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Mystery Spheres on Mars Finally Identified
Space.com ^ | 17 March 2004 | Leonard David

Posted on 03/17/2004 6:22:21 PM PST by ElkGroveDan

Scientists have learned the composition of the mysterious sphere-shaped objects scattered across the crater floor at Meridiani Planum, the landing site of the Opportunity Mars rover.

By using a Mössbauer Spectrometer mounted on Opportunity's robot arm, a patch of the tiny spherules -- also called "blueberries," although they aren't blue -- received close examination and have now been identified as hematite.

The spectrometer is designed to study minerals that contain iron, which are common on the Martian surface. Also used to pin down the makeup of the spherules was the rover's Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer, a science instrument that can recognize minerals formed in water.

Meridiani: shallow lake?

This new evidence further supports the hypothesis that the hematite mineral was likely formed in a past standing body of water. The Meridiani area, it is thought, was once a shallow lake.

Once Opportunity wheels itself out of its current shallow crater site, scientists expect the hematite-rich spherules to litter the landscape at Meridiani Planum.

Philip Christensen, a Mars Exploration Rover scientist from Arizona State University in Tempe, announced the finding yesterday at the 35th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference being held in Houston, Texas.

Formation via precipitation

"This finding further supports the hypothesis that these interesting 'Mars balls' are actually sedimentary concretions, rather than any of the other working hypotheses," said James Garvin, Lead Scientist for Mars Exploration and the Moon at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

There have been a variety of contending theories for what may have caused the unusual mineralogy at Meridiani, including volcanic causes.

Garvin told SPACE.com that this latest finding strongly supports the view that the rocks in the outcrop at Meridiani have been modified by water -- a determination made already through other research at the site.

"Hematite as a major compositional phase in the spherules supports their formation via precipitation, rather than as impact-related fallout," Garvin said.

"So, the story is getting better... and multiple lines of independent evidence support water-related chemical 'processing' of the rocks," Garvin added. "Now all we have to do is figure out what made the rocks in the first place and how long the water may have been involved in the 'soakings'. What a fun time!"


TOPICS: Front Page News; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: mars
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To: general_re
ME . . .Iron loving organism can be a source . . .

YOU . . . . . . you're presupposing the mechanism whereby liquid water would have existed.


I am presupposing nothing. The Opportunity rover HAS ESTABLISHED that there was a period of unknown duration, beginning or ending when the vicinity under examination was "awash in water".

Further, I am making no assertion that biological presence was in fact the vehicle for assembling the spherules. My operative verbiage was, "can be". I simply observed that hot springs were not required, though on an intuitive level, it is reasonable that as Mars was forming from material that could have been similar to water-rich comets assembling, compressing, heating and ejecting water, the period of time required for all of the interior water to be "wrung out" of Mars' primordial matter was probably lengthy and punctuated by many eruptions of geysers of huge magnitude.

And, yes, we need more evidence

41 posted on 03/17/2004 9:56:05 PM PST by Phil V.
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To: Dog Gone; TexasCowboy
Hmmm, wonder what the day rate is for drilling on Mars?
42 posted on 03/17/2004 10:02:32 PM PST by razorback-bert
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Just simply amazing stuff.
43 posted on 03/17/2004 10:04:31 PM PST by GretchenEE (Osama, you're going down.)
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To: Phil V.
My operative verbiage was, "can be". I simply observed that hot springs were not required....

I think we're talking past one another. If we dismiss the possibility of geothermal energy being responsible for liquid water, we're implicitly embracing the only other possibility, a warm Mars via energy from the sun. At this point, there's no evidence of the sort we should expect to find if that were the case, so I don't think we can dismiss the idea that geothermal energy caused the surface to be warm enough for liquid water to exist just yet. We both agree, I think, that water was there at one point or another. But my only point is that if you have geothermal energy and water in an iron-rich environment, you don't need organisms to form hematite nodes - we know very well that they can form in a perfectly natural manner in such environments, without any organisms present.

