Sunday, August 14, 2005

Is the ESA's Mars Express team trying to tell us something? Take a look at the unmistakable vivid blue and green in the top-center of this (very large) image.

I know that sometimes lack of color correction can produce spurious oases on the Martian surface, but this . . . ?
Posted by Mac at 12:07 AM

17 comments:

W.M. Bear said...

Yep, I see it too. Hard to imagine a color correction that would give a greenish tint to an otherwise rusty yellowish-beige predominance, though I suppose that's conceivable. There's gotta at least be rudimentary life there, Mac, even if it's just algae-like mats. There's the atmospheric methane, the polar "spiders" and "banyan trees," the greenish tints, the surface/subsurface water, etc., etc., etc.

2:52 AM
Ken said...

Well, that's ESA for you: disappoint, disappoint, shock. If I were orbiting in the USS Kosmik Kenney, looked out the port hole and saw that, I'd reckon it a prime suspect for a life-oasis. Note the streaks on the top right have greenish tinges, with a few having the oddest little red outline. Could easily be algae. Also, further down and to the left, can be seen a streak that flows down a noticeable slope, over a much more slight incline, and then down another slope, all indicating to me a greater likelihood of water flow, and decreasing the likelihood of a dust avalanche.

All in all, Bear, I agree with you. There must be something living there, it surpasses all logic to say there is not. As to why ESA does this, ah, what to think? Authority flanked by silent whistleblowers? They've come up with some doozies lately, all increasing the probability of life on Mars. Ha ha: to think I'd live to see the day; this is great!

Yeah, oasis in the desert, sure looks like it.

4:32 AM
Ken Younos said...

Martian oasis...Wish we could send National Geographic up there to take pictures from the ground...

A couple of additional thoughts:

First, I thought liquid water was not possible on the Martian surface because of low temperatures and reduced atmospheric pressure.

Second, if the green tints really do constitute some sort of vegetative life, it suggests that chlorophyl (however the hell you spell it) and photosynthesis are at work. In other words, plant life on Mars has somehow evolved in a very similar fashion -- if not in the exact same fashion -- as it has on Earth.

I think the odds of that happening are extremely small...unless there's more to evolution than the strictly arbitrary hit-and-miss scenario of natural selection.

4:47 AM
stankan said...

I don't know much about color correction. But, if these colors are close to accurate, this should be touted as a major discovery.

I think of the universe as one large biosphere. All evolution (chemical or biological) takes place within this sphere. I therefore expect similar life forms in the rest of the universe to the ones on Earth. I still believe they evolved.

Stan

6:01 AM
Carol said...

Site seems to be down in some peculiar fashion. I just clicked on your link, got an empty photo space with one of the "no picture" x'ed boxes (what is the formal name for them?). I went up the URL and got forbidden notices, and when I got to the home page wasn't getting a 404 of any kind, it was empty.

Do you suppose someone was unhappy about that picture?

11:57 AM
JohnFen said...

I think the odds of that happening are extremely small...

Maybe not. Mars and Earth exchange a surprising amount of mass in the form of meteorites. Life could have started on one and been transplanted to the other, and you'd have the same coincidence. I admit a bias, though -- I'm rather partial to the "we are the martians" theory.

1:16 PM
JohnFen said...

...err, I mean "hypothesis", not "theory". Have to be careful about those words these days.

1:17 PM
Ken Younos said...

"Maybe not. Mars and Earth exchange a surprising amount of mass in the form of meteorites. Life could have started on one and been transplanted to the other, and you'd have the same coincidence. I admit a bias, though -- I'm rather partial to the "we are the martians" theory."

I've got my own hypothesis; I call it the "Duplication Hypothesis". My proposal is that there is actually a space-time nexus of some sort between Earth and Mars, which in turn caused life to evolve in remarkably similar ways on the two separate worlds.

