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Odd Things Encountered On Mars' Surface

Well...that's a very curious geological accretion / weather erosion effect...if that's what it's conventionally believed to be. Unless (of course) it's just a weather balloon.
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By zooming in to such an extent, you do get a fair bit of pixilation. There does appear to be possibly 10 protuberances radiating from an oval central structure however, which is why it's been dubbed the crab.
 

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No matter what evidence is presented of life existing - or having existed - on Mars, and no matter which country/agency/authority presents it, human nature guarantees there will still be plenty of doubters and deniers. People only accept what they want to hear.

And also, there'll be plenty of people who will say that Mars is such a near-neighbour it is possible that it is a case of cross-contamination, i.e. life started on one planet and somehow transferred to the other. That idea that 'WE are the Martians!' - which I associate with Nigel Kneale's Quatermass, but I might be mis-remembering - indeed seems entirely plausible to me (not that I'm arguing in favour of that idea). So even if we come to generally accept that yes, there is/was life on Mars, there will still be the question of whether life exists anywhere else outside our solar system, or whether it is just a little local anomaly that has happened in our neighbourhood and .... err.... nowhere else at all.
 
Good crab picture there BMCS. But why has it got a fat ginger cat sitting on its face? Is it the lesser-known 'Garfield Crab' ?
 
I lost some interest in supposed evidence for alien life, whether fossilised or extant, on Mars, after the same official explanation was given every time.
Namely that, due to Mars' lower gravity and minimal weather conditions, erosion on the Red Planet will produce some seemingly strange shapes that would be too fragile to survive on Earth.
Still, it would have been nice if the Curiosity Rover had shuffled over for a closer look at these two objects with protuberances resembling arthropod legs and the various stick-like objects protruding from and casting shadows on the sand (one looks just like the long ladle I used when brewing beer!). It's hard to imagine the kind of specialised erosion that could carve out structures like these.
Finally, a shame that no Mars lander has been anywhere near the evocative tree-like objects, as photographed by the orbiter and which the late Arthur C Clarke suspected were genuine plant life.
It's a good point. Why isn't NASA wheeling the rover over for a close look?
I mean, isn't not as if the rover is whizzing past these things at a rate of knots. It's just crawling along. They could make it detour a bit, surely?
 
It's a good point. Why isn't NASA wheeling the rover over for a close look?
I mean, isn't not as if the rover is whizzing past these things at a rate of knots. It's just crawling along. They could make it detour a bit, surely?
Or send the chopper over for a butchers
 
Which is what the conspiracists have been saying for decades.
Mind you, with the recently-landed Chinese rover heading towards the so-called mud volcano, which is supposedly a prime location for detecting signs of life, I cannot imagine NASA wanting the CCP to win that prize (if indeed one exists). So, if NASA has any solid evidence for non-human artificial objects on Mars, now would be a propitious time to release them.
Of course, we now know that China and America are secretly working together, even though they project this fake animosity towards each other.
 
Thing is, when they send these rovers to Mars, they always look for a good place to land.
Some pictures are taken beforehand, some general areas are identified that might be worthy of investigation, then ultimately they sensibly look for somewhere flat to land.

The problem with that is that there might not be a helluva lot there to look at, even with a bit of a drive around.
I mean, if the same approach was applied to sending a craft to Earth for a look around, then it wouldn't surprise me if the ultimate landing places settled upon would be also nice and flat, with not a lot around.
Maybe The Sahara, The Arctic, the Siberian Steppe....etc
And not a lot would be found.
 
Very flat, Norfolk. Good place for an alien probe.
 
There's always Cromer.

Hmm. Just thought.... it might not be a good place for Martian Crab People to come probing......
 
Perseverance drives past Trollface (or Ghostface from Scream) buried on Mars:

mars1.JPG


Meanwhile, the Chinese Zhurong rover has completed its self-tests and is now slowly rolling south towards the "mud volcano" that geologists (or should that be areologists?) are getting excited about. The Chinese haven't released many photos yet, so fingers crossed that something of interest turns up in the briny Martian mud.
 
Good work, BlessMCS. I have to say 'Trollface' is a dead ringer (pardon the pun) for something that used to be in the opening titles (iirc) of 'Scooby Doo, Where Are You?'. I haven't seen it for years, but that face brought the memory flooding back.
 
ZOINKS!! That was the chap! Wonder how he ended up on Mars? Or did he start there.....??
 
I lost some interest in supposed evidence for alien life, whether fossilised or extant, on Mars, after the same official explanation was given every time.
Namely that, due to Mars' lower gravity and minimal weather conditions, erosion on the Red Planet will produce some seemingly strange shapes that would be too fragile to survive on Earth.
Still, it would have been nice if the Curiosity Rover had shuffled over for a closer look at these two objects with protuberances resembling arthropod legs and the various stick-like objects protruding from and casting shadows on the sand (one looks just like the long ladle I used when brewing beer!). It's hard to imagine the kind of specialised erosion that could carve out structures like these.
Finally, a shame that no Mars lander has been anywhere near the evocative tree-like objects, as photographed by the orbiter and which the late Arthur C Clarke suspected were genuine plant life.
Mars #1. Just Plain Weird.

