Mars - miscellaneous anomalies

[junglelord]

Interesting symmetrical patterns on the Arabia Terra of Mars.

Mysterious Layered Hills in Northern Mars.
Arabia Terra, on the northern uplands of Mars, is presumed
to be one of the most ancient red planet regions. For reasons unknown,
several hills there are neatly layered shelves of dark sands on light rock,
says NASA, “wide enough to drive a truck around. The image, showing
an area about 3 kilometers across, was taken in October 2003 by the now
defunct Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.” Image Credit: MSSS, JPL, NASA.
See original at Malin Space Science Systems.

click for image
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/200 ... index.html

[bdw000]

I'd say we need some professional EU perspective on these so-called "mud volcanoes" of Mars:

http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/3586/ ... es-on-mars

My favorite line from the brief article:

"the two scientists were able to rule out the possibility that the mounds were caused by other processes [than mud]"

[mharratsc]

When anyone in the PC/EU community look at pictures and formulate opinions, we're laughed at. "Where's the math?"
Not so these two, apparently. Double standards abound.

I have to give these two credit, however. They manage to publicize something without having big $$$ computer models and mathematical formula to model their mud floes...

[mharratsc]

No really, they said that.

Study Links Fresh Mars Gullies to Carbon Dioxide

PASADENA, Calif. -- A growing bounty of images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals that the timing of new activity in one type of the enigmatic gullies on Mars implicates carbon-dioxide frost, rather than water, as the agent causing fresh flows of sand.

Researchers have tracked changes in gullies on faces of sand dunes in seven locations on southern Mars. The periods when changes occurred, as determined by comparisons of before-and-after images, overlapped in all cases with the known winter build-up of carbon-dioxide frost on the dunes. Before-and-after pairs that covered periods only in spring, summer and autumn showed no new activity in those seasons.

"Gullies that look like this on Earth are caused by flowing water, but Mars is a different planet with its own mysteries," said Serina Diniega, lead author of a report on these findings in the November issue of the journal Geology. She analyzed these gullies while a graduate student at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and recently joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. "The timing we see points to carbon dioxide, and if the mechanism is linked to carbon-dioxide frost at these dune gullies, the same could be true for other gullies on Mars."

Scientists have suggested various explanations for modern gullies on Mars since fresh-looking gullies were discovered in images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor in 2000. Some of the proposed mechanisms involve water, some carbon dioxide, and some neither.

Some fresh gullies are on sand dunes, commonly starting at a crest. Others are on rockier slopes, such as the inner walls of craters, sometimes starting partway down the slope.

. The 18 dune gullies in which the researchers observed new activity range in size from about 50 meters or yards long to more than 3 kilometers (2 miles) long.

"The alcove is a cutout at the top," Diniega said. "Material being removed from there ends up in a fan-shaped apron below."

Because new flows in these gullies apparently occur in winter, rather than at a time when any frozen water might be most likely to melt, the new report calls for studies of how carbon dioxide, rather than water, could be involved in the flows. Some carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere freezes on the ground during winter and sublimates back to gaseous form as spring approaches. The dunes studied are poleward of 40 degrees south latitude.

"One possibility is that a pile of carbon-dioxide frost accumulating on a dune gets thick enough to avalanche down and drag other material with it," Diniega said. Other suggested mechanisms are that gas from sublimating frost could lubricate a flow of dry sand or erupt in puffs energetic enough to trigger slides.

At an increasing number of sites, before-and-after images have documented changes in Martian gullies. The new report uses images from the Mars Orbiter Camera on Mars Global Surveyor, which operated from 1997 to 2006, and from the High Resolution Science Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera and Context Camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been examining Mars since 2006.

"The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is enabling valuable studies of seasonal changes in surface features on Mars," said Sue Smrekar of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., deputy project scientist for this orbiter. "One key to doing that has been the capability to point from side to side, so that priority targets can be checked more frequently than just when the spacecraft flies directly overhead. Another is the lengthening span of years covered by first Mars Global Surveyor and now this mission."

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the orbiter. The University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory operates the HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates the Context Camera and formerly did the same for the Mars Orbiter Camera. For more about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mro. For more about HiRISE, visit http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu.

Guy Webster (818) 354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Daniel Stolte 520-626-4402
University of Arizona, Tucson
stolte@email.arizona.edu

I suggest that the gullies are being created electrodynamically, especially since they directly point out that they see many of the gullies starting at crater rims, emphasized by the below quote:

Diniega and co-authors at the University of Arizona and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., focused their study on dune gullies that are shaped like rockier slope gullies, with an alcove at the top, a channel or multiple channels in the middle, and an apron at the bottom

In my mind this describes an inverted Lichtenberg pattern, quite simply.

