Posted on 06/04/2022 7:43:38 AM PDT by BenLurkin
NASA's Curiosity rover has a knack for snapping eye-opening pictures of the Gale Crater on Mars. There was the (actually very small) "doorway" recently and then a facelike cliff last year. The latest "wow, look at that" image to come to my attention shows two delicate, gravity-defying formations reaching upward from the dusty Martian surface.
The SETI Institute -- a research organization focused on searching for life in the universe -- highlighted the image in a tweet last week, calling it a "cool rock."
SETI offered a possible explanation for the fantastical shapes: "The spikes are most likely the cemented fillings of ancient fractures in a sedimentary rock. The rest of the rock was made of softer material and was eroded away."
The image came from Curiosity's mast-mounted camera (Mastcam) on May 15. It can be hard to judge the scale of rocks and other small landscape features, but a wider view suggests the formations are very dainty. The spikes are reminiscent of a lovely flower or coral-shaped concretion (leftover from erosion of sedimentary rock) the rover spotted earlier this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnet.com ...
That Martian’s antennae weren’t completely covered by the rockfall.
Fossilized Martian cobra.
Hmmm...are we actually Martians who got away to Earth before Mars died????????
Nice!
grave markers...
Petrified Cobras.
Just like here on earth - all those formations called “fossils” and the fantastical beasts derived from them are just “cemented fillings of ancient fractures in a sedimentary rock”...
I donāt suppose thereās any lightning on Mars.
Look like termite castles.
Covid spikes?
Beat me to it!
Wow. Just wow. I wonder how they formed.
Spikes? Did Fauci have a lab out there?
Igneous intrusion into sedimentary rock.
CC
it reminds me of sand fusing together when hit by lightning
they do it in a 5gal bucket wi wire and a kite...
could this be a natural strike and the sand around it simply blew away over time leaving the strike behind?
Looks like over the eons red Martian dust covered some Martian's old
television. He had been using aluminum foil on the rabbit ears to try to
improve the reception of 'My Favorite Martian' episodes from Earth.
It's a long way from Earth to Mars. I wonder if the foil helped the reception any.
That's just my guess. I could be wrong.
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