My guess is that on planet X in some part of the universe far from Earth life has evolved in very different ways than it has here. Perhaps there is even intelligent life there, but the way that this particular intelligence has developed is so different from our own evolutionary history that communication between them and us would be impossible. In other words, their intelligence would not be wired in the same way as ours, and communication is possible only where reasoning works in roughly similar ways.

If men and women have such a difficult time understanding one another, just think of the implications if the difference in psychic "wiring" were increased exponentially. Lol.

3:01 PM
Mac said...

Ken Younos--

Sounds very "Sheldrakian"!

3:27 PM
Ken said...

Water can exist in liquid form down to 6 millibars, .006 of Earth's atmosphere. On
Mars, atmospheric pressures of as much as 12 millibars have been measured. You and I could not live in such low pressure, but water can remain liquid. Also, surface temperatures exceeding 70F have been measured. So, liquid water can exist on the surface, some where, some times.

Also, since the pressure drops off so dramatically with altitude, the first meter or so (less?) would become supersaturated and unable to accept more water vapor. The atmosphere above is too thin to accept any more either, but obviously right at the surface one would find the highest concentration of water vapor.

What this means is that if any ice melts, it cannot be taken up by the immediately adjacent atmosphere, and is therefore compelled to remain liquid. Too warm to freeze, unable to evaporate/sublime.

After I downloaded the ESA image, I realized the "oasis" is right where I would expect water in a desert. A few natural tanks, right at the bottom of a very large, apparently impervious mount, which by the way deomonstrates fluvial erosion. A perfect source of melt and precipitation. Say, ice crystals deposit on the slope, and slowly melt/migrate down slope to the "oasis". Something like that. Subsurface, maybe.

This is all really plausible. However, I note that on the very right top, there are reddish shadings which make me suspect absolute accuracy in the colours of this image, as well as my guess about red algae ringing some streaks. Naetheless, I misdoubt this suspected inaccuracy to be so extreme as to eliminate the "oasis" guess above made. The colours are in the ball park.

In an earlier post I wrote poorly, and gave the impression that I am unconvinced of free standing or flowing surface water. In fact, I have been convinced for some time now that there is indeed same, in limited times, places and amounts. Think oases in the Atacama Desert of Chile; that's what I mean. We're likely looking at one. I mean, I think it's actually probable that we observe an oasis.

Additionally, and I am not making this up, here in Alaska we really DO have Ice Worms. They live at the surface and in cracks of glaciers, secrete a type of antifreeze which modifies their envioronment, and "burrow down to keep warm". I'd not be surprised to find similar on Mars. These worms can noticeably lower the melting point of ice. So can some algae and bacteria - as I understand that. Therefore, it is very possible that life could be modifying its environment on Mars.
---------
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/01/0128_020128_iceworms.html

..."Worms occupy the most diverse niches on the planet," said Daniel Shain, an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University. "They live near hydrothermal vents in the ocean at temperatures that can exceed 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit), and they're living in ice on Alaskan glaciers at zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit). That's about as extreme as you can get."...
--------
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF0/053.html

..."Robert Service perhaps knew that real ice worms were discovered on the Muir Glacier in 1887. Ann Saling, writing in the March 1978 issue of Search, tells much of what is known about ice worms. They live in the coastal glaciers of southeastern Alaska and as far south as Mount Rainier.

Four species are known, ranging in length from 1 to 3 cm (an inch more or less). Nearly as colorful as the ice worm concocted by Service, real ice worms can be white, yellow, brown or black.

Squirming around between crystals of ice and through the many interconnected channels in granular snow, ice worms generally stay near the surface of glaciers. Most species of ice worms rise to the surface at dusk, where as many as a hundred in one square meter can be observed. During the day some species remain in puddles of meltwater where they anchor their front halves in the ice--for reasons not explained.

