Oblong Hole in Mars Rock

originally posted by: Blue Shift
Looks nice with the color adjusted, too. Looks like jasper / jade.

Lots of interesting stuff in that image and if you adjust the color you can see them more easily.

Here's some other stuff. I'm not big on "artifacts," but some of it looks almost mechanical:

I like to white balance the images and sharpen them up a bit.

But with an image like this people like to see the unaltered raw image.

Nice job on adjusting the color, thanks for posting the pictures.

a reply to: Archivalist

You forgot one. Or Exo crashes into a giant dead ball of rock and dust, with a bit of rust

Could be the effect of concretion from past life on mars or some sort of embedded mineral deposit. Some of those rocks scattered on Mars are actually from space too, who knows where they originated from. I do not know if a Martian meteorite will look like one here on earth, maybe because of the light atmosphere there they may not so much melted.

a reply to: rickymouse

Most of the ones the rover has found are not as big as this one, but are about the same color.

The texture is about the same too, but they don't all have holes like that.

The rock in the OP doesn't look like a meteorite to me, but I am no expert.



Curiosity Finds Iron Meteorite on Mars

originally posted by: LookingAtMars
You can find faces in any picture like this. It's a thing call Pareidolia, I am sure you have heard of it.

Yeah, faces are easy to find. That's why I don't look for them or artifact-like shapes unless they're really prominent. Too many ways for good ol' nature to fake them.

As for paeidolia, it depends on the context. If I see something on Mars that looks like an arrowhead, for instance, it's easy to dismiss it as a rock because there shouldn't be arrowheads on Mars. Obviously.

Looking around I can see much smaller rocks with possibly similar holes. I would point out the rock in question is a different color than all the surrounding rock and one up and diagonally to the left has whitish streaks on the edges possibly indicative of abrasion. This rock may be out place, where did it come from and how was it moved there? My only guess is that it's a meteorite or fragment of one. This would account for the color difference, the hole and nearby stone with abrasion marks.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
This rock may be out place, where did it come from and how was it moved there?

One interesting thing to do with these things is to try to locate them on a Gigapan somewhere so you can see the overall context in which they're lying. There are a surprising number of these out of place things lying around, which I guess you can expect from a place that has had meteorites slamming into it unchecked for a couple billion years. It's also probably why in spite of relatively frequent abrasive dust storms, a lot of the surface looks "fresh" and not smooth or worn down.

originally posted by: LookingAtMars
a reply to: eriktheawful

You are very welcome. I am so tired of that stuff too, that is one of the reasons I started posting.

And many of us thank you for that!

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
Looking around I can see much smaller rocks with possibly similar holes. I would point out the rock in question is a different color than all the surrounding rock and one up and diagonally to the left has whitish streaks on the edges possibly indicative of abrasion. This rock may be out place, where did it come from and how was it moved there? My only guess is that it's a meteorite or fragment of one. This would account for the color difference, the hole and nearby stone with abrasion marks.

It could be a meteorite, thanks for pointing out the information in the image that supports that. There are many different kinds of meteorites. Here is an image that gives a wider view of the area.

Here is a greyscale image that seems to show the rock behind it has a slot cut out of it and it isn't just a shadow like I first thought. /02255/2255MR0120690120106478C00_DXXX

a reply to: tinymind

Are you saying a Mars rock is behind the invention of tool-making on Earth?

On a serious note, cool hole.