Of course, as you point out, you don't need hot springs either - they can be facilitated by biological organisms. This is what I mean in saying that, by themselves, the existence of hematite really isn't conclusive either way - they could have been formed by biological organisms, or maybe not. We just don't know yet. But, as I also said in my first post, what we do know is that here on earth, there are very primitive organisms that live in and around geothermal springs, and so the mere presence of geothermal springs suggests an environment that could be inhabited by primitive life forms. It doesn't constitute especially strong direct evidence for life, I think, because life isn't required in order to form hematite nodes, but either way you choose to interpret it, it's suggestive of life - if you interpret it as the product of organisms, it's obviously evidence of life, but even if you interpret it as a natural occurrence, it still suggests the existence of an environment where we know that life was at least possible.

44 posted on 03/17/2004 10:13:01 PM PST by general_re (The doors to Heaven and Hell are adjacent and identical... - Nikos Kazantzakis)
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To: ElkGroveDan
That would be one of the hortas...
45 posted on 03/17/2004 11:14:56 PM PST by JasonC
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To: general_re
that it's at least possible that we're looking at the remains of an ancient Martian hot spring, where the crust was thin enough that the surface was warm enough for liquid water to exist, in much the same way that there are pools of liquid water in Antarctica.

Any object that has hit Mars surface in the past must have impacted with such force that it could have created a crater which was temporarily filled with water (as the ice on the object (meteor) melted and before it was able to cool it could have been absorbed into the dry Mars soil.... so there may be large reservoirs of water below the surface in just these spots that now have craters.

46 posted on 03/18/2004 12:26:10 AM PST by Searching4Justice
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To: Robert_Paulson2
A high salt (NaCl) content can depress water's freezing point by as much as 23 °C. Thus, in addition to the known water vapor in the Martian atmosphere, and the water ice at the poles, there could be water ice and liquid brine just below the Martian surface, as well as deeper aquifers.
47 posted on 03/18/2004 4:03:58 AM PST by jpthomas
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To: Robert_Paulson2
"when was the last time Mars saw 32 degrees?"

Probably yesterday. Daytime highs on the red planet average
in the low-mid 40's. Just doesn't stay there very long, and
gets much, much colder at night.
48 posted on 03/18/2004 6:06:20 AM PST by green iguana (“There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.” – William James)
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To: N. Theknow
Mars has boobs?

Those would be made of Alabaster.

49 posted on 03/18/2004 6:17:46 AM PST by Professional Engineer (3/11/04 saw the launching of the Moorish reconquest of Spain.)
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To: Rebel_Ace
Ice sublimes even on earth at below freezing. We can see this easily in Fairbanks where water vapor from snow redeposits inside of smowbanks to form ice crystals in non-snow shapes such as needles, plates, and cups, and the thickness of the old subsurface snow blanket decreases all winter while fresh snow deposits on top.
50 posted on 03/18/2004 11:03:05 AM PST by RightWhale (Theorems link concepts; proofs establish links)
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To: ASA Vet
Hubble telescoped.
51 posted on 03/18/2004 1:01:08 PM PST by Don Joe (We've traded the Rule of Law for the Law of Rule.)
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To: general_re
What are Manganese Nodules ?

http://www24.brinkster.com/manganesenodule/

Introduction:

Manganese Nodules are small, dark, potato-shaped little balls where metals and other minerals have accumulated around a core over a few million years. The core can be a prehistoric shark tooth, a piece of prehistoric whale bone, a meteorite fragment or similar. They contain a relatively high percentage of useful metals, i.e. Nickel, Copper, Cobalt, Manganese and Iron, though the tailings (residues) are approximately 75% of the dry mass. They are mostly found in water depths of 4000-6000 metres in large fields often distant by a few thousend km from the closest continent shores.

There are so many of these nodules on the bottom of the ocean, that the metal reserves associated exceed for many metals the amount of known deposits on land. The difficulty to use them today is mainly of technical nature. Though it is not very difficult to pick them up in little amounts, e.g. with a grab sampler or with a dredge, it is very difficult to mine them in such quantities that they can be processed and the valuable metals extracted and still be competitive with land won metals.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography Ferromanganese Nodule Analysis File..


52 posted on 03/18/2004 9:20:03 PM PST by XBob
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To: general_re
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule

Manganese nodule
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Polymetallic nodules, also called manganese nodules, are rock concretions on the sea bottom formed of concentric layers of iron and manganese hydroxides around a core. The core may be microscopically small and is sometimes completely transformed into manganese minerals by crystallization. When visible to the naked eye, it can be a small test (shell) of a microfossil (radiolarian or foraminifer), a phosphatized shark tooth, basalt debris or even fragments of earlier nodules.

Nodules vary in size from tiny particles visible only under a microscope to large pellets more than 20 centimeters across. However, most nodules are between 5 and 10 cm in diameter, about the size of potatoes. Their surface is generally smooth, sometimes rough, mammilated (knobby) or otherwise irregular. The bottom, buried in sediment, is generally rougher than the top.

Nodule growth is one of the slowest of all geological phenomena – in the order of a centimeter over several million years. Several processes are involved in the formation of nodules, including the precipitation of metals from seawater (hydrogenous), the remobilization of manganese in the water column (diagenetic), the derivation of metals from hot springs associated with volcanic activity (hydrothermal), the decomposition of basaltic debris by seawater (halmyrolitic) and the precipitation of metal hydroxides through the activity of microorganisms (biogenic). Several of these processes may operate concurrently or they may follow one another during the formation of a nodule.

Nodules lie on the seabed sediment, often partly or completely buried. They vary greatly in abundance, in some cases touching one another and covering more than 70 per cent of the bottom. The total amount of polymetallic nodules on the sea floor was estimated at 500 billion tons by A.A. Archer in 1981. They can occur at any depth, even in lakes, but the highest concentrations have been found on vast abyssal plains in the deep ocean between 4,000 and 6,000 meters.

The chemical composition of nodules varies according to the kind of manganese minerals and the size and characteristics of the core. Those of greatest economic interest contain manganese (27-30 %), nickel (1.25-1.5 %), copper (1-1.4 %) and cobalt (0.2-0.25 %). Other constituents include iron (6 %), silicon (5%) and aluminum (3%), with lesser amounts of calcium, sodium, magnesium, potassium, titanium and barium, along with hydrogen and oxygen.

Polymetallic nodules were discovered in 1868 in the Kara Sea, in the Arctic Ocean off Siberia. During the scientific expeditions of the H.M.S. Challenger (1872-76), they were found to occur in most oceans of the world. Nodules of economic interest have been found in three areas: the north central Pacific Ocean, the Peru Basin in the southeast Pacific, and the center of the north Indian Ocean. The most promising of these deposits in terms of nodule abundance and metal concentration occur in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone of the eastern equatorial Pacific between Hawaii and Central America.

Interest in the potential exploitation of polymetallic nodules generated a great deal of activity among prospective mining consortia in the 1960s and 1970s. Almost half a billion dollars was invested in identifying potential deposits and in research and development of technology for mining and processing nodules. These initial undertakings were carried out primarily by four multinational consortia composed of companies from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Japan and two groups of private companies and agencies from France and Japan. There were also three publicly sponsored entities from the Soviet Union, India and China.

The promise of nodule exploitation was one of the main factors that led developing nations to propose that the deep seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction should be treated as a “common heritage of mankind”, with proceeds to be shared between those who developed this resource and the rest of the international community. This initiative eventually resulted in the adoption (1982) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the establishment (1994) of the International Seabed Authority, with responsibility for controlling all deep-sea mining in international areas. The first legislative achievement of this intergovernmental organization was the adoption (2000) of regulations for prospecting and exploration for polymetallic nodules, with special provisions to protect the marine environment from any adverse effects. The Authority followed this up (2001-02) by signing 15-year contracts with seven private and public entities, giving them exclusive rights to explore for nodules in specified tracts of the seabed, each 75,000 square kilometers in size. The United States, whose companies were among the key actors in the earlier period of exploration, remains outside this compact as a non-party to the Law of the Sea Convention.

In the meantime, interest in the extraction of nodules had waned. Two factors were largely responsible: the difficulty and expense of developing and operating mining technology that could economically remove the nodules from depths of five or six kilometers and transport them to the ocean surface, and the continuing availability of the key minerals from land-based sources at market prices. The commercial extraction of polymetallic nodules is not considered likely to occur in less than two decades.

External link · [1] International Seabed Authority
53 posted on 03/18/2004 9:40:52 PM PST by XBob
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To: dogbyte12
I always thought the mystery spheres would turn out to be Kerry's cojones. They haven't been spotted anywhere on earth.

ROFLMAO!
Good One J
LOL

54 posted on 03/18/2004 9:43:46 PM PST by Fiddlstix (This Space Available for Rent or Lease by the Day, Week, or Month. Reasonable Rates. Inquire within.)
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To: Rebel_Ace
Actually, in very low pressure environments, solid ice "evaporates" directly into the air without going through the "liquid" phase.

How low does the pressure have to be? Isn't that the way improperly wrapped meat gets "freezer burn" in the deep freezer? And I know from experience that clothes frozen on the clothesline will dry in sub-zero temperatures. I have seen this happen to clothes my wife would hang out to dry in winter many years ago before we had a dryer.

In seems to me the ice in the clothes must go directly from solid state water to vapor-state since it can't thaw into liquid water if the air temperature is way below freezing, or can it?

55 posted on 03/18/2004 9:47:48 PM PST by epow
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To: XBob
Errr, I must be a bit slow tonight, so can you spell out how this relates? I'm not *trying* to be obtuse - it just works out that way sometimes ;)
56 posted on 03/18/2004 10:18:43 PM PST by general_re (The doors to Heaven and Hell are adjacent and identical... - Nikos Kazantzakis)
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To: epow; RightWhale
"...How low does the pressure have to be?..."

The pressure does not have to be low at all for this effect to occur. It just happens MUCH FASTER the lower the pressure is.

As pointed out by RightWhale in post #50, Ice indeed sublimes to vapor right here on good old Earth, and with careful examination you can record it.

My point was that on the very low pressure environment of Mars, the effects would be much more pronounced, and noticable with even casual observation. While it occurs here on this planet, it does not do so dramatically, and therefore people generally do not consider it when thinking about snow and ice.

(I have tried to convince my wife that I do not need to shovel the snow here, that we could simply wait for it to "sublime", but she did not buy it.)


57 posted on 03/19/2004 2:49:19 AM PST by Rebel_Ace (Tags?!? Tags?!? We don' neeeed no stinkin' Tags!)
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To: Rebel_Ace; epow; RightWhale
"As pointed out by RightWhale in post #50, Ice indeed sublimes to vapor right here on good old Earth, and with careful examination you can record it."

And if you're not into careful examination, the best way to observe sublimation (which technically occurs whenever a solid turns into a gas OR a gas turns into a solid without passing through the liquid phase) is to get a block of dry ice (frozen CO2) and watch it sublime right before your eyes.
58 posted on 03/19/2004 6:07:06 AM PST by green iguana (“There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.” – William James)
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To: XBob
The United States, whose companies were among the key actors in the earlier period of exploration, remains outside this compact as a non-party to the Law of the Sea Convention.

The treaty is a travesty of immense proportion. It's essentially a net transfer of wealth from the USA to third world hellhole dictatorships. Unfortunatly it looks like Bush may move to ratify it.

59 posted on 03/19/2004 7:50:31 AM PST by Don Joe (We've traded the Rule of Law for the Law of Rule.)
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To: Phil V.
Hematite will do some ODD stuff depending on what conditions are present.
So it is possible that some weird organism will secrete/accrete the stuff into a weird shape.
Of course, I have no real experience or working knowledge of such mechanics.
SOooo.. for what my word is worth..
*chuckle*

But those oblong holes look pretty strange around the 'berries', and remind me of stomotalites.
60 posted on 03/19/2004 1:49:57 PM PST by Darksheare (Fortune for the day: Buy the Frog and own John Kerry's soul!)
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