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Odd Things Encountered On Mars' Surface

Could part of the Rover fallen off...given it's waiting out bad weather?
 
Nobody seems to have said that it could be a small rock thrown up from a nearby meteorite impact, which just happened to land in the probe's field of view.

A lot more meteorites hit Mars than Earth, on account of Mars' extremely thin atmosphere. Anything of equivalent size which hits Earth's atmosphere would burn up long before it made it to the surface.

I agree that if it is this, it's quite a coincidence, and extremely interesting. Some people have said that the rover itself could have dislodged a rock, which then rolled into view. But if the rover hasn't moved for a month, how so?

Just my tuppence worth.

Bill.
 
Myth - thanks for posting the before and after images!

They now think that the rover knocked a piece of loose bedrock while it was maneuvering, "tiddly-winked" it, and it landed upside down.

Of course they would say that - to cover up the awful truth that the public can't handle.
 
Mythopoeika said:
If you look at the 'Before' image and zoom in, you will see that there is something there in the place where this strange rock has appeared.
My theory is that a chunk of rock sprang up as a result of a circular frost fracture
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I thought the same when I first saw the pictures: that some part of the the rock was already in the first picture. Hadn't thought about frost fracture being the cause though. Good one!
 
Next thing, the Rat-Bat-Spider appears and tells us to go away!

(for the younger members, the Rat-Bat-Spider was a monster in a monumentally cheesy movie called 'Angry Red Planet' When the Earthmen shot it's eyes out, I felt genuinely bad, I thought of it as some kind of hamster. Sentimental me!)

The astronauts, clad in surplus fighter pilot suits and helmets were a dippy bunch. The animation effects would not have fooled a garden slug. Dialog was pitiful, plot was puerile, whole thing stank. Which is why it's become a cultural icon.

Wonder what we might do if it should turn out that there is advanced life on Mars(perhaps in underground habitats?)

It may never happen, or, a practical FTL might appear in a year or two.

Sure would bew nice not to be alone!
 
krakenten said:
Next thing, the Rat-Bat-Spider appears and tells us to go away!

(for the younger members, the Rat-Bat-Spider was a monster in a monumentally cheesy movie called 'Angry Red Planet' When the Earthmen shot it's eyes out, I felt genuinely bad, I thought of it as some kind of hamster. Sentimental me!)
Click to expand...
Obligatory youtube clip of the rat-bat-spider
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzkBJA-Tlxw
 
Martian creature photographed moving about by Spirit Rover sequence?.
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014100...ife-on-mars-that-nasa-doesn-t-want-to-discuss

If the photographs show what is claimed, then an explanation is definitely needed. But to be frank, I can't see whatever it is they are alleged to show. If anyone can find links to better versions of the pics, please post them.
 
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I've noticed that there are a lot of guys with videos on Youtube looking at rocks and (frankly) clutching at straws - seeing simulacra and pareidolia all over the place.

But...this is definitely weird and unexplained. I wish NASA would do more analysis of stuff like this.
 
garrick92 said:
Martian creature photographed moving about by Spirit Rover sequence?.

If the photographs show what is claimed, then an explanation is definitely needed. But to be frank, I can't see whatever it is they are alleged to show. If anyone can find links to better versions of the pics, please post them.
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There's a rather large rock in between some others. In the pictures where it's circled (pics 3 and 5), it's generally darker than the other rocks and not as smooth as the other large rocks pictured. This object does not appear in pictures 2 and 4, indicating it has moved. Lighter spots that are markings that are apparently on this object indicate that it has maintained it's orientation, eg it's not an object that rolled over on it's top. In picture five, two small dark objects appear that were not in picture 4.
 
I wish NASA would do more analysis of stuff like this.
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They do. What do you think they do with the pictures- blow their noses on them? These are some of the most expensive images ever made.

This is a parallax artifact. Look at the rocks behind that little group;- they are all completely different. The two pictures were taken from completely different angles.

Here's my analysis.

I've marked a particularly distinctive v-shaped background rock with a blue arrow in both images:
blue1412980698.png

as you can see the blue marker is well to the left (and considerably higher) in the image labelled #3. This means that there is plenty of room for the missing rock to be hiding to its right in image #2.

NASA will have looked at these rocks and no doubt given them cute little names. But they would be under no illusion that they have moved.
 
eburacum said:
I wish NASA would do more analysis of stuff like this.
Click to expand...

They do. What do you think they do with the pictures- blow their noses on them? These are some of the most expensive images ever made.
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Yes, yes, some of the most expensive photos ever.

When an apparent anomaly like this appears, NASA should be aware of it and put a notice next to the picture to explain what we're looking at. Otherwise, we'll forever be getting the navel gazers on Youtube desperately looking for something that isn't there, and even talking about a conspiracy.
 
Looking very closely at the photos, I think I can see a thin sliver of the missing rock peeking out from behind the larger rock on the right. This sliver has the same tones as the corresponding edge of the missing rock; if this were a 3D image this would be easy to see.

As I've said before on this forum, space photos should be in 3D and colour wherever possible, since it helps with the interpretation a lot.
 
Thanks for those clarifications eburacum, you've certainly helped me make visual 'sense' of what was previously a meaningless mess of dark and light areas. I agree that there is definitely a parallax effect with camera viewpoint movement evident between the two pictures.

But is that the whole explanation?

