Something growing on Mars

reply to post by StellarX


Thanks Stellar, wow didn't realize it got so warm there at times.

As the images that ArMap shows demonstrate, some of the dark areas seem to raised areas without frost (or dunes) in them. Others (such as in the images I showed) do have dunes in them.

The "filament" runs along the edge of a crater. A likely location for an accumulation of different material than the surrounding area.

[edit on 3/8/2009 by Phage]

Honestly , to me this just screams LIFE . Ask yourselves here , what does your gut tell you? marsanomalyresearch.com...

Originally posted by Phage
One step at a time. The Viking mission provided ambiguous data (at best), it neither proved or disproved the existence of life.

And you are just refusing to read what is right infront of you. According to the pre mission specifications the viking landers found life on Mars which is why the first press release SAID that they found life on mars. Then someone somewhere in NASA ( from orders on high i suspect) decided that the pre missions specs where no longer acceptable and withdrew the claim.

According to our BEST knowledge we found life on mars back in 1976 and it's never been explained why either the pre mission specs where altered or the new theory validated. We will again find life on Mars not becuase we didn't do so already but because it was not politically expedient to admit to the fact in 1976 or even today.

Scientists are being more careful to devise experiments which can provide more definitive answers but what can be accomplished on each mission is limited.

There were NO accomplishments with direct evidence for life because they know if they tried at all they will find it again; why else aren't they looking when their supposedly looking? Can you please respond to ALL the presented data and not just that parts you feel you can 'handle'?

The MSL will be another step. Levin's ideas are well known. So is the chip on his shoulder about the way he feels he has been treated.

He took it in relatively good spirits originally because i suspect he still had far too much to lose at that point in his life. Admittedly he just says that he 'not all the data were in' but from personal experience at protecting my daily bread ( to say nothing of the reputation he had to have to get into the program ) that is not saying much about what he truly believed at the time.

Have you seen the criticism of his arguments as well? He is not the only scientist to have studied the data from Viking. Surely you don't take only one opinion into account do you?

No i don't and if you can present me with evidence , i havn't seen, to validate the change in pre mission specs i would be most interested. As it stands everything i saw indicated to me at least that it was a political decision with no hard data brought in support of changing the specs. In fact that may be way a broken GMCS were sent up in the first place?

Maybe Mars even has life today. The evidence sent back from Mars by two Viking Landers in 1976 and 1977 was not clearcut (6). In fact, NASA's first press release about the Viking tests announced that the results were positive. The "Labelled Release" (LR) experiments had given positive results. But after lengthy discussions in which Carl Sagan participated, NASA reversed its position, mainly because another experiment detected no organics in the soil. Yet Gilbert V. Levin, the principal designer of the LR experiment, still believes the tests pointed to life on Mars (7). When the same two experiments were run on soil from Antarctica, the same conflicting results were obtained (LR - positive; organics - negative.) Soil from Antarctica definitely contains life. The test for organics was negative because it is far less sensitive than the LR experiment. The same problem could have caused the organics test on Mars to give a false negative.

www.panspermia.org...

This would help explain why Viking's gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer detected no organic compounds on the surface of Mars. This result has also been questioned recently by Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the University of Mexico, who reported that similar instruments and methodology are unable to detect organic compounds in places on Earth, such as Antarctic dry valleys, where we know soil microorganisms exist.

www.marstoday.com...

Lafleur, who helped develop the Viking GCMS instrument, and a co-author of the original report of no organic matter on Mars, revealed unpublished results of pre-mission tests.

They showed that the instrument sent to Mars could easily have missed biologically significant amounts of organic matter in the soil, as it had in a number of tests on Earth.

Thus, the Mars GCMS results no longer can be considered proof that the LR failed to detect living microorganisms.

www.spacedaily.com...

So why, knowing that the test you are using to disqualify other positive results, cling to such vehement denials so long after? Why attempt to come up with alternative models to explain the conflicting results when you knew quite well that the conflict stems from the least sensitive device that could not detect life on Earth?

You say that sort of thing isn't political but that's all i see here.