I believe that their mention of carbon dioxide is simply because they were frantically hoping to find water flows on the surface, but since the gully-building events they're seeing are happening when it's not possible for water to flow (Martian winter), they've latched on to the magic of carbon dioxide to cause what they're seeing.

So my question is- would Martian winter be a time when more electron/negative ion scavenging would occur on the surface on Mars? Would Martian summer be a time when a positive charge transfer to the planet is seen?

Just wondering if anyone could clarify, or maybe even write up a TPOD on this one..?

[GaryN]

A flythrough of Zumba crater on Mars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftS4rujx ... r_embedded

As with many craters, the dendritic ridges near the rim look like
they could only have formed if the flow of material was traveling
down the slope, and being removed from the center upwards. If the
material were being blown outwards and up the slope, the 'feathers'
on the arrows would be pointing upwards. Mechanically, it does not
make sense for them to be pointing downwards, does it?

[StevenJay]

Wow, cool animation, Gary!

What grabs my attention the most is the polished river rock-looking "stones" that start at about the 1:30 mark. I have to keep reminding myself that the "camera" view is moving at 100 MPH - meaning the implied altitude would make those "stones" monolithic in size.

[GaryN]

If the flow was downwards, then I expect those big rocks to have been from the rim as
it was being eaten away by the inflowing plasma.
The author has a few more animations available. He uses NASA images and their DTM info,
and there is no vertical exaggeration. Hard to imagine water playing any part in the formation of
any of those features, the only thing flowing on that surface was a very dense plasma.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MARS3DdotCOM

[nick c]

More electrical sculpting on Mars:
The Thunderbolt that Raised Olympic Mons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DABEeixgxgs

[neilwilkes]

More electrical sculpting on Mars:
The Thunderbolt that Raised Olympic Mons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DABEeixgxgs

I saw that one recently. Makes much more sense than an improbable - and geologically incorrect - shield volcano does.
The image posted by the OP is a beauty though.

[GaryN]

Geologic faulting, or...

Take a closer look.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/5045 ... l_full.jpg

[GaryN]

This 10 Meg image is well worth a download so you can zoom and pan around. How does
a lava flow run so far without the leading edge having cooled and thickened and
caused a backup, forcing the lava stream to have branched?
There are no conventional explanations for this in my book.
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/EXTRA ... browse.jpg

[seasmith]

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/5045 ... l_full.jpg

Definitely looks like arc-gouging, to this longago former welder.


http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/EXTRA ... browse.jpg

This one, if the light source is to the upper-left as it appears, is a raised weld bead.
Unusual is the different skin color left and right of the 'bead'.
Perhaps as if the current source was a broad-area plasma arc with low penetration properties (ie: high pulse rate or AC, as opposed to concentrated DC current); that would melt a surface layer and push the puddle material out into a surrounding berm.
The small round inclusions are consistent with an ancillary fusion effect commonly called "weld spatter".

my $.02
s

[Osmosis]

The upper channels appear (to me) to be much deeper than the foreground ones, not raised.

[davesmith_au]

This one, if the light source is to the upper-left as it appears,

The light source is from the right, as per the craters which appear in the image. Thus the shadows fall along the right edge of a depression and the light strikes the left edge, highlighting it. Many planetary surface images play such tricks, or rather our brains do, and it takes a bit of persistence at times to work it out and tell the brain to interpret them properly!

Cheers, Dave.

[GaryN]

This valley on Mars (Shalbatana), located at:
44° 5'39.51"W
4°24'33.73"N
is very similar to the above one I posted (which I didn't get the name of )
above. You will see what looks like it must have been a molten slump of material
from the rim. The rim looks like it has been 'nibbled', with the material flow
going down into the valley.Up and down the valley there are also dendritic
features which look like those seen in many craters, where I also think the flow
is down the slope, to the excavation and removal point in the valley bottom.
I picture an electric tornado event here, and once a sharp edge is formed, then
secondary arcs would be attracted to the rim, causing the nibbling. Occasionally
one of those secondary arcs forms a smaller tornado which wanders away from the
rim, excavating its own valley.
That's my interpretation anyway.At least with Google you can see the elevations,
so you don't have to guess what is high and low, which has caught me out too,
many times!