Ice worms eat airborne pollen grains, fern spores and the red algae that lives in snow and sometimes colors it pink. Unable to exist at temperatures much below freezing, ice worms must remain in temperate glaciers. The only ice worms ranging as far north as Dawson were the four-inch giants that Robert Service's Sheriff Black, Skipper Grey and Deacon White fashioned of spaghetti and ink."...
--------
http://www.nichols.edu/departments/glacier/iceworm.htm

..." On Suiattle Glacier, (photo at left) on the south side of Glacier Peak, the recorded mean density was ~2600 ice worms per square meter in 2002. With an area of 2.7 square kilometers, this represents somewhat over 7 BILLION ice worms on this glacier!"...
--------

I'd not at all be surprised to find similar in/on Mars.

Now I've had the living shit fooled out of me by lots of things, Mars images included. Seen critters that weren't there, an itty bitty table, Pareidola, eehhh, it's embarassing. Even so, IMO I have seen an image (from another's web site) that sure as hell looks like an antennaed mini-tank thingiewhatsitcritter. Which is as far as I'll go; I don't like being laughed at.

Anyway, there's water. Hell, even NASA admitted it when one of 'em said a rover was squeezing water out of the soil. Around abouts these parts, where there's water there's life, and I'd bet a paycheck that there is life on Mars kickin' around right now. And I don't gamble. Prefer to piss my money away! :-)

Anyway: let's go swimmin'!

8:16 PM
The Andy-Christ said...

Was this image changed since Mac posted the link? I just looked at it, and while it retains a greenish tint around the edges, looks pretty black to me at the moment. There's no mistaking the water erosion chanels cut into that hillside, though. There's also a three-sided structure near the bottom of the pic, on top of the hill. One of the pyramid-like hills, it looks like.

8:54 PM
JEFM said...

Hey K Younous ... it's called the incommensurability problem (your scenario) ... or however the hell you spell that (pardon me, I'm not anglo) ;)

I don't think the martian atmosphere is as bening as some of you are proposing ... photosyntesis would be extremely difficult under the current "accepted" conditions. The picture is interesting ... damm, europeans ... we are really making progress in the space exploration field, the camera's resolution's just awesome.

;) Let's pretend it's not there ...

BTW, Ken, join the club ... been there, done that. Chin up buddy ... also, could it be that the green-reddish patch is nothing but bacteria in the "melted" water, kind of like a dirty version of the Oparin soup ... I could think of that easier than the whole "little algae" growing there thingie

Jon

11:23 PM
Carol said...

There's some interesting features on this beyond possible algae. I got the image for a few minutes, now it's disappeared on my so I'll have to go on my fleeting memory if the section I saw.

Go down the left side of the image. A little above halfway down the left side
(the image takes up about 2 screens worth from left to right for me) there's a sort of mesa. If up is north, at the southwest of it is an L-shaped line of hills that seemes to have fairly rhythmic sort of crenellations. If these were caused by wind or water, I wouldn't think they'd be able to maintain that right angle in relation to the mesa to the northeast of it.

Further down, closer to the left edge than that feature, look for a long-short-long "seep" somewhat like a chicken foot radiating from the northwest to the southeast.


Above that with an axis going from 11 o'clock to 5 o'clock (the seep would be coming off its foot) there is a feature which looks like a humanoid biped stick figure with arms and legs outstretched. I put a piece of clear plastic over it and traced it, and then folded it along the center "torso" line.

The arms and legs appear to be perfectly symmetrical in their angle from the body, and pretty much in their length!

Since I can't access this properly and can't get any further details, does anyone know if this was a nadir shot?

Has anyone else commented on it? If not, I call naming dibs! What date was it shot?

11:59 PM
Kyle said...

Mac -

A cool photo...in a sea of cool photos from Mars. On my monitor the center of the dark area you cite is indeed a very deep dark blue, and the area surrounding is also indeed green with a reddish fringe in areas.

Also, in the rather deep "canyon" in the image, there seems to be a very dark reddish "murkiness" that reminds me of the iron-rich water of Toledo Bend Reservoir here in Texas. Very interesting colors going on here.

One thing that gives me pause on the oasis theory is the scale of the image.
As one inch on the image equals 10 kilometers, these would have to be gargantuan moss beds or algaeal mats.