I meant disclosure in the sense of revealing previously hidden information.

There are plenty of 'hidden' information as well :

Another find in the two decades-plus Viking treasure-trove of data was outlined by Joe Miller, associate professor in the Department of Cell and Neurobiology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Miller has recently reviewed the Viking LR data in great detail.

"To my surprise, in their LR experiment, they seemed to have clear periodic oscillations in the release of gas from a Martian soil sample injected with a nutrient solution. The oscillations in gas release had a period of what appeared to be one Martian day. Being a circadian biologist, I became very excited," Miller told SPACE.com.

On Earth, Miller said, circadian rhythms -- oscillations with a period of nearly 24 hours -- are present in every species examined down to blue-green algae. Was it possible, he asked, that the LR experiment was recording the circadian rhythm of a Martian soil-dwelling microbe?
NASA worked with Miller, providing him the 1976 LR data sets, as well as converting the information to an electronic format. That allowed the circadian biologist to study the data using modern computer-based analytical tools."I found that the gas release was indeed rhythmic, with a period of precisely 24.66 hours, a Martian day," Miller said. This finding, along with other painstaking assessments about LR operations, the scientist feels that a Martian circadian rhythm in the experiment may constitute a biosignature - a sign of life.

www.space.com...

"To my surprise, in their LR experiment, they seemed to have clear periodic oscillations in the release of gas from a Martian soil sample injected with a nutrient solution. The oscillations in gas release had a period of what appeared to be one Martian day. Being a circadian biologist, I became very excited," Miller told SPACE.com.
NASA worked with Miller, providing him the 1976 LR data sets, as well as converting the information to an electronic format. That allowed the circadian biologist to study the data using modern computer-based analytical tools.

"I found that the gas release was indeed rhythmic, with a period of precisely 24.66 hours, a Martian day," Miller said. This finding, along with other painstaking assessments about LR operations, the scientist feels that a Martian circadian rhythm in the experiment may constitute a biosignature - a sign of life."On the whole, a biological explanation seems more plausible. In all probability, Viking discovered life on Mars 25 years ago. The presence of a strong circadian rhythm in the LR experiment further suggests that circadian rhythmicity may be an excellent 'biosignature' of extraterrestrial life," Miller said.

www.space.com...

More specifically, says Miller, the fluctuations in gas emissions seem to be entrained to a 2 degrees C fluctuation inside the lander, which in turn reflected not-quite-total shielding from the 50 degrees C fluctuation in temperature that occurs daily on the surface of Mars. Temperature-entrained circadian rhythms, even to a mere 2-degree C fluctuation, have been observed repeatedly on earth.

As for the original concerns of the dubious chemists, who thought the same sort of signal could simply be coming from highly reactive, non-organic compounds in the soil, Miller says such a scenario would be almost impossible to imagine. "For one thing," he explains, "there has since been research that shows that superoxides exposed to an aqueous solution—like the nutrient solution in the experiment—will quickly be destroyed. And yet, the circadian rhythms from the Martian soil persisted for nine straight weeks."

"There is no reason for a purely chemical reaction to be so strongly synchronized to such a small temperature fluctuation," he adds. "We think that in conjunction with the strong indications from Mars Observer images that show water flowed on the surface in the recent past, a lot of the necessary characteristics of life are there. I think back in 1976, the Viking researchers had an excellent reason to believe they’d discovered life; I’d say it was a good 75 percent certain. Now, with this discovery, I’d say it’s over 90 percent. And I think there are a lot of biologists who would agree with me."

www.eurekalert.org...

And that's just one small issue. When you go into the Geology, climate you should likely ( but perhaps not; you don't seem to reflect on new data) be stunned. If this 'discussion' goes on long enough perhaps i can bother you will all the data i have collected in the last few years.

Continued

You are correct, the new information is presented as it is found. Again, Levin's interpretation of the Viking data is not the only interpretation.

You are incorrect. New data is presented as it becomes politically expedient to do or when efforts to suppress it fails. Levin's interpretation is certainly not the only one around but again reality is not determined by consensus so diverging opinions are no proof of anything but that the vast majority have always been wrong when it comes to a factual description of reality.

