Curious shapes found by Curiosity on Mars

a reply to: Moohide

I will gladly stake a public bet of $5,000 with an established escrow and booking service that we will know macro-cellular life exists on Mars and has thriving ecosystems, within 3 months of ExoMars touching down on Mars, if not sooner.

If you would like to take me up on the offer, I'd be glad to apply options on the bet for, or against, Thescelosaurus bones and their existence on the Martian surface.

Pareidolia is a scapegoat, nothing more. Consider this. Science tells us pareidolia is a flaw in our ability to perceive reality, yet... Human brains are regarded as having a much more advanced facial recognition capability than any artificially intelligent or computer driven system to accomplish the same thing. Yet, our ability to recognize patterns is a flaw?

I see pareidolia as an advantage, when searching for patterns, not a hindrance. Forgive me if I lack any care towards your suppositions. I am willing to believe, and place a tangible stake of value on my assumptions. Feel free to match my bet, I'll find us a bookie.

Trust me though, I tend to know a little bit on these subjects:

museums.kenosha.org...

Use that as a comparison and look through any Mars image set near ridge lines. It is quite easy to write off "pareidolia" while at the same time, if these were positive matches, would your pareidolia NOT give you the same interpretation?

a reply to: Blue Shift

Thank you for your reply.

Your opinion is the type I appreciate. It comes with tangible explanation, evidence, and a well thought out response.

Your arguments are the reason that I am working on a system to properly analyze the Curiosity image pack.

Some people don't trust a keen eye, as much as they trust statistical probability and advanced computer metrics.

Thus, I am in the process of creating a system to automatically scour, categorize, statistically analyze, and provide mathematical output based on MastCam image input, from Curiosity.

a reply to: Moohide

"not likely." Is not a zero sum possibility.

A few decades ago, the idea of a carnivore in the same size range as a blue whale, would have been considered "not likely."

I search for the rare findings, on rare odds.

Either way, all arguments in this thread will be settled once ExoMars touches down.

Sadly, until that time, we are busy trying to piece together complex conclusions from a 2 megapixel collated image, broadcasting on a connection akin to HughesNet.

I still fail to see the logic in - > $2 billion dollar rover - > 2 megapixel camera

Sad.

a reply to: Moohide

Funny notes about the "Curiosity Wire Brush"

A "hoover" or vacuum based idea isn't very tangible in an atmosphere with such low air pressures, the power required to create a strong suction or blow force is probably much higher than Curiosity's battery can output.

Curiosity does have an interesting laser that can cause some interesting impacts and will show up in some images as a grid of pock marks about the diameter of a quarter, each.

"The LIBS instrument can target a rock or soil sample up to 7 m (23 ft) away, vaporizing a small amount of it with about 50 to 75 5-nanosecond pulses from a 1067 nm infrared laser and then observing the spectrum of the light emitted by the vaporized rock."

I have not been able to easily find much information on it, but it is said to have a mechanism for "percussion drilling" I feel like I have read that the mechanism drills by utilizing resonating waves that shake up the target area, but since I can not find that information right now I won't directly cite it.

Wire brushes do seem a bit simple, but even doctoral paleontologists use a toothbrush from time to time.

a reply to: Blue Shift

I would agree with you completely.

I have also considered, if water is such a valuable resource in an environment like Mars, why didn't we include a way to disperse a little bit? Wouldn't it logically be a very viable bait, for living organisms?

I think we should set some sort of bait trap that supplies all the good stuff a Martian organism would be looking for.

Hunters do it, to attract animals, why shouldn't scientists do the same? After all, we won't be trying to shoot them with a 30-6 rifle afterwards, but just a camera.

To add helpful insight to this thread:

I have found two angles of my "femur" finding in Sol 108

Once in MastCam image 53000 from Sol 108, and again in MastCam image 36000 from Sol 108.

I attempted to overlay them as well as I could with my eyeball and MSPaint.

Here is the giphy animation combining the two separate angle views.

media.giphy.com...

These two separate views do not grant much detail into whether the "femur" is an optical illusion or not, but they do provide an interesting look at the same position on Mars over two separate capture times that I would guess are seconds or minutes apart. Any movement could be from shadows and light changes due to the angle change. Either way, I find these types of analyses a little more fascinating than still image scouring.

I thought you all might appreciate the variation in the images as a neat reference.

a reply to: Archivalist

I wish NASA's images had an overlay HUD with information about sun angle, distance of images, time, and a size legend/reference.

If such information were provided, I could mathematically determine what movements would be considered "too drastic" to be accounted for by only a light/shadow angle change. Without that information, I must default that all movement is strictly optical illusion, however, with the proper mathematics involved, a more in depth analysis would be possible here.