Mars #2. (Three separate rocks - an illusion?)

Crab image.png
Mars #3. (Appears to be levitating - an illusion?)
Spoon.png
Mars #4. (Could turn out to be some sort of crystalline mineral form?)
("Depends how close the pic is)
Plants.png
 
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It's hard to imagine that the people who are sending probes to Mars could be so incurious about those pics that they wouldn't send their little chug-a-bug along to have a closer look. Unless the pics are known not to be genuine. They look like weird things to fake though. That said, I can never get my head around what would motivate people to fake stuff like that. Just cos they can do it, I suppose.
 
It's hard to imagine that the people who are sending probes to Mars could be so incurious about those pics that they wouldn't send their little chug-a-bug along to have a closer look. Unless the pics are known not to be genuine. They look like weird things to fake though. That said, I can never get my head around what would motivate people to fake stuff like that. Just cos they can do it, I suppose.
My first thought when I saw these so-called Martian Pics was, are they real.
My second thought was, where did they originate - just from images of tagged 'Martian Photos?'
My third thought is more-or-less the same as yours 'CharmerKamelion,' if they are the genuine article, then why on Earth (or Mars!) would the scientists ignore them, or at least the harder to explain ones? After all, isn't that the supposed reason they go to all the trouble of sending stuff up there?
 
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Driving a rover on Mars isn't just a case of "drive it over there and we'll have a look, Bob". Every minute on the surface is allocated to one experiment or another, it's outline and purpose decided months/years in advance.

As mentioned up thread, a suitable spot for all of the experiments has to be found. If NASA wanted to look at one of these anomalies, then it would be a designated mission and cost millions of dollars. As far as i see it, the only chance we've got to have a look at one of these is if:

a) It happens to be where the rover is going anyway
b) The rover fails and so the helicopter is allocated more time to explore
c) Other signs of life are discovered and these anomolies become a priority.
c) Future exploration becomes so commonplace that rovers/helicopters can take "time out" to have a look.
 
And remember, due to the 20 minute lag between sending a signal and the rover receiving it, any instructions to deviate from what it was already doing autonomously (a lot of the things the rover does is, as Ringo states, pre-planned a long time in advance), they have to be a 'packet' of instructions that would essentially be saying "stop what you're doing, go over there for a look, investigate what you find, report back, and then be prepared for further instructions".
A lot of these sorts of things are evidenced when you look at the pics it takes of the surroundings in which the wheel tracks go straight for hundreds of metres and then suddenly turn in a different direction - that's a change in course that would only be initiated by NASA controllers.
 
Blimey, you guys make it sound like looking for signs of ancient life on a planet that's 34 million miles away is difficult! :crazy:
 
And remember, due to the 20 minute lag between sending a signal and the rover receiving it, any instructions to deviate from what it was already doing autonomously (a lot of the things the rover does is, as Ringo states, pre-planned a long time in advance), they have to be a 'packet' of instructions that would essentially be saying "stop what you're doing, go over there for a look, investigate what you find, report back, and then be prepared for further instructions".
A lot of these sorts of things are evidenced when you look at the pics it takes of the surroundings in which the wheel tracks go straight for hundreds of metres and then suddenly turn in a different direction - that's a change in course that would only be initiated by NASA controllers.
I would imagine that all the photos are uploaded at the end of the day/period or whatever, rather than being uploaded as they are taken, they are probably then anylized by some team or another, to look for anything that is of interest to the mission, then some photos are released to the public, by the time we see them the rover has probably moved on somewhere else and it would nit be economically viable to reroute it back to look at something, that has more than likely been anylized by experts and found not to be of scientic interest to the mission, just because the public think its a bit weird.
 
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What you said, Souleater. But surely if any one of the odd-looking things in those pics could be re-located and did indeed prove to be life or proof of life, imagine the significance. And the kudos. And the scientists' curiosity must surely drive them to want to take another butchers. I mean, they get their probes to scrabble around in the dirt for traces of possible microscopic life (or similar) when.... Look over there! It's a bloody great crab! Wandering around amongst some trees! Waving a great big spoon!
 
Thing is, 'time' is something they have an abundance of. If the rover get's redirected to inspect something and await further instructions there is no point in sending it off somewhere else, only to the possibly find something in the analysis that would make them want to send the rover back. It would make more sense for it to just hold station at the site while possibly doing other aspects of its scientific routine that are not dependant on location, such as all the photography of the surroundings, analysing the atmosphere, taking soil samples etc etc.
Then once any analysis has been done back on earth, if they find nothing of further interest then they can instruct the rover to continue on its way.
 
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