Where did i quote any of those? If so can you show that the data have in fact become useless?

A new test for the presence of vegetation on Mars depends on the fact that all organic molecules have absorption bands in the vicinity of 3.4 ...

adsabs.harvard.edu... (your link is broken)
The findings of Viking and the other landers and rovers (as well as orbiters) show that this study is obsolete.

Thanks for finding a new link; perhaps your input might in fact be of some use to me after all....

The problem with your 'analysis' , such as it is, is that it disregards old evidence based on the mistaken presumption that additional finds have not basically bourne out the original claims with more 'exacting' investigation.. Let me then present you with a few more 'modern' extracts:

Mars Once Green? - Carole Stoker and Pascal Ashwanden, both researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, have announced that they have found evidence suggesting that chlorophyl exists on the surface of Mars. Finding chlorophyl, the material that plants and algae use to convert sunlight into food, would be strong evidence that life one existed on the planet. Chlorophyl is what gives plants their characteristic green color. The discovery came to light when the scientists reexamined data from a 1997 mission to Mars. The results of their study was presented at the Second Astrobiology Science Conference last month.

www.unmuseum.org...

Mars Pathfinder mission touched down in the Ares Vallis region of Mars in July 1997. It took many images of the surrounding area and released a small rover to sample rocks.
A detailed analysis of the images of the landing site now reveals two areas close to Pathfinder that have the spectral signature of chlorophyll.

According to experts it might be highly significant - or could be just a patch of coloured soil. Specifically, the program looked for the spectral signature associated with red light absorption by chlorophyll.Previous searches for evidence of chlorophyll in Pathfinder's pictures were carried out shortly after it landed.Some tentative indications were seen but they were later dismissed as "possible image misregistration".

news.bbc.co.uk...

1. Chlorophyll for converting solar radiation into food (photosynthesis).
2. Cyanobacteria can tolerate the extreme damaging effect of solar UV-B by synthesising a variety of protecting pigments which either screen or prevent the effect of the radiation, such as phycocyanin, scytonemin, mycosporine- like amino acids, carotenoids and isoprenoids.

The pigments Dr. Pershin may have found are porphyrins derived from chlorophyll and hopanoids from carotenoids. These are found in cyanobacterial sedimentary deposits 3.5 Gy old. These photosynthetic pigments are auto-fluorescent and all biomolecules have unique spectra which can be detected amongst other compounds within a community. Dr. Pershin has used a two-band, red/green radiance-ratio technique as a tool for detecting evidence of pigments and related compounds derived from any cyanobacteria-like organisms in sediments residual from possible former potential habitats on the surface of Mars covering a rather large area in the western Utopia Planitia region of Mars. It is well known that organic pigments and components have a visible and red part in flourescence spectrum under the laser and solar UV-visible excitation. Several Hubble Space Telescope images of Mars were taken in key wavelengths and were used in his analysis. The question is: Are these pigments ancient or recent?

www.icamsr.org...

So yeah, that's exactly what i think they found but since this data is , funnily once again, 'not conclusive' maybe you can once again just claim that it's 'too old'?

Lowell's "canals" aren't there. But the article is pretty much nothing but speculation anyway.

Plenty of speculation going around, i mean i heard some smart people say that the evidence for life on Mars isn't 'in'! Hell i suspect people who do science that way may very well tell Martian invaders ( who tells us their from mars trough universal translators of sorts) that 'they' are not possible because we haven't found life on Mars yet. How i love well educated communities of people who deny any and all evidence contrary to the original claims of the most prestigious members until they have all died of old age! Talk of patronage!

Isn't it fascinating how the whole world have had to hold it's breath for three decades because we are stuck with deceitful groups of people who can't admit any truth that is contrary to their best interest? Great. The absolute worse thing about all of this is that this very same 'science community' gets to 'decide' , totally ambiguously, when the 'data is in' ; objective truth playing apparently no part in any of this.