EDIT:
Although, further thinking on my part... Our hardware and software on Mars has not had any real advancement, since the landing of Curiosity...
However, our available hardware and software on Earth has improved dramatically in this time frame. My opinion: All of Curiosity's images are worth a second look now, with our much more advanced software and computer capability. We can probably obtain more information from these older images, now that our terrestrial analytical technology has had such a major leap. I wonder if anyone is pushing for more advanced analytics of the Curiosity image dump?

Whether it is being planned for, or not. I, personally, am working on some ideas to better analyze the images that we have already obtained. I'll keep ATS updated if I make any meaningful breakthroughs.

-shakey fist at JPL/NASA for not supplying the relevant mathematical data-

a reply to: Archivalist

You want to bet £3500 on macro-cellular life being found, and then go on about Thescelosaurus bones (an earth dinosaur). So are you saying its a martian Thescelosaurus that was born there (meaning its not a Thescelosaurus as it would need a different name), or an earth Thescelosaurus that was blasted from earth to mars when the meteor hit 65 million years ago?

You say "Pareidolia is a scapegoat, nothing more." And then you say "I see pareidolia as an advantage". Make your mind up.

You dont care about my suppositions (a belief held without proof or certain knowledge; an assumption or hypothesis) when that is exactly what your view is, a belief, just because you say you see a bone doesnt mean its a bone. You must care as you have commented on my thread enough times about an arguement you cant prove.

Until we know otherwise no-one is right. Will come back to this tomorrow (if you care about my opinion, which you obviously dont, and i dont care if you do or not) and will have a look at your evidence.

a reply to: Moohide

And you wonder why I didn't bother to reply to you the first time.

I am here for fruitful discussion and progression of science.

Like science, I do not care who is right or wrong.

To waste analytical time discussing politics and philosophy is not in my interests, put your beliefs in a tangible bet, and wager them, or waste your time on less deaf ears.

If you have anything further to say that is of scientific use, feel free to provide your evidence? Is your evidence really constructive if it is only evidence with an intention of tearing down someone else's argument? I don't feel like that is positive for progress, are you making your own hypotheses? Or are you only looking to deconstruct hypotheses that are put in place by others?

Perhaps you would benefit from having an original thought, I doubt such a thing will strike you in a thread that you are emotionally involved in. Feel free to go read some other material, the internet is full of petabytes of other things to read, I'm not mandating that you read my posts.

a reply to: Moohide

I re-read your post here.

My implication is Earth material and Mars material may have been shared in the past, irregardless of what went where.

The Chicxulub impact had enough force to launch large quantities of material into space, and out of Earth's gravity well.
(I did the mathematics involved for this once, and I do not care to take the time to re-solve a problem I have already finished working on. If you want to call me on that claim? Do the math yourself.)

We have found meteorites from Mars, on Earth.

Pareidolia can be a scapegoat and a benefit. Those are not mutually exclusive.

Public scientific opinion points at pareidolia as a convenient way to explain away ALL potential finds, in any imagery.

Human beings have outstanding facial recognition capability, and object recognition ability.

Opinion tells us that because pareidolia is a possible answer, it is always the answer. I refute that ideal.
I fully support that pareidolia CAN make someone see patterns that aren't there. However, it's a two lane road. If something IS THERE, our so-called "pareidolia handicap" is a blessing, because you will very likely, have the cognitive ability to see it.

You and I grid locking on burden of proof, for our beliefs, benefits neither of us. I will not acknowledge any more debate on something that won't be solved by you, or myself. My explanations are a possibility, this I acknowledge, however, if you can not conclusively disprove my ideas, and I can not conclusively disprove yours, then...

We wait for ExoMars.

a reply to: Archivalist

At least your last post was a little more balanced, that i like. Neither of us can prove anything, we agree on that. But really my thread was about the 5 shapes, and nothing more than that. As Blue Shift kindly pointed out, they were probably made with the brush, and i second that.

originally posted by: Archivalist
I have also considered, if water is such a valuable resource in an environment like Mars, why didn't we include a way to disperse a little bit? Wouldn't it logically be a very viable bait, for living organisms? I think we should set some sort of bait trap that supplies all the good stuff a Martian organism would be looking for.

Hunters do it, to attract animals, why shouldn't scientists do the same? After all, we won't be trying to shoot them with a 30-6 rifle afterwards, but just a camera.

