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Weird Geological Features Spied On Mars
astroengine writes "The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera carried by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted a strange geological feature that, for now, defies an obvious explanation. Found at the southern edge of Acidalia Planitia, small pits with raised edges appear to hug a long ridge. So far, mission scientists have ruled out impact craters and wind as formation processes, but have pegged the most likely cause to be glacial in nature."
"to have been deliberately buried."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Well, I'd like for it to be burrows or casings...
A fault line, with small volcanoes following along it?
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I'm not saying it's aliens, but that "ridge" was clearly a space craft docking terminal used by ancient aliens and their flying saucers.
Given that the blurb on the HiRISE page say "but for now this is a mystery," I'm not seeing any evidence of scientists being scared of saying they don't know. In fact, making a high profile general public article highlighting stuff you don't understand seems like the exact opposite of the scientists being scared to point out what you don't know.
Those are acne scars from when Mars was much younger, you insensitive clods!
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
They're a pain to get rid of. Probably what led to the extinction of the Martians.
This is clearly a classic Giorgio Tsoukalos formation.
It's a sandworm, there is probably lots of OIL on Mars and they will need to fight sandworms soon.
Thunderbolts (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050608craters.htm), yet again.
Yea, I mean, seriously 4.4 billion years old? It could just as easily be 4.5 or 4.3 billion years old.
Martian kimchi!
Putting the "anal" back into "analyst"...
Instead of "I don't know" they can just throw massive error bars on the figure. For example, the earth may be 4.5 billion years old +- 20 billion years. (Thats right, it may not be created until the future...)
Have gnu, will travel.
The earth is 4,500,000,027 years old.
They told my it was 4.5 billion years old when I took high school geology back in 1986.
Have gnu, will travel.
Looks like the toxic refinery to me.
Maybe. Ice could melt, even evaporate due to the low vapour pressure and leave a void behind. Viola, sinkhole without groundwater.
All rites reversed 2010
Just because it came from Mars doesn't mean it's automatically weird.
Silly humans.
I recall that when Clarke was still alive he noted several geological features which were of personal interest to him, one of which was a "sandworm" type of feature very much like this one.
It's easier to find Clarke's off-the-cuff remark that some features look like banyan trees, but I know he wrote another piece about features other than those. Hive mind, can you please provide the citation that I cannot?
Aren't they just roads?
It's just a response to one of the rovers drawing a giant penis. Martians are responding saying theirs is bigger.
Looks like the kind of ice and snow that remains on the shadow side of a mountain or ridge. The ice slowly melts, so the water gradually creates a depression on one side and deposits mud at the bottom.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
They look more like solifluctations, or possibly something related to palsas or pingos.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Zoom in more at the end of the trail and you'll see remains of a thumper.
Aint this the reason we have a Wall-e on the red planet in the first place?
If you figure each put was made by a chunk of ice, which laid on the surface to trap blown debris, then subliminated away, you'd get something like that. The one to the right with ones inside of on pit would have been made by a ice boulder fracturing apart then its parts sublimating away.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
looks like to me.
"Yea, I mean, seriously 4.4 billion years old? It could just as easily be 4.5 or 4.3 billion years old."
Precise Dating is everything.
Some tourists in the Chicago Museum of Natural History are marveling at the dinosaur bones. One of them asks the guard, "Can you tell me how old the dinosaur bones are?"
The guard replies, "They are 70 million, four years, and six months old."
"That's an awfully exact number," says the tourist. "How do you know their age so precisely?"
The guard answers, "Well, the dinosaur bones were 70 million years old when I started working here, and that was four and a half years ago."
There's a strange thing! I don't understand it. You don't understand it. Top Men don't fully understand it, or are divided on some fine point.
ERGO, [non sequiter crackpot hypothesis unsuggested by the data]! See? Finally, I have been proven right.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
He knows everything about Mars. And if he doesn't know, he'll make it up!
http://www.enterprisemission.com/
hahahah... mod parent up!!!!!
'When the Going gets Weird, the Weird turn Pro.' - Hunter S. Thompson
Agreed the recent trend is to pay a specific public representative to tell us what they are not ;p
However, We don't know, or "Don't think its that" is a perfectly valid answer =)
Circular edges are precipitate.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Is it really that hard to put a scale on images? It kind of helps and typically makes the science more interesting.
There are quite similar to the depressions in Moreux Crater (image PSP_010695_2225 ; 42 degrees N / 44.6 degrees E). They might be Kettle Holes, formed when a retreating ice sheet or glacial flood leaves behind huge chunks of debris rich ice that later melts (or sublimates) creating distinctive hollows in glacial sediment.
Moreux Crater Kettle Holes
Actually it's the mouth and those are the teeth. Mars is just a big orange PacMan.
Is it dead or did it just decide to hibernate until quarters were invented and sent into space? More Research Needed (tm).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Also: See the covers of the Hitchhiker's Guide books for examples of similar features.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ulla!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Go on google maps and take a gander pretty much anywhere in the northern portions of Siberia. It looks an awful lot like this.
Not palsas. Palsas are formed on bogs, as peat is necessary for summertime insulation. Because all vegetation (if there ever was any)—and with that all the peat—has long since left Mars, any former palsas shouldn't really leave that visible marks.
Palsa formation usually requires not just a peat bog, but also snow cover. Ice lenses are formed underneath the peat layer on spots where winter freezing occurs unusually rapidly e.g. due to a thin spot in snow cover. (Palsas have been deliberately created by plowing snow off from certain spots on a bog in wintertime.) Palsas are also relatively short-term formations; they will eventually melt when they grow so much that their sheer size will cause the isolating peat layer to crack, thus withdrawing the insulation that prevents ice lenses from melting during summertime.
Solifluctations are a more plausible explanation, and perhaps also collapsed pingos. AFAIK pingos have a much longer lifetime than palsas, and when they collapse they also leave around much more visible evidence of their former existence.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus