Unusually clear structure in an MSL image

[webolife]

Like Maol's above, these cooled lava columns [look like basalt in this case?] demonstrate that orderliness in nature is not an alien artifact, although I'm not ruling out the possibility of overarching design. I'd be interested in further study of areas like Olympus Mons, to determine whether these shield type structures are basaltic extrusions. EU would like further evidence that they are EDM pocks, so that would be very interesting to know either way.

[JHL]

There seems to be something about EU having become some sort of a movement which is blinding a lot of people to other possibilities, which is sort of sad. Finding remains of a past civilization and living creatures on Mars is at least as big a deal as the EU itself.

Those two statements are as incongruous as they are fallacious, Tholden. I'm invested up to my shoulders in EU theory because as it's said, the patterns of evidence are overwhelming. I say this as a guy with a sufficient scientific capacity, a goodly dose of skepticism and common sense, and a reasonably sufficient IQ. Therefore, this "past civilization" and these "living creatures" on Mars should stand to similar scrutiny, as I'm sure you'll agree. I doubt the EU crowd can be said to be blind, even in small part.

Neither these ancient civilizations or creatures do stand to reason, however. In almost any sense. I suspect that's why you resorted to those two statements instead of providing, if not a proof, at least a sensible, rational prospect of such a proof. The EU does that in volumes; the Martian ruins in no way I've ever seen.

Years ago there was a propensity to see subliminal images of salacious content craftily embedded in all sorts of popular advertising, the theory being that sex sells and so sex it shall be when selling, in any way Madison Ave can jam it into any sort of media for public consumption. Surely it was everywhere, went the assertion, just because.

To be a proved fact, however, everything has to stand the burden of proof, and the burden of proof itself has to derive from a prior reasonable theory. There's a flow - the ready, repeating pattern of EU evidence, for example - that stands to both sensibility and fact.

Finding actual skeletons or spacecraft parts or pipe fittings or antennae or tombstones or roadways on Mars by constructing them from low resolution photos, however, is infinitely less likely than seeing non-existent subliminal graphics in advertising: If you want to, and if you squint enough, and if you relax four-fifths of the visual detail, yes, you can see anything you choose to see. If you want it badly enough, it'll appear. And apparently it does.

Unlike subliminal advertising of purported racy content, however, apparently there are innumerable objects purported laying around Mars. There are only a few of a very specific sort hidden in plain sight in manipulated graphical advertising, if you know what I mean. Thus the ratio of fanciful Martian possibilities - from soup to nuts to sailboats to boxcars - probably tracks fairly well with the vast number of these unfounded claims that proponents claim.

Does this mean there's nothing but dirt on Mars? Technically, no. But does a single one of these claims really stand to reason among a reasonable consensus of spectators?

[tholden]

Dr. Tom Van Flandern was a director of the US Naval Observatory.

http://www.metaresearch.org/solar%20sys ... /proof.asp

[webolife]

Dr. Tom seems like a nice enough guy in the several videos of his that I watched.
He starts off with a reasonable degree of tentativity, making himself sound like a genuinely honest scientist.
Not saying that he is deliberately deceptive but the more I listened to him the more it felt like he began repeatedly drawing conclusions out of thin air, and expecting his audience to do the same. I agree with JHL here. These images do not stand up to reasonable scrutiny. Let alone the typically unclear image of the OP. Or the supposed Cydonia face that looks nothing like any kind of artifact when viewed in a different light up close. Or the "tunnels" supposedly traced between outcroppings. Or the heavily digitally pixelated shadows in crater walls... or...

And I bet there isn't one of us that wouldn't be absolutely thrilled to discover there really had been intelligent life on Mars before the Pathfinder.

[tholden]

Modern mathematics is based on the idea that there is such a thing as absolutely proving a proposition...

In real life, a proof or disproof is a kind of a transaction. There is no such thing as absolutely proving or disproving something; there is only such a thing as proving or disproving something to SOMEBODY'S satisfaction. If the party of the second part is too thick or too ideologically committed to some other way of viewing reality, then the best proof in the world will fall flat and fail. What you're really talking about here, sooner or later, is salesmanship.

In the OP above, I provided an image of a structure with five visible edges, all perfectly straight, and two visible sides, both perfectly flat, and all I see here is "Oh, no, that's just another rock..." The best salesman in the world will sooner or later just pack up and leave for greener pastures.

As to who finds any of this stuff convincing, at this point I'd have no problem saying more people than find the EU convincing. On FaceBook alone there are half a dozen to a dozen large and active groups devoted entirely to going over MSL images:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheMarsReality/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1568758710019891/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MarsMoonSpace/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/205140259829860/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MarsAlive/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/580723088722616/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/583999221722964/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1119190368109886/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/514483018695199/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1572080479688143/

for starters... Some of the discussions involve the question of how NASA and/or the USAF could have managed to pay for a black-op manned space program and there was a large conference in Bastrop Texas recently at which financial experts spoke as well as people more interested in the MSL mission:

https://secretspaceprogram.org

More than a little bit of the interest in this stuff arises from images of humans, both NASA employees and indigenous, turning up in these images:

http://www.bearfabrique.org/FBook_Utube ... genous.pdf

Sounds insane at first blush but, then, nobody makes a vehicle which can roll around Baltimore for three years without maintenance; does anybody really believe that anybody could make a vehicle which could roll around Mars for three years without maintenance? You’d figure there has to be at least one NASA rover mechanic on Mars and at
least one of the unvetted images shows that guy’s shadow in startling detail:

NASA techie working on Rover (shadow):
http://tinyurl.com/k43p954



The man is wearing a mask which covers his eyes and nose and a minimal sort of a scuba type
tank for oxygen. Again, that is a NASA image.

Part of what has happpened in recent years is that FaceBook groups appear to have largely replaced usenet as a global forum system, and there are several reasons for that. FB groups don't have the cliqueishness problem which usenet had and the technology is better. My own recommendation for those interested in keeping up with these developments would be the Martian Genesis group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/205140259829860/

I do repost what I view as particularly interesting images in the GH group as well:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/514483018695199/

There has been a gigantic profusion of clearly anomalous images over the past three years with MSL. You can see those images as they turn up on the FB groups, and then there are a couple of info/image repositories which are worth knowing about:

http://www.ufah.space

http://www.marsanomalyresearch.com

The idea of claiming that Mars is a collection of rocks and electrical scars is no longer tenable.

[tholden]

Sphinx on Mars, remains of very large statue and clear entrance to subterranean area in close proximity:

http://cosmosincollision.com/forum/index.php?topic=98.0

[JHL]

tholden, you haven't really addressed the point, which is the relative credibility of a thing for which there must be the characteristic, familiar thread of logical trajectory that hews to observation and known fact - the growing pattern of evidence found all over the EU theory, for example - although it appears you've doubled-down on prior assertion.

(Interestingly, as the EU progresses it gains the credibility of such fact and reason, whereas the Martian artifact narrative - for it is a fabrication until it gains a trajectory similar to that enjoyed by a true science - can only lose momentum with each passing day that it fails to affirm the simplest of realities. There's no confirmation of its shaky presumption, which is that Mars once sustained humanoid life or harbored transient visitors. There is no confirmation that they then left behind a planet-sized junkyard of evidence of their passing strewn over every location man has chosen to visit with robots aiming little cameras sending back grainy digitized images.

Ironically, artifact theory has vastly less to recommend it, but it enjoys the enormous advantage of having to prove itself exactly one time, that very first time, regardless of how you reasonably define "proof". In that respect it's not really a science, but a notion with a very simple, binary solution. Snapshot a pocket watch, just one pocket watch, and the proof is made.)

Once again the EU has a decidedly, markedly different momentum than the Martian thing. The EU has a hundred or a thousand variables to consider, not one, and yet it's ticking them off one by one, virtually with each passing week.

Back to the merely repeated assertions relative to Martian artifact conjecture, to wit:

Modern mathematics is based on the idea that there is such a thing as absolutely proving a proposition...

In real life, a proof or disproof is a kind of a transaction. There is no such thing as absolutely proving or disproving something; there is only such a thing as proving or disproving something to SOMEBODY'S satisfaction. If the party of the second part is too thick or too ideologically committed to some other way of viewing reality, then the best proof in the world will fall flat and fail. What you're really talking about here, sooner or later, is salesmanship.

So disbelievers are too biased to believe. Does that sound reasonable, tholden, in all instances where belief exists?

Loosely translated I take that to mean that if we stretch the semantics, we should credibly adopt the premise of Martian artifacts if we don't reject them out of hand. Similarly, I can "believe" in a civilization of bipeds at the bottom of Lake Huron - if we're open-minded eventually we'll be proved right. Proof is relative, goes that reasoning, and the burden of it falls on the observer, and not the purported scientist whose theory must survive a review by peers and such observers.

If we stretch the semantics we can reinterpret anything as anything and expect the reasonable clearance to do so. I don't buy that.

I'll give you a hand: We can bypass the Sun as a probable electrical event too, for which there is a lot of evidence rising to the level of a proof the semanticist can exempt himself from accepting, and credibly insist it's an unproved, standing nuclear reaction because of the vague similarities it has to reaction. We can credibly enshrine every one of Einstein's theories as fact. But in both instances we must confront what to a common man and a scientist will assuredly be substantially more credible cause and reason for these disciplines than if we ask him to believe in Martian junkyards.

Then, you seem to assert, we can convert our belief into a science of discovery by simple insistence. We should expect it to be given credibility. But are you willing to hoist Martian artifact whimsy to the level of traditional, accepted solar phenomenon, even knowing what you do about the alternative electric sun? Or to the level of the theory of relativity, even knowing what you probably do about the insurmountable hurdles it has when confronted with the quantum?

My point is that those two vastly complex disciplines remain credible even in the face of great controversy whereas after years of sifting through a thousand empty assertions, apparently we still have zero prospect for finding our first Martian hubcap, the simplest possible binary scenario imaginable after which the entire base of human history will have to withstand new scrutiny and revision.

But, since no such thing as proof exists, goes the rationalization, Martian artifact study need not provide one either and the search can credibly go on. If we bend the common use of "proof" we can find room to not disprove Martian artifact studies, which surely then becomes a worthy adjunct to any emerging science, say like electric cosmology and astrophysics. But that notion itself bends semantics, tholden. It's unreasonable. The differences between the EU and alien artifact "study" are vast.

Debating the nature of proofs is not at issue; finding reasonable validity at any point along the entire alien fabrication narrative is, however, and it's at each of those points on its own arc where we find it still has no traction. It cannot satisfy any condition beyond the first unproven premise - that life on Mars occurred - and then the second - that we can draw from literally every known object, structure, landmark, or even debris in any catalog we have when redefining dodgy pictures into the copious after-effects of a purported race or species. If it looks like the Eiffel Tower, then surely it must be the architectural artifact of a similar origin. But that simply doesn't wash, tholden.

In the OP above, I provided an image of a structure with five visible edges, all perfectly straight, and two visible sides, both perfectly flat, and all I see here is "Oh, no, that's just another rock..." The best salesman in the world will sooner or later just pack up and leave for greener pastures.

You provided a dodgy picture of a rock that with any common regard for natural geologic cleaving in mind can be explained completely away using a classic instance of Occam's Razor. Likewise the Martian Sphynx, which is just a pile of rubble that the fanciful mind can reconstruct into a pile of rubble that must have fallen from an elaborate carving by an intelligent race.

As to who finds any of this stuff convincing, at this point I'd have no problem saying more people than find the EU convincing

People believe all sorts of crazy things. Want of proximity to a credible theory doesn't matter. Your appeal is fallacious.

Sounds insane at first blush but, then, nobody makes a vehicle which can roll around Baltimore for three years without maintenance; does anybody really believe that anybody could make a vehicle which could roll around Mars for three years without maintenance? You’d figure there has to be at least one NASA rover mechanic on Mars and at least one of the unvetted images shows that guy’s shadow in startling detail:

A good quarter million vehicles costing 0.01% what a Martian rover costs roll around Baltimore every day without maintenance for three years, tholden, if you'd happen to think about it. And while their stupendously less sophisticated design and means of propulsion needs periodic refueling, they withstand substantially more adverse effects than do precision hundred million dollar wheeled titanium robots driving around what amounts to the Nevada desert floor in a snowless, rainless winter. As to the purported tech in the shadow, vet that photograph.

There has been a gigantic profusion of clearly anomalous images over the past three years with MSL...The idea of claiming a collection of rocks and electrical scars is no longer tenable.

YouTube is positively rife with conspiracy theories. They're fun, they get attention, and everybody loves a little entertainment - it's what we do. None of that hardly amounts to credibility, however, any more than claiming the Giza pyramids must have been antennas that had as much to do with electricity as Heavyside, Maxwell, and Tesla, whose collective work stands rationally and credibly overlapped and then well outside of present electrical convention. One is sheer fancy; the other a genuine scientific alternate explanation for a facet of observable reality.

As webolife says, I bet there isn't one of us that wouldn't be absolutely thrilled to discover there really had been intelligent life on Mars before the Pathfinder. Agreed. I just don't see anything whatsoever, so far, to confirm where Martian artifact enthusiasts have already taken their pet notion.

[tholden]

I rest my case....

[webolife]

What case? You have brought your wares to the hearing, and this court has decided that there is insufficient evidence to hold a trial. There is no compelling reason to believe a crime was ever committed. There is no body, no witnesses, no corroborative testimony, no smoking guns, no expert analyses... There is some very imaginative wishfulness, based on an even more wishful and empty premise... that Ganymede is the seat of life in the solar system... and a crowd of conspiring conspiracy theorists with a lot of time on their hands.

[Grey Cloud]

Anyone who cites Facilebook as a source of evidence deserves to be laughed out of court.

[tholden]

I generally subscribe to the EU concept and would like to see it succeed; I also believe that in order to do that, proponents will sooner or later (and probably sooner) have to deal with these Mars findings.

I've felt it a sort of a duty to try to provide viewers on this forum with enough information that those interested in coming up to speed with the new Mars findings can do so and I believe I've done that.

Twenty years from now remember, you saw it here first.

[webolife]

Twenty years from now, likely sooner, you'll be wishing no one remembers these posts.
Ted, you've allowed your imagination to run away with you. The "scuba man" shadow for instance. Really?
You are seeing unicorns in clouds, and the virgin mary in a pancake.

[JHL]

I generally subscribe to the EU concept and would like to see it succeed; I also believe that in order to do that, proponents will sooner or later (and probably sooner) have to deal with these Mars findings.

I've felt it a sort of a duty to try to provide viewers on this forum with enough information that those interested in coming up to speed with the new Mars findings can do so and I believe I've done that.

Twenty years from now remember, you saw it here first.

No disrespect, tholden, but do realize that that entire comment only stands up to reason if it turns out to be true. So far the opposite holds fast, making the remark just a last-word assertion.

There are no such findings. Findings isn't even remotely the right word for this odd phenomenon, and obviously nobody has any purported duty whatsoever to it.

No disrespect; just framing the thing a little more responsibly. I actually hope you're right. There's just no evidence at all you could be.

[tholden]

http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/172261/snapshots/484689

[comingfrom]

I found a clear structure in a HiRise image.

In the Northern Plains of Mars.
A zoomed in shot.