Curiosity: Potential Anomalies (Update 01/2014)

originally posted by: ArMaP
a reply to: funbox

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by that.

You don't have to understand it to enjoy it. funbox is an air poet, someone who can take words and symbols and things, throw them up into the air, and they fall on the page in arrangements like a poem. He's probably the best writer I've seen on the site.

That said, Mars seems to have opened up again in the Rover's path, giving rise to sandy bits interspersed with pointy and rocky bits. Somewhere in there lies treasure, and some of you guys may have been poking around in it lately. Good finds.

a reply to: fullparanoidmode

Ah jeez in a wastebasket, some guy comes on trying to sell his book, so someone give him a star to keep the string going....but dude, this isn't an open air marketplace, and folks aren't hanging around here with money sticking out of their wallets who then accidently drop their hard earned cash onto the computer keys, and then onto the floor, next to the dog stuff. That aside, how are sales going?

originally posted by: Aleister
You don't have to understand it to enjoy it.

But I have to understand it to answer it.

funbox is an air poet, someone who can take words and symbols and things, throw them up into the air, and they fall on the page in arrangements like a poem.

I don't like poetry.

He's probably the best writer I've seen on the site.

Not to me, far from it.

a reply to: ArMaP

what does the blue silt indicate in your hunts ?

eg the bluesilts, you find lots of fossil on top of

funbox

a reply to: ArMaP

*a small slit appears in the screen and a unusually large yet dimensionally challenged mfb appears. with eyesite shattering speed he drags the Your Banned thread into the digitally deranged ,quazi arrangement of a posts that is Curiosity: potential anomalies UPDATE*

ArMaP's Banned, for simply discussing other members

funbox

originally posted by: funbox
what does the blue silt indicate in your hunts ?

eg the bluesilts, you find lots of fossil on top of

The grey silt layers appear (to the naked eye) as devoid of fossils, as if they were too old (as it appears below, implying that's an older layer) for having that kind of living organisms.

But I don't know if my interpretation is right.

a reply to: funbox

What's a "mfb"?

a reply to: ArMaP

well im interpreting, it as you've found a layer that's devoid of fossils, that's greyish not blueish , im also interpreting it as you've not investigated the 'greysilt' to a degree which would exclude fossils , have you a microscope or magnifying glass ?

an mfb = microfunbox ..,they genrally come in all shapes and sizes though

funbox

originally posted by: funbox
well im interpreting, it as you've found a layer that's devoid of fossils, that's greyish not blueish , im also interpreting it as you've not investigated the 'greysilt' to a degree which would exclude fossils , have you a microscope or magnifying glass ?

All those interpretations are correct.

What happened was that, at the time (some 35 years ago) we (me, a neighbour and my sister) went to the site where they were digging for the foundations of a building and found some fossils, so we returned there many times. Some months later they decided to dig to a greater depth, so the layer that was full of fossils became out of our reach, and the layer below (the grey silt layer) didn't have any visible fossils. We didn't think about using a magnifying glass or a microscope (I had a small one that came with a small chemistry set).

an mfb = microfunbox ..,they genrally come in all shapes and sizes though

That explains why I didn't know about it.

a reply to: ArMaP

I suppose you could have took a sample back , but , hey , retrospect , what is it good for ...

funbox

a reply to: funbox

If I ever get the opportunity (no pun intended) to go back in time 35 years and do some things in a different way I will try to remember to get a sample of that soil.

I remembered that both layers (the one with the fossils and the grey silt layer) extend through all this area, and some 10 km from where I live there's a cliff where we can see those layers. In the image below (from Google's Street View) you can get an idea of what it looks like, although it's a little mixed up with the rest of the soil.

(click for full size)

originally posted by: funbox
a reply to: jeep3r

all we need to see is some ruined carrousels , and bingo, we've discovered the equivalent of a lakeside Martian leisure complex for the Martian elite,, im expecting further down artists way, we'll find chair lifts, leading up to a large dining and beauty spot viewpoints built into a huge cliff that looks over the old lake

but I don't expect it'll pan out like that , pictures like that taken up there , would cause cataclysmic earthquakes down here. certainly not worth rocking the boat in its current state

Indeed, a lot of interesting things were 'sailing by' (as you say) in some of the more intriguing images we've seen up to now. Yet, it seems that things are going strictly according to protocol.

The scientific goals are necessary, yes, and there've been some intermissions, true ... but it seems like you can't have a fossil without previously having found the building blocks of life.

You can't have the building blocks of life without having proven past habitability. No past habitability without having shown there's been water. No oceans prior to finding an ankle-deep lake at Gale (and so on).

/* sarcasm off */

So, as we advance through the 'protocol', chances might actually increase to officially see something like 'past life' (or present life) on Mars.

God save the 'protocol' ... !

originally posted by: ArMaP
a reply to: funbox

If I ever get the opportunity (no pun intended) to go back in time 35 years and do some things in a different way I will try to remember to get a sample of that soil.

