Mysterious Streaks/Tracks Detected by the Rover... Curiosity Sol 540.

qmantoo
You would have thought that erosion over billions of years would show, and the erosion would be obvious, but where is it? There are still pointy sharp rocks, there are no rocks with obvious wind erosion visible, all I see is a small covering of very fine dust.

Well there's plenty of rocks on Mars, one might infer that the many smaller rocks eroded from larger rocks. Is that reasonable? There's ample evidence that there used to be water on Mars, and that evidence is often in the form of channels, deltas etc. Those things are snapshots of past erosion.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Earth has far more erosion than Mars does.

Yes, I never implied that it didn't.

On Earth it comes from wind, water and general wear and tear and this is obvious just looking at the environment on Earth. Mars we dont see many grooves on a small local level evidenced by the rovers on the ground. I have linked to other examples of grooves which cannot immediately be explained away as localised dust-devils or erosion.
Maybe you can tell us what you reckon may have caused these grooves ON MARS. Earth environmental influences have very little comparison to Mars ones because things are so different up there (or so we are told).

edit on 25 Feb 2014 by qmantoo because: (no reason given)

I can't tell you where they're from, but I'd guess that the environment of Mars was once more Earth-like, and that opens the door for all sorts of erosion etc, even if its not really happening at the moment. That's why I phrased it as "a planet that's been around for billions of years". Like most planets, Mars has changed quite a bit since it first started cooling down. An environment can change itself quite a bit when the time scale is billions of years, even if there's no life.

There's plenty of evidence that there WAS liquid water on Mars, and if there was, why couldn't it cause erosion? In fact, erosion is how the dry riverbeds etc formed. There's not plenty of evidence for martians building pipes along random looking lines, though.

There's less wind, but it includes acid fog, something that may have unique weathering properties.

Mars' surface has also been shaped by volcanism, another non-living feature of Mars that defines its surface.

I know Mars doesn't have an atmosphere to speak of but what about winds and or solar winds?

What does naturally and normally move across the surface of an alien planet? Things that are not living such as aliens of long lost Martian civilizations - There has to be some space based reason for these if not terrestrial.

I suppose it's also possible if near an impact crater there could have been rocks blown away from the blast that hit other rocks causing them to move like balls on a pool table.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


Sorry to pop your bubble mars got a atmosphere near 11km of height the composition of it make it not the best one for human

Dolby_X
reply to post by JohnPhoenix

 

Sorry to pop your bubble mars got a atmosphere near 11km of height the composition of it make it not the best one for human

Ah.. I welcome you then to expound on the winds of mars.

Lots of information by learned folks on the winds of mars in this thread about dust being blown on and off the rovers. After reading it you will not know what to believe because it gives official endorsement to all arguments, so good luck with understanding the winds on Mars..

You see on one hand some folks are saying that the groves are deeper features weathered over billions of years... and on the other hand not showing other evidence of similar or related weathering on Mars which may lend weight to their argument. (not sand dunes please)

Over millions or billions of years, any grooves will have their edges worn away or smoothed out. Even if the wind is pathetically weak, the edges will not be crisp and sharp.

We can discuss all of this forever, but unless NASA is willing to go and investigate, we will never know any more about the anomalous features found by the rovers on Mars.

There is a huge body of evidence in the photos of anomalous things, yet NASA will not enter into any discussion about the strange things shown in the images from Mars. That must tell us something, it tells us that if they truly wanted to find life on Mars they would properly document and investigate what strange things they find, rather than just moving on.

Other inexplicable mysterious streaks on the sand...
mars.jpl.nasa.gov...
mars.jpl.nasa.gov...
mars.jpl.nasa.gov...
mars.jpl.nasa.gov...
mars.jpl.nasa.gov...
mars.jpl.nasa.gov...
mars.jpl.nasa.gov...

Our best bet is to ask at the Unmanned Spaceflight Forum.

I recall reading somewhere that they are cracks, or eroded veins, that got gradually filled with fine dust.

P.S. found some explanation in this part of their thread: www.unmannedspaceflight.com...

QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Feb 12 2014, 05:40 AM) *
No, settling of blocks! We've seen it many times in the past - check out the rim of Endurance crater 9.5 years ago.

Phil

one model to explain the curious 'embossed' racetrack sand patterns might be that, as the resultant fractures fill in with the deflating block material, and the exposed tops are eroded ever lower, the larger pebbles build up along the perimeters of the blocks where they tumbled or rolled off the topography of the block at that time and remain where they came to rest, leaving berms that build up along the fracture edges as deflation processes continue, eventually the berms alongside the fractures are left higher than the middle of the once-blocks since the bulk of the unmovable material has accumulated there due to the original topography, which supports the degree of variability we see in the berms. im wondering how much material has been eroded off the top here to leave what we see?

Well, it can't be a tail, there are not other tracks around it like footprints...
Maybe snake like? but that would be it hops around instead of slithering around, seeing as how the pattern in eratic and cuts in and out.
Good find though, keep up the good work!
I'm more interested in the Ancient Civilization aspect of Mars, lower lifeforms are a bonus, lol