MARS OUTCROP SOURCE OF TINY SPHERES

JPL ^ | sol 13, opportunity, mars | JPL

[Merdoug]

On second look, doesn't it seem that the out-crop of rock have the appearence that there are "virgin" spheres WITHIN the rock itself? Aren't some of the features of the outcrop rather "ball" looking? Maybe the spheres are a different kind of rock within the out-crop rock.

[FireTrack]

It must be either "attached" to the out-cropping or sticking to it somehow.

My thinking as well. I bet if you look closely, you'll find a bit of soil underneath.

[Salamander]

Laugh if you will since I'm really too old to be doing stuff like this, but, when he's cutting or grinding I sit and watch the little "meteors" flying to floor.
I try and keep my eyes on a particular one to see where it lands.
Just like real meteors, they look so big while they're hot and falling yet they're just tiny little balls of dust by the time they cool off before reaching the floor.

You learn to understand analogous things in the funniest ways, sometimes.....:)

My yard is full of surprises that date back to before 1789. The county records of the property only go back that far but the house was here before "America" existed.
The nearby stone fort built in 1750s because of the French & Indian war also saw action in the Revolutionary and Civil war.
There's tons of stuff right underfoot, including things the pioneers dropped whilst waiting for their wagons to be repaired.
( and that's not even counting the Indian stuff )
Every hard rain brings some new discovery.
Last fall I was walking towards my front gate and when I looked down, a clod of dirt seemed to be grinning up at me.
The bottom half of a pair of circa 1930s dentures had been exposed by the downpour.

( I resisted the urge to pick them up...let the next explorer have that privilege )...LOL!

The most important thing I've learned while living here is that using a metal detector on an old blacksmith's property is exhausting......;)

[Bernard Marx]

I'm going to take a crack at posting an image -- don't hit me if it doesn't work!

I don't want to give up on my tuff theory and I've been poking around to find other ways spheres can form. I knew I'd seen something like the Mars spheres before, and, voila, accretionary lapilli! They are mud balls which result from a wet nucleus falling through a volcanic ash cloud. They may roll on loose ash and grow like a snowball. If that's what the Barsooms are there's no doubt about the presence of water during their formation.

Here's an image of accretionary lapilli near the Kilauea caldera that formed during an eruption in the 1800s:

Here's another example that shows accretionary lapilli surrounded by wind-deposited ash in the Ka`u Desert, Kilauea Volcano. This layer is one of several found at this location, about 10 km from Kilauea's summit caldera:

[FireTrack]

Very impressive! This certainly offers considerable creditability to your theory of how the spheres were formed. I especially like the snowball growing while rolling down hill analogy.

The things that present questions in my mind are still the great uniformity of the spheres (though some additional mechanism may be at work here to sort them), the even dispersal, and ability to cling to precarious perches.

[Bernard Marx]

The things that present questions in my mind are still the great uniformity of the spheres (though some additional mechanism may be at work here to sort them), the even dispersal, and ability to cling to precarious perches.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "uniformity." Do you mean size, shape or distribution? If you look closely at the image at the top of this thread you'll note quite a bit of size variation. If you look at the images in posts #158 and 159, there are a lot of different shapes, all generally spherical but with lots of variations. Clarification?

[doodad]

Hitherto fore, it shall be understood that there is no discourse in the actual formation of these spheres as they originated in the "doodadasphere

If I offended you in some way it certainly wasn't intended, friend. I have no idea what they are, just curious.

[doodad]

I know I would.

[quantim]

Not a chance! Possession is 90% of the law! Scientific nomenclature credits the discoverer! We may have stumbled on a "quantum" Oort cloud.

T.

[quantim]

The crater is electrical, not impact.

And I am from Mars.  BTW, they are crop circles. 

[doodad]

Well I guess my 10% is just the doo....:-)

[Fitzcarraldo]

Good theory! However, the Mars spheres have a different
color spectrum than the parent rock. Look at Sol 14's pancam series of the split rock (Snout?) and you'll see that at some filter wavelengths the spheres are the same shade as the parent rock and with other filters they are much darker!

[FireTrack]

"If you look at the images in posts #158 and 159, there are a lot of different shapes, all generally spherical but with lots of variations. Clarification?"

I have to clarify what I think I'm seeing in my own mind first... LOL This is much like the first images we saw from Spirit when the air bags retracted and we saw what looked like "mud". There can't be mud on Mars right?

Similarly, I'm seeing something here that can't be. Rocks behaving like biologics. They somehow seem to have the ability to attach themselves to precarious perches an appear to be growing from the soil collected in the porous rock. They are spread out as if competing for nutrients.

The uniformity I see is in what I'm going to call the "Mature" Barsooms. They are all relatively the same size (maybe 25% - 33% differences), almost perfectly round with little deformity. I see some juvenile Barsooms as well with little deformity but the majority are mature.

I also see the ones you describe as generally spherical but with lots of variations. These appear to be whithering, broken or deteriorating and are all smaller (declining in size) than the mature Barsooms. </P The one oblong Barsoom that I've seen was partially ran over by Opportunity. To be honest, I rather wait a few days and let NASA straighten all this weirdness out and make everything right! ;-) Come to think of it though, they never did give us a good answer on the Mars mud nor did they even take micro images of it did they?

[FireTrack]

Latest panoramic images from opportunity show parts of the plain outside of the crater that appears to have large number of Barsooms as well.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Latest panoramic images from opportunity show parts of the plain outside of the crater that appears to have large number of Barsooms as well.

I predict they will call hundreds if not thousands of miles surrounding the landing site the "Plains of Barsoom". These nodules are everywhere. There are in the bed rock and the surface we see is a result of erosion of the surface layers of the bedrock. Notice how easily the parent rock erodes. As it erodes and blows away, the nodules remaim behind, accumulating in surface density. The crater floor has a lower areal density of them because it's filled with sand, but a few of the nodules and fragments of the parent rock have blown in. Obviously, the nodules are the cause of the hematite signal.

[Bernard Marx]

Look at Sol 14's pancam series of the split rock (Snout?)

Can you point me to that? I've been all over the NASA site this a.m. and can't seem to locate it.