Strongest evidence yet of "WET MARS" . . . input please!

NASA - JPL ^ | 02-22-2004 | NASA/JPL

[Phil V.]

Microscopic Imager Non-linearized Full frame EDR acquired on Sol 28 of Opportunity's mission to Meridiani Planum at approximately at approximately 12:26:38 Mars local solar time, Microscopic Imager dust cover commanded to be OPEN. NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS

VIEW FULL IMAGE

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"stereo" strip . . .

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Just below center and just to the left of center notice what appears to be a fractured "spherule". Notice the dark center. This is STRONGLY suggestive of growth by accretion - an increase by natural growth or by gradual external addition . . . a process FREQUENTLY associated with a water environment. This is MY interpretation. But the picture is NASA/JPL . . . it is worth a thousand words. Feel free to contribute.

[airborne]

COOFFEE??????
I'm going back to bed.

[Phil V.]

thin??? How thin is "thin"? This "bead" is only a couple mm in diameter. I see several sections within that 2-4 mm

[Searching4Justice]

I think I heard that the temperature on Mars was around 60 below zero ...if this is true then it would be hard to imagine any form of water not being frozen (At 20 or 30 below a cup of coffee thrown into the air freezes before it hits the ground)...but I think it is very windy up there so any type of object that was subject to rolling (as river rock tumbles it gets rounded), and being blown in the wind might look like that after a few billion years.

[Dog]

Thank you Phil....every new photo is mind blowing.

Amazing !

[Fitzcarraldo]

That could be a small rock superimposed in front of the spherule - we need some 3-D talent here!

[Dog]

Ladies new Mars photos!

[Dog]

It wouldn't have been that cold when Mars had water.

[Aracelis]

"Thin" as in a microscopic slice...to be mounted on a glass microscope slide and observed at high magnification. The simple explanation is that mineralogists and petrologists can identify certain minerals by observing them at high power magnification with special lighting. Properties such as birefringence can be observed, along with crystal forms, etc., all of which are unique to a specific mineral because of its atomic lattice structure.

Check this link for a diagram of a petrographic microscope and some thin-sections of several minerals.

[LibWhacker]

I've been worried somebody Photoshopped it since it's on a non-NASA website . . . So I've been pouring through the originals and here it is (blow it up to max magnification and look toward the far righthand side, bottom half of the photo):

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/016/1P129617173EFF0322P2260L7M1.JPG

You may be correct about a superimposed rock or something. Or perhaps it's a photographic anomoly of some kind. But there are two counter arguments I can think of right off the bat: First, the shadow indicates the "berry" is not in contact with the ground, but elevated . . . Second, we have a second example of "stemming," if I can call it that, in Phil's photo at the beginning of this thread. But I'm sure there are counter-counter arguments to that, lol! Comments . . . coments, anyone?

[Searching4Justice]

Here is a little food for thought......all these bodies floating in space and much like the earth are volcanic....thinking about the enormous weight that is pressing on the core of the body, its no wonder that it is like a perpetual motion machine always cranking out energy.... why wouldnt it be possible to recreate this same scenario at the base of every building which would create energy (by itw own weight) which could be used to provide electrical power (drive a turbine ?) for that building based on this same principle ???

[Aracelis]

Here's a generic example of calcite under thin-section:

[Dallas59]

Made this in PS from pics on NASA website.

[Searching4Justice]

Not being any kind of astronomer, I would assume the reason why it's cold on Mars is the distance from the sun and I can't imagine any time recently (within the last 5 billion years or so) that it was any closer so how could it have been warmer ? just a thought

[squarebarb]

A cup of coffee thrown into the air at 20 or 30 below F. does not freeze before it hits the ground. I lived in the subarctic when temperatures were regularly at 30 and 40 below. Once 60 below.

Strange things happen at those temperatures but not 'freezing before it hits the ground'.

[Searching4Justice]

I remember last month in North Dakota a bunch of reporters were throwing their coffee into the air on camera and it was freezing and I think they said the temperature was 20-30 below...maybe dry air where you were had something to do with in not freezing at these temps.

[Dallas59]

Sol 26

[Phil V.]

To what scale does the "rhomboid" shape ov calcite hold beyond crystaline? Will calcite base rocks fracture in a way so as to preserve the "rhomboid " shape?

[Dog]

Mars more than likely was like an early Earth....warm.....oceans....than something happened to cause its atmosphere to evaporate. When the atmosphere disappeared it allow the planet to cool.

[Dog]

Are they pebbles?

[NordP]

I'm glad you all are so knowledgable...to me, this pic looks like two Dachshund profiles - one without an eye.

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