If such life-forms exist on Mars, and I think the evidence will be revealed very soon that they do, I think it will be found in very small pockets virtually all over the planet, rather than concentrated in kilometers-long patches.

I could be wrong, but Mars just isn't that hospitable to life...at least life as it is here.

I think also that if life has a hard time making it on Mars, it's pretty likely that if it ever did flourish there, it probably came here from there. In fact it may have splattered all over the solar system, and only took hold in a few little "pockets"...Earth, Europa, Iaepetus, etc...and on those others perhaps for only a short time before extinction through various intolerable conditions.

With MRO en route to the red planet, we will soon know for sure what this image depicts...among MANY other things.

It's about time we went there to look for what we should have been looking for all along...and with a set of very impressive eyes, even by rover standards.

Let's hope MRO doesn't meet the fate of Beagle II.

Best,

Kyle
UFOreflections.blogspot.com

4:49 AM
W.M. Bear said...

Mac -- Against the color-correction idea, if that were the cause, you'd think there'd be a consistent pattern of that kind of color and there doesn't seem to be. It seems concentrated in just that one area and, I have to say, the pattern of it certainly makes it look biological. That is, it seems to conform to the topology in a real way that's not just an artifact of the photographic process -- Green Mars! (That deep, almost ultraviolet indigo in what seem to be deep-shadowed crevices? Now that strikes me as possibly an uncorrected rendering of black. But the green, no, doesn't look like an artifact of the photography.)

Carol -- Try scrolling v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. I think the sheer size of the image keeps causing my machine's virtual memory to choke on it, since I also get weird behavior when I'm scrolling through it. Let me get back to you on the patterns you describe. I plan to keep looking at this one.

5:47 PM
Ken said...

Carol, can't find the features you mentioned, but I too shall continue with this image. They'll be seen by me eventually. In other areas I noticed apparent symmetric regularity. NO! I'm NOT saying construction. But eyecatching.

Kyle, the reddish canyon hues I first thought potential red algae, watered by residual moisture exuding from the canyon walls. On second thought I'm not nearly so sure, but indeed, in any event those canyons would be an entrancing walk. In general, I agree with you that life on Mars is likely in pockets. However, I see no reason said pockets - oases - could not be individually and rarely large. This possible oasis is, after all, fed by a very large watershed, best appreciated when the image is shrunken to 1/4 or 1/8 size. Which watershed it must be, as the fluvial erosion is obvious and irrefutable.

Anyway, this image fascinates me, and since I have begun trying to understand the GIMP image software, that's what I will use. As much as I've liked IrfanView, GIMP gives me better resolution.

As for colour accuracy, please note that further down the image a great many hill tops have a slight greenish tint. The summit of a small knob is precisely NOT where I would expect water or life, therefore unless these knobs share a common apex mineralology, there is a colour error. However, IMO (uneducated) a correction for this would not come anywhere close to denying the rich greeness of the "oasis".

And, if, if, if. It's SO easy to be mistaken! Since I have an emotional investment in this planet Mars and its potentials, must needs I be quite careful about quick - and desired - conclusions. This image seems much too important for me to jump to confusions about it.

Anyway, for a life-pocket, I'd count this among the usual suspects, but not convicted. But it sure is green!

7:21 PM
W.M. Bear said...

The other possible explanation assuming the green is the real color of what we're looking at is, you guessed it, geo-chemical. I suppose there are substances like the copper oxides (CuOn) that have a similar color and could have precipitated out of some liquid outflow. The fact that there are similar spreads with a deep reddish tint (iron and other oxides?) might tend to support this idea. (BTW, I'm just trying to think like Steve Squyres & Co.) I'm not actually that familiar with chemical compound coloration but I would think that spectrographic analysis of the area would reveal something about this one way or the other. I don't really think this is what it is but we do have to consider all the possibilities for fear of being (n-o-o-o-o-o!) "debunked"!

8:30 PM