I understood that there was some firm working on a kind of evaporative collector, kind of like they have on boats for stranded mariners to collect drinkable water. It's like a plastic tent that folds out and sits on the ground and uses solar heat to suck up moisture from the ground. Yeah, a little water would come in handy for all kinds of stuff on Mars.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Blue Shift, you may find this interesting, there are deposits of calcium carbonate on Mars, with the right reactions, it can become a desiccant 4 times as powerful as silica gel packets. Mollusks on Earth have shell material that includes it. I would want a shell made of something that snatches moisture out of the air, if I lived on a planet with such low water quantities

originally posted by: Archivalist
Blue Shift, you may find this interesting, there are deposits of calcium carbonate on Mars, with the right reactions, it can become a desiccant 4 times as powerful as silica gel packets. Mollusks on Earth have shell material that includes it. I would want a shell made of something that snatches moisture out of the air, if I lived on a planet with such low water quantities

They could also try actually drilling down a little bit. Do we know how deep the calcium carbonate cracks go?

a reply to: Blue Shift

I don't personally know those details, although if you want to see what the depths of Mars have to offer, SOL 900-1200 is a good place to look. That ridge contains thousands of feet of upheaved mantle.

My roommate and I have assembled some theories about the behavior of possible macro-cellular ecosystems there.

We just recently began to think of the surface of Mars behaving like the bottom of Earth's oceans. (A really really really dispersed vapor ocean.)

Places where geothermal activity provides heat would be a good place to look for organisms, the energy margins in those areas are higher, and organisms would have more opportunity to snatch up cheap energy.

Another consideration, is crater rims. Thinking of them, like ocean drop-offs, could provide a valuable picture.
Imagine a crater on Mars, so deep, that sunlight never hits the bottom. It would create a thermal differential between the bottom of that crater, and the surface. Organisms near the rim of said crater, could snatch energy from the thermal movement, and additional energy from falling particles, thanks to an assist from gravity. In our oceans, there is generally a large concentration and variation of life near ocean drop-off points, especially if they are very deep and cold drop-offs, off the edge of a continental shelf.

Imagining creatures that take advantage of what the planet has to offer, for cheap energy, is easy to do. Earth has many examples of creatures utilizing their local environment for a Darwinian advantage.

Chemical energy, friction energy, thermal differentiation energy... All of those potential energy transfer zones, would be the places I would look for life. If it's easier to get energy by being at location x,y,z, then by Darwin rule, those are the places an organism would be.

A fun idea we were throwing around, would be a blanket type creature, similar to slime molds or massive mycelium colonies on Earth, but in practicality on the surface of Mars, the creature would act like a phospholipid bilayer skin, with rocks and dust between the two sheets. Our blanket buddy, could park himself over a geothermal heat vent, with carbonate rocks in between his layers. Let the natural planet heat do the work of breaking the energy and moisture back out of the minerals. A top layer for insulation from the harsh surface environment, a bottom layer to provide control of the absorption of heat from the geothermal or geochemical activity, and a convenient pocket between for yummy energy high minerals. Land whales, that eat rocks. Indistinguishable from the surrounding environment, thus very hard to encounter for Curiosity.

Not from Curiosity, maybe.

It's an older pic but one of my favs.

a reply to: burgerbuddy

Formations like that, that look like an arthropod with two forward stretched parallel arms, are somewhat common. Unfortunately, there are several ways those can occur via standard geological phenomena. (Imagine a layered sedimentary rock hardening over time, two layers long, one short between them, all three break off as one piece and turn sideways in the sand... Boom, exact shape.)

((I believe that is likely a Curiosity image, possibly from a NavCam though, and not the good resolution MastCams. Sojourner may also be a possibility, Sojo had some decent cameras and it + it's lander could take imagery close to what you posted. (The reason I still guess Curiosity, is just the odds and probability, I'm pretty sure we have magnitudes more images from Curiosity, than any other rover mission there.) ))

However, I believe it is possible there are highly specialized forms of macrocellular life on Mars.
Curiosity may not be able to reveal them as such though, as creatures on Mars, if there are any, may have developed a form of "Hyper" camouflage. Mars is thought to have had conditions that supported life, much earlier than the Earth developed those conditions.

If creatures on Mars had been macrocellular, and followed our Darwinian logic for evolution... They would have a lot longer for extremely specialized creatures to evolve, such that they could be considered to have near perfect stealth camouflage. (Look at how good Octopi on Earth are, with adaptive camouflage.) Mars creatures would have had more time to evolve than our camouflaging octopus friends...

So, while there are geo processes that can explain it, and Occam's razor would tell us, that must be the explanation... I am willing to give consideration to the idea that they could be biological shapes still.

Another question, that we are waiting for ExoMars to answer.

a reply to: Archivalist

I've found many more of the delta wings in other places and pics in all orientations.

I'd really need to dig them up to post.

Here is a larger one that was a 3D pic. Looks like it was active.



I like this pic, it's not of one of the wings, tho.

Got a crab in this one.



I think my pics are from the rover.

edit - accidental post, my bad