Mars Close Up: Sinus Meridiani

The following b & w images from Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) - www.msss.com... - are to be included as part of a “NASA: What Are You Doing with Our Money?” piece done for a small press publication.
I’ll spare you any feeble attempts to address technicalities as this is really a work of imagination and fun.

Unfortunately, I lost the exact file name of the MOC images source. But I do know the data/strip is from Sinus Meridiani, specifically from a terrain overlap-boundary near the borders of the region. For some reason I’m thinking SE.

Additionally, most of these strips the images are taken from are about 2-3 km across, so when examining individual features we’re dealing with scales in the tens to hundreds of meters range.

Basically, the argument goes thusly: “This stuff is weird. It exhibits organization, direction, symmetry, axes & angles, proximal-compartmentalized complexes, and appears in some cases to be volitional, responsive and/or purposeful. There are also features that resemble motility morphologies.
This begs the question; if this amount of complexity occurs without life as we know it at play, do we perhaps need to broaden our definition of life?
And it seems unlikely, to this biologist, that these features are solely the result of accumulating dust or long-gone aquatic/volcanic action.”

As anyone knows who has bothered to look, finding weird stuff on the surface of Mars is easy even with all the tampering. The Southern Polar Region is probably the easiest area to find weird forms, but as I said the place is lousy with ‘em!

Anyway, just follow the pics. They are in an order.
Also, please note that the alphabetical designations are unique, that is, the label “A” always means “feature A.” Areas of interest may be outlined in white and the feature labels A-F are also white.
Finally, I’ve adjusted or manipulated most of the images to highlight certain aspects of the features. Please forgive what may appear at first to be redundancies in the images. A few have been subtly tweaked to display differing levels of detail and orientations. Others are included for sequential clarification.
This little tour proceeds initially from macro to micro views then explores the features labeled A-F in detail, by section. The first few images aren’t MOC images and are only included for context. The image sequence will walk you through the “tour” and all arguments will be made pictorially.
Thanks for looking.

s42.photobucket.com...



[edit on 26-6-2008 by djerwulfe]

[edit on 26-6-2008 by djerwulfe]

You may want to fix your link as I am unable to access any photos or like.

Thanks

Mars: Sinus Meridiani Slide Show at myspace.com page under the "General" section heading.

profile.myspace.com...

And here:

s42.photobucket.com...


[edit on 26-6-2008 by djerwulfe]

[edit on 26-6-2008 by djerwulfe]

...the few square kilometers of Sinus Meridiani under scrutiny...

reply to post by djerwulfe


Need to find that image number... I don't have time to hunt for it

reply to post by zorgon


There is no need to look for it.

It's M01-00253.

This should be (more or less) the area you selected.


Section A


Section B


Section C


Sections D and E


If I misplaced some of the sectors just correct me and I will post the corrected image.

These images were taken from the IMG file, converted to GIF and level adjusted without loss of detail.

reply to post by ArMaP


Thanks ArMaP Amazing !!! They are really there

reply to post by ArMaP

Ahh! Seriously, I've been trying forever to track that down.

Gracias!! Thank you!!



*** So it's Northern Sinus Miridiani.***
www.msss.com...

[edit on 28-6-2008 by djerwulfe]

But... what do you think? Is this of no interest? Should I have put forth some explanation for these anomalies? No one cares! Waaahhh!

I thought this was pretty cool and am working on a few more, but maybe it's a waste of time...

I tried to directly place the slideshow in the thread, but I couldn't seem to get the HTML or [IMG] to work.

OK, this stuff is fossilized remains of Martian Marine fuana that died in a catastrophic event.

There. That should give something for someone to argue with. (PS, I have NO idea what these things are... I labeled them without purpose and on superficialities....)

From the original post:
"Basically, the argument goes thusly: “This stuff is weird. It exhibits organization, direction, symmetry, axes & angles, proximal-compartmentalized complexes, and appears in some cases to be volitional, responsive and/or purposeful. There are also features that resemble motility morphologies.
This begs the question; if this amount of complexity occurs without life as we know it at play, do we perhaps need to broaden our definition of life?
And it seems unlikely, to this biologist, that these features are solely the result of accumulating dust or long-gone aquatic/volcanic action.”

As anyone knows who has bothered to look, finding weird stuff on the surface of Mars is easy even with all the tampering. The Southern Polar Region is probably the easiest area to find weird forms, but as I said the place is lousy with ‘em!"

Continuing along this same line of thought...
I started another thread, but here's the meat of it.
See the other thread for details…

Originally posted by djerwulfe
But... what do you think? Is this of no interest? Should I have put forth some explanation for these anomalies? No one cares! Waaahhh!

No its not a waste of time its just there are so many anomaly threads that it is impossible to keep up

I saw something really interesting in this one but have not had time to highlight it... I will tomorrow If I don't just u2u me and and bug me

Well, this one's weird. The "fishicle" thing has two semi-parallel rear-appendages and a central appendage with an upward(?) tilt or curve.

What is that thing? seems really distinct and symmetrical for a purely geological form.



Even if I'm looking at it "wrong" it's still improbable as random form.

Maybe I'll redo this slideshow in more detail....