So here we are, stuck, waiting for some white haired old men to tell us that they have now in fact found life on Mars but that they couldn't have known in 1976 because you know, they decided to alter the pre mission specs to 'prove' that there wasn't life on Mars. What a tragedy. Why don't we just start building castle's again so we can install some new Kings in them?

bah.

Stellar


[edit on 9-3-2009 by StellarX]

Interesting.

It does look like some type of mold or somethig similar growing.

Nice find

reply to post by bluemooone2


Dunes over a white rock substrate.

One last thought on this ONE flyover this area of Mars. I've taken one of ArMaP's excellent image enhancements, blown it up and enhanced it some more. What I see is a volcanic cone with ejecta being layed down in the direction of the wind. Current active volcanism on mars is exciting in and of itself, since mars is supposed to be geologically "dead".

Also notice if you look from the upper right to lower left of the image, the white frost goes from white to muddy gray to BLUE! Liquid water on ice is blue isn't it? Warmth from the volcanic vents could be melting the frost! If these are active volcanos, then as I mentioned earlier we have all the ingredients for life: organic material, energy and liquid water. I hope HIRISE does some more flyovers of this area, a rover would be nice too hehe.

reply to post by Nicolas Flamel

These are not true color images so the "blue" is probably not really blue.

There are processes happening on Mars other than active volcanoes (which there is no evidence to support) which can account for the spewing of material into the air. Frozen CO2 below the surface thaws into its gaseous state. When enough pressure builds, it breaks through the ice above carrying material from the surface with it.
apod.nasa.gov...


[edit on 3/9/2009 by Phage]

Also notice if you look from the upper right to lower left of the image, the white frost goes from white to muddy gray to BLUE! Liquid water on ice is blue isn't it?

Interesting idea. I think you are confusing liquid water on ice's color. It is only blue on Earth when it is reflecting a clear blue sky above it. On Mars a clear sky would be a butterscotch or pinkish-red. The ice acts as a mirror like surface reflecting the color of the sky above it.

If it is melted spots in the ice, why do they appear in the sand dunes next to the ice? Or is that ice too?

Originally posted by pavilOn Mars a clear sky would be a butterscotch or pinkish-red.

On Mars the sky is blue... for the same reason its blue on Earth... even ArMaP agrees with blue skies on Mars

reply to post by zorgon


If it weren't for the fine dust carried throughout the Martian atmosphere, the sky on Mars would be a dark blue due to Raleigh scattering. But because of that dust the Martian sky is a butterscotch color. Earth's atmosphere does not have the dust content that dry, dry Mars does.

[edit on 3/9/2009 by Phage]

Wormsign!

The crater does look like some sort of volcanic activity. That is very interesting and is probably going to be very controversial. Most "experts" have considered Mars geologically dead. I have read countless articles proclaiming that there is no evidence of active vulcanism. Soooo, what does that look like again?

Maybe Mars is not nearly as "dead" as has been claimed? If that is an active volcano, then the chances of life on Mars just got a whole lot better.

We already know that a considerable amount of water ice exists under the surface, now warm that ice up by geothermal processes and viola, liquid water! Maybe Mars has cyano-bacteria colonies under the surface? That might explain a lot.

Just speculation of course but it looks like NASA has painted itself into a corner here. The evidence is starting to pile up on the side of life.

[edit on 10-3-2009 by lunarminer]

reply to post by Phage


On the subject of the sky color on Mars. From what I have seen, the photos that we see from Mars are red saturated. When they are balanced for natural sunlight, the sky is in fact blue.

I keep wondering how much dust could possibly be suspended in the Martian atmosphere? The air density is 1 percent of that on Earth, while the gravity is a quarter of ours. It seems to me that our thick atmosphere would do a much better job of keeping dust suspended even with our higher gravity.

I know that some are going to say that the wind on Mars can reach 200 miles per hour. I would say that winds in the upper reaches of our atmosphere, where the air pressure matches that on Mars, also reaches 200 mph.

The point is that the dust on Mars would have to be much finer than that on Earth by an order of magnitude in order to stay suspended. The photos that I have looked at do not bear this out. The dirt and dust on Mars looks no finer than that on Earth.

