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Rover Cracks Mystery Of Mars Spheres

Posted by timothy on from the blueberries-my-foot dept.

Ant writes "CNN has a story about scientists having learned the composition of the mysterious sphere-shaped objects scattered across the crater floor at Meridiani Planum, the landing site of the Opportunity Mars rover."

3 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. link - sorry by Richard+Allen · · Score: 3, Informative

    nasa

  2. Re:Why does it have to be water? by DoraLives · · Score: 4, Informative

    Start here if you'd like. Short and sweet, and comes with a nice pretty picture. Dig for more if you'd like, it's out there and it's not even hiding. Them little boogers isn't volcanic. And oh yeah, NASA is NOT "asserting that because they are spheres they must have formed in water." Not at all. Not sure where you got that from, but you might as well go ahead and put it back, 'cause it's wrong.

    --
    Is it fascism yet?
  3. Re:Why does it have to be water? by cmjensen · · Score: 4, Informative
    Any geologist know why they could not be volcanic and still be spherical?
    I'm not a geologist, but I've read the press release that explained this.

    The spheres appear uniformly through the strata laid down. Volcanic or meteor sources would be more likely to appear in layers of spheres -- one layer of spheres per erruption or meteor impact.

    Secondly, in this picture here, you can see that some of the spheres have merged as they met. If it was volcanic, they would have melted together (and flowed together) rather than merely intersecting. To a geologist, the shape of the merged spheres has "molecular compound formed on-site" written all over it.