MARS OUTCROP SOURCE OF TINY SPHERES

JPL ^ | sol 13, opportunity, mars | JPL

[Fitzcarraldo]

Pisoliths?

For more images of the outcrop go to http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_p013.html

[longshadow]

ping

[Erik Latranyi]

A Martian that lost his marbles?

[dead]

[RandallFlagg]

That eludium pew-38 is sure plentiful, ain't it?

[martin_fierro]

[EggsAckley]

Nice. Thanks for posting it.

[doodad]

Too cool! I am thinking lithophysae also. But perfectly rounded?

[adam_az]

FINALLY, a source for Unobtanium!

[null and void]

" The conventional wisdom during the early part of the century was that these pisoliths were formed by the action of algae growing over the surface of fine grains. The grains became larger as the algae facilitated chemical precipitation of lime (calcium carbonate) and/or the capture of fine sediments. As the grains were rolled around by moving water, growth would take place on all sides producing a somewhat spherical pisolith."

Means life or water?...

[Paul Atreides]

Nah, they're the zits on the face on Mars.

[JennysCool]

It's GOLD! Gold I tell yuh!! GOLD!!!

[Frank_Discussion]

Pretty neat!

Is there some frickin' reason we can't get a color pic of this from NASA? I want to see the layering (and everything else) in color.

[painter]

That looks like a dry creek bed.

[MissAmericanPie]

No way, too uniform in shape.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Unobtanium hell, find Upsidaisium and cheap space travel becomes a reality!

[doodad]

We used to joke that a rock was leverite. As in leave her right there.

[John H K]

Water, possibly, life, not necessarily.

http://www.grisda.org/origins/23110.htm

"The most dramatic change in thinking about the origin of these spheres took place just a few years later when two investigators, Robert Dunham6 and Carroll Thomas,7 working independently, concluded that the pisoliths were not the result of the work of algae, but were formed inorganically, underground, by the gradual accumulation of their many lime layers (Figure 2) around an original nucleus. As water occasionally percolated down through the normally dry soil of the region it facilitated the replacement of the original lime sediments with layers of denser concentration which form the pisoliths. The common spherical concretions we find in many sedimentary rocks are thought to have formed in a similar way."

[CommandoFrank]

Look closely in the lower right corner...

Do you see it?

An arrowhead and a scraper!

[quantim]

Sorry, once again can't help myself!