these long, blunt-ended vallies. Their formation is a source of major contention. Probably a faulted graben feature.
Remember the "face" on Mars? That one was very effectively debunked with the MGS images. As long as you show individual images, you can pretty much see anything you want, but if you look at them in different light angles, you can start to piece together what the features actually are. However, if they actually showed those (or read the science), they'd have nothing.
Seriously, this is crap!
^]:wq!^M
I thought that some of these pictures were uh... blurry and took some level of interpretation to see but most of these ok looking. But then again, take a look at how many shapes, forms, animals, etc. we've seen and made from the billions of stars in our skies (constellations)! I guess if you take enough pictures of stuff, you'll start to see things in 'em. Especially random hilly terrain pics. Good idea: one of you techheads should program a random terrain generator linked to a webpage and have a voting system to see if a person sees anything in that picture. Would make a great website... name it amisecretmartianface.com or something *snicker*.
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/