In short, I think that the orange or pink sky on Mars is a fraud. The photos from Mars show an unnatural red saturation which NASA will have to admit sooner or later. I think that it will be very interesting to hear what excuse they use to explain it. Probably something like, "Our new software does a much better job of representing true color."

Originally posted by lunarminer
The point is that the dust on Mars would have to be much finer than that on Earth by an order of magnitude in order to stay suspended. The photos that I have looked at do not bear this out. The dirt and dust on Mars looks no finer than that on Earth.

Great post lunarminer! That's exactly why I believe the sky is blue on Mars..besides all the evidence of image tampering and so on..

reply to post by lunarminer



lol, spice!


we just might find organisms that can contain a water supply like a jug.

it sounds like a good strategy to evolve, given the enviroment.

maybe that's a reason why for some odd features we see?

reply to post by StellarX

You are incorrect. New data is presented as it becomes politically expedient to do or when efforts to suppress it fails.

I know it's off-topic, but I'm curious. Could you explain to whom, how and why the existence or otherwise of life on Mars has political consequences?

Originally posted by Astyanax
I know it's off-topic, but I'm curious. Could you explain to whom, how and why the existence or otherwise of life on Mars has political consequences?

I believe it speaks to origins and perhaps even human origins. Basically if there is life on Mars that means there are two habitable planets in one the only solar system that we can investigate. Since there are now moons of other planets that seem even more hospitable to life on Mars would very likely mean life on Europa and perhaps even a few more.

More fundmentally it starts to beg the question of whether Mars had more or less life in the past ( It's climate is known to have been rather more hospitable in the past) and if so what happened to it. Since we have no direct evidence to suppose that life evolved faster here or on Mars it begs the question of whether intelligent life where first to originate there or here.

But to really share my theories and opinions i would have to go even further off topic than we may allready be. You may or may not remember that i believe that the face is in fact artificial....

Stellar

Edit: I agree on most points lunarminer beside for the brookingsreport. If every there was a document created, ( a bible of misrepresentations if you will ) to have a political excuse to suppress knowledge this is one of them. As for the careers being at stake that certainly plays a huge part but without the luck of sharing the goals the PTB in this instance have the science establishment could never have managed this. This is much bigger than the scientific careers of a few white/grey haired planetary ( astrobiologist/ astronomers/cosmologist ) scientist who 'put' their money on the wrong horse. There have always been too much strange coincidences and knowledge about Mars to have come to the dead world hypothesis by chance.

Stellar

[edit on 10-3-2009 by StellarX]

reply to post by Astyanax


There are many political reasons to suppress knowledge of life on Mars.

The first one that everyone mentions is the Brookings Institute research paper that was done in the late 50's - early 60's. That paper found that the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere would have devestating consequences to our society. Everyone assumes that religion would be the institution that would be most severely impacted but the paper actually says that science as we know it would collapse.

I know that finding a few microbes on Mars is not exactly like talking to ET but it opens the door to the possibilities. A door that many would like to keep closed. Considering Richard Hoagland and the Enterprise Mission and the claims of artifacts on Mars. A discovery of life would lend more credibility to all of that.

Another reason for the politics is the Drake Equations. Astrophysicists like Carl Sagan have been saying for decades that life is extremely rare in the Universe. Two planets in the same solar system with life would cause some very serious problems because it would suggest that life is common in the Universe and that raises a bunch of questions.

Last of all there are a lot of scientists who have staked their careers and reputations on the idea that Mars is a dead world. This has been the conventional wisdom on Mars for the past 80 years at least. It would be a major loss of face to have to suddenly admit that all those guys were wrong. Textbooks would have to be rewritten, resources would have to be redirected, careers would be ruined. It is easier to simply maintain the veil of secrecy for as long as possible and to do limited controlled releases of information.

So, this is what we are seeing from NASA very small leaks of information that when you put it all together, it starts to add up to a very different Mars.

One of my favorite lines from Bill and Ted, "Dude, we've been totally lied to by our album covers."