The fourth and fifth photographs in the sequence don't appear to fit the parallax explanation at all. In fact, I find the sudden appearance of the 'object' at the left of photo #5 very surprising.

Can you explain those too? (This isn't meant insolently, I am genuinely curious).

BTW, obviously the bloke who runs the site to which I've linked is the sort of person who suffers from acute VonDanikenitis and sees alien artefacts in his breakfast cereal, but -- ignoring his excited blathering -- I think this sequence of photographs has yet to be explained satisfactorily.

OK, so there's a parallax effect involved that isn't immediately obvious. Now that that's been pointed out, does it account for the anomalies in photos #4 and #5 too?

BTW: Passing curiosity, from British TV news a day or two ago. ITN interviews NASA chief for story about the feasibility of establishing a manned martian base, and he mentions almost in passing that 'life may exist on mars now'. A real WTF moment for me, not even mentioned in the text accompanying the video, and I am amazed that no other journalist has picked up on it.
 
garrick92 said:
BTW: Passing curiosity, from British TV news a day or two ago. ITN interviews NASA chief for story about the feasibility of establishing a manned martian base, and he mentions almost in passing that 'life may exist on mars now'. A real WTF moment for me, not even mentioned in the text accompanying the video, and I am amazed that no other journalist has picked up on it.
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Microscopic life perhaps?
 
garrick92 said:
But is that the whole explanation?

The fourth and fifth photographs in the sequence don't appear to fit the parallax explanation at all. In fact, I find the sudden appearance of the 'object' at the left of photo #5 very surprising.

Can you explain those too? (This isn't meant insolently, I am genuinely curious).
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I think so. The two large foreground rocks appear to be on a ridge, while the rock in the background is lower down, probably in a crater - a feature which is quite common on Mars. This means that the mysterious 'moving' rock is probably quite a bit further away than it looks.
Here's where I think the rock is in each photo (in photo #1,it is well outside the frame to the right)
d.jpg
 
I see what you're getting at, but I can't square what I'm actually seeing with what you're proposing. To me, the parallax involved appears too great, even if one accepts your reading that the 'object' is in a depression.

If I had access to some photoshop-type software like the one you're using, I'd try to illustrate my argument, but I don't know how to use it, and words would be too complex, so I'll have to leave it there.

I'm not concluding that these pictures show a martian animal, just that they're bloody weird.

Incidentally *is* there some freeware photoshop-type stuff that even a sausage-fingered luddite like me could learn to use? If anyone knows of such a thing, please let me know.
 
garrick92 said:
Incidentally *is* there some freeware photoshop-type stuff that even a sausage-fingered luddite like me could learn to use? If anyone knows of such a thing, please let me know.
Click to expand...

Well...there's The Gimp which is free but hard to use, or there's Paintshop Pro which costs anywhere from £40 to £70, depending on your source.
Or...there's Project Dogwaffle:

http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/
 
I don't buy the 'parallax' explanation at all, which is why I find this to be especially weird.

If it's not a lifeform or a rock, my suggestion is that it's a tiny mud geyser - a minor volcanic outgassing causing a small amount of mud to jump up a few inches and then fall back again.
 
I would guess that the mysterious 'moving' rock is at least twice as far from the camera as the two large rocks in the foreground. Taking the two rocks as a fixed point then it is easy to see that the distant 'moving' rock will appear in a wide range of different locations in the background.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I don't buy the 'parallax' explanation at all, which is why I find this to be especially weird.
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The parallax explanation is particularly easy to see in the first two images I posted. It is certainly correct, but very difficult to visualise in these rather muddy reproductions.
 
Here's how I see it; the Mars Rover was moving along the line at the bottom, and looking in the general direction of the mysterious 'moving' rock marked X. The other rocks are about halfway between the rover and the rock marked 'X', which may be in the bottom of a shallow crater.

Note that the Rover doesn't need to move very far to make 'X' appear in a very different location; note as well that the ground that Spirit was moving across is unlikely to have been very flat, so the relative elevations of the rocks will change.

In particular note the postions of the two smaller rocks F and G; these move quite significantly from picture to picture as well, in a way that is entirely consistent with my diagram.

crater.png
 
As far as 3d software goes, I find Anim8or the easiest of all the renderers; most other software is far too fiddly. Here's the surface of an alien planet I've just made (some postwork in Gimp)

 
Thanks for the image software recommendations chaps/chapesses, I will look into them. (Totes 'spec, man, eburacum, for your crazy graphics skilzz0rs)

OK so we can't agree on the rock/animal whatever.

How about this?

Same batshit site, but a rather less ambiguous photo.
 
Well, we've been littering it since the 1970s iirc, so no shock there.

My instantaneous reaction to the 'bit of an airbag' interpretation is that it appears to me to be remarkable that something light enough to wave in a slight martian breeze would maintain the same 'ears-up' orientation even when blown several metres up a hill (as is claimed in the article, although I can't find a pic illustrating this movement).

But yes, it probably is a bit of the lander -- it would be a bit too damn good to be true if the craft had landed next to a martian critter that obligingly hung around to be photographed.
 
I could with a bit of work create a model that exactly matches each of those photos from the batshit site, demonstrating how rock X can appear to move in the way it does; but it should be easy enough to see from my diagram how it works, so I won't bother for the moment.

The hard part would be reconstructing all, the other, more distant rocks, many of which only appear in one photo (but no-one mentions them - is Mars simply over-run with moving rocks or is it just that people find it hard to think in 3D?).
 
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