I remembered that both layers (the one with the fossils and the grey silt layer) extend through all this area, and some 10 km from where I live there's a cliff where we can see those layers. In the image below (from Google's Street View) you can get an idea of what it looks like, although it's a little mixed up with the rest of the soil.

(click for full size)

take a screenshot of the text just in case , there might be a delay in the time disassembly line and your description of the silt under the microscope will come into place in the near, I hear some universe auditors say to allow for 48 hrs to elapse before complaints are to be made, you never know though they might come good

as for the silt , if its good enough for plants to grow in (your pic) its more than certain to be made up of at least 'parts* of earths previous inhabitants , I suppose in some small way they might make up the refractive index , who would have thought this odd cyclical reincarnation would be so scrutinized , to the point of light play

me , I m just watching the clock, maybe we'll have a full chemical analysis appear shortly and these comments will rightly disappear

ill not have a kryten moment though

funbox

a reply to: jeep3r

I would have expected to see a timeline of events , charts , interesting diagrams of important finds/elements detected, temperature and wind speeds for the entire period, where is all the information ?its been over a year , surely we don't have to wait till the rovers dead , before some kind of comprehensive, easily accessible data becomes available, dare I say it a conclusion

to me it seems far fetched to have any rigid protocols for this mission, if indeed it is a mission and not some on the fly scripted drip drip

how many variables have we seen so far come into play? the route must have altered so many times , did we go into the buttes the way they planned ? , if something as basic as the route cannot be quantified and executed according to plan and within time schedules how can any realistic approaches to experimentation be made , especially considering such variables as power consumption, additional route alterations , unexpected software failures ,the wheels being lacerated, surely this is taking its toll, drag alone, with increased surface area of the wheels would be payed via more energy consumption.

surely a far simpler and more productive protocol would be to land it ,throw a big party at the sheer odds of landing it , then wing it with the cameras, making for a rough destination exploring interesting things along the way , in all seriousness , what more is needed ?

funbox

originally posted by: funbox
as for the silt , if its good enough for plants to grow in (your pic) its more than certain to be made up of at least 'parts* of earths previous inhabitants , I suppose in some small way they might make up the refractive index , who would have thought this odd cyclical reincarnation would be so scrutinized , to the point of light play

As I said, in that photo, the grey silt is mixed with the rest of the soil, that's not just the silt.

I don't understand what you mean by "refractive index".

ill not have a kryten moment though

I don't have the slightest idea of what that means.

a reply to: ArMaP

en.wikipedia.org...

should give you all the info

as for Kryten , that ill leave to you

funbox

originally posted by: ArMaP

originally posted by: funbox
as for the silt , if its good enough for plants to grow in (your pic) its more than certain to be made up of at least 'parts* of earths previous inhabitants , I suppose in some small way they might make up the refractive index , who would have thought this odd cyclical reincarnation would be so scrutinized , to the point of light play

As I said, in that photo, the grey silt is mixed with the rest of the soil, that's not just the silt.

sounds like we could end up stuck in cheese with a mouse and a bug , trying to describe this 'silt'

A quick 'book of the damned snippit

It is our expression that nothing can attempt to be, except by attempting to exclude something else: that that which is commonly called "being" is a state that is wrought more or less definitely proportionately to the appearance of positive difference between that which is included and that which is excluded.

But it is our expression that there are no positive differences: that all things are like a mouse and a bug in the heart of a cheese. Mouse and a bug: no two things could seem more unlike. They're there a week, or they stay there a month: both are then only transmutations of cheese. I think we're all bugs and mice, and are only different expressions of an all-inclusive cheese.

Or that red is not positively different from yellow: is only another degree of whatever vibrancy yellow is a degree of: that red and yellow are continuous, or that they merge in orange.

So then that, if, upon the basis of yellowness and redness, Science should attempt to classify all phenomena, including all red things as veritable, and excluding all yellow things as false or illusory, the demarcation would have to be false and arbitrary, because things colored orange, constituting continuity, would belong on both sides of the attempted border-line.

Charles Fort - the book of the damned

www.resologist.net...

funbox

a reply to: funbox

I know what "refractive index" means, I should have said that what I don't understand is why you talk about it in this case.

I will ignore that "Kryten" reference, but that will make me ignore more of the things you post.

a reply to: ArMaP

the color of the silt maybe? wouldn't certain elemental compounds attribute towards the look ?
im having the same trouble at this moment filming the eclipse..

the joy of cloud cover and alternating light refraction.. got to love camera work for endless adjustments

funbox

originally posted by: funbox
the color of the silt maybe?

wouldn't certain elemental compounds attribute towards the look ?

Only if the silt was translucent and we were looking through it, as we are looking at the silt (mixed with the rest of the soil) and the silt is not translucent, refraction doesn't apply, only reflection/reflectivity.