Mars Exploration Rovers Update - February 13, 2004

Maybe they are baby crawfish, it is crawfish season, you know.

Reply to
CAP
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You are absolutely correct, Jonathan. You don't know! In fact, you don't have a clue.

However, I do, and that is not it. This is:

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Oh, by the way, Jonathan? You're a dork.

Reply to
George

Notice what planet he's from!

Reply to
George

February 26, 2004

gemmules of a microbial sponge colony : 'porifera jonathanii'.

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Jonathan, if you want an entire phyla named after you, then you have to do a little more research. Sponges may be soft and spicule free, and although they can get quite large, what you are seeing do not appear to be spicules. Start here :

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Organisms have to work with what they have, and there is little evidence for a lot of free carbon and silicon. What they do have is a lot of sulfur and iron and salts, and a limited amount of phosphorus and nitrogen which would have been grabbed up by the biosphere. If these were indeed porifera, they would most likely be soft tissue colonies of evolved extremophiles and cyanobacteria, basically feeding on themselves and exploiting biomineralization for reproduction.

Thomas Lee Elifritz

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Reply to
Thomas Lee Elifritz

gemmules of a microbial sponge colony : 'porifera jonathanii'.

can!

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According the reading I've been doing, spicules are unique to each species. If you look at the original photo that shows gemmules quite like the spheres, you'll see the skeletal spicules are long and curved and tend to hook at the end. Look at the one just above the word gemmule in the left photo below. There are numerous long spicules in the soft tissue.

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Then compare that long spicule with the earlier photo of the thread below imaged earlier.
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If the soft tissue has dried up I would expect the long curved siliceous spicules to leave marks just as imaged in the first link above. In that pic, you can see two large brown patches in the upper left corner. Just below them is a small brown spot, just to the left of the small spot you can see a very small thread sticking out and casting a shadow.

But of course these images are open to interpretation, I'm not going to claim I'm correct about everything I say when it comes to non mathematical subjects.

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I never claimed to be an 'ologist' of any sort. Yet I suggested the dunes need to be reconsidered as possible water features, and finally Nasa is beginniing to take another look at them.

Nasa is today calling them geologic ripples instead. They seem to think they're wind blown, but a little common sense is needed here. Wind blown ripples are from gentler winds, yet the ripples are almost exclusively made up of the larger 'pebbles'...spheres. I can only conclude their science team is made up of only geologists that are determined to find non-living explanations for everything. I'm not at all surprised they're still scratching their heads over the spheres and dunes. They're going to contrive wind patterns to explain them both it seems. Good luck!

"This false-color image from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera shows peak-like formations on the martian terrain at Gusev Crater. Scientists have been analyzing these formations, which have coarse particles accumulating on their tops, or crests. This characteristic classifies them as ripples instead of dunes, which have a more uniform distribution of particle sizes. Scientists are looking further into such formations, which can give insight to the wind direction and velocity on Mars, as well as the material that is being moved by the wind. This image was taken on the 40th martian day, or sol, of Spirit's mission."

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I can't wait until Spirit makes it to the crater. Not knowing a thing about that crater I will offer some wild speculation. The bottom of that crater will look like the Opportunity crater. Lots of spheres and more dark clumpy soil, wanna bet? If the crater is big enough there should be 'ripples' too.

Funny how the wind blown 'ripples' are at the bottom of these Gusev craters, I guess there's some odd wind patterns there too. I'm beginning to lose respect for the Nasa science team.

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Jonathan

s

Reply to
jonathan

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Linda How is a baffoon. NASA has stated that the landing released a lot of debris from the lander, and are embarrassed by it because they tried to take as many precautions as possible pr prevent it.

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You are imagining things. Stick to math.

Apparently you are not very good at math either.

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Not at all. There is plenty of evidence that pyroclastic flows can form dunes just like what we are seeing on Mars.

Since you are not a geologist, I'm not surprised that you would think so.

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And you'd no doubt be wrong.

Since the only crater Spirit has been in to date is Sutev, I find this not a little amusing.

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Since no one has any respect for your opinions, you opinion of NASA is irrelevant. Oh and stop crossposting, dork.

Reply to
George

That is something I have always thought myself. In the Bahamas we call them 'sand waves'. Wherever you find these on Mars, in the bottoms of craters and canyons, they seem to be indicative of the dust and dirt left over from melting ice and standing water, and the wind blowing over the standing water will leave the standing wave dunes as the water evaporates or subsides into the ground. The effects of wind erosion on Mars are grossly 'overblown'. Water is the key player. In many of the very large basins you have huge dunes of very fine sub-micron material which is clearly windblown, probably bacterial remains.

I agree with that sentiment.

You can clearly see them in the bottom of the nearby larger Opportunity crater. It should be possible to see the effects of seepage from the walls of the crater. Some minor seepage effects are visible even in the small Opportunity crater, and clearly the mud flats at the Spririt site are seepage and standing water remnants.

I have completely lost respect for NASA, although clearly I have a lot of respect for the engineers who put these vehicles on Mars. Today's news conference was embarrassing.

Thomas Lee Elifritz

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Reply to
Thomas Lee Elifritz

marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/m/019/1M129869847EFF0338P2953M2M1.HTML

You would expect? Why? Have you studied their durability in Martian conditions? You can't even claim to know the Martian conditions at the site. The soil chemistry in particular.You are instead leaping to conclusions on the basis of superficial similarity.

Due to the superficiality with which you have approached every other subject you have touched upon here, one would have to be a fool to believe you would be expected to be correct about anything you say when it comes to ANY subject - most certainly including mathematical subjects.

Hah! You have no idea what NASA actually considered nor when.

No. A little technical expertise is what is needed here. Which NASA has - and you most certainly lack. Your particular "common sense" is nothing more than willfully ignorant speculation. You have admitted ignorance of all of the "ologies" required to make an educated conclusion as to what is being seen - yet you have the audacity to chide the people who do not share your ignorance. You have even gone so far as to say the details don't matter because you know with mathematical certainty blah blah blah... Well, the details do matter. What does it do to your gemmule hypothesis if the spherules turn out to be made of basaltic glass? Such a small detail.....

You can only conclude? That is your description of these people?

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Or perhaps you could name names? Which ones in particular are determined to find non-living explanations? And most importantly - why?

Even Helen Keller could have seen that. All of the MOC images of the Spirit landing site showed that all of the craters in the area are completely dark. You are developing quite a knack for discovering the obvious.

Either you didn't even look or you are playing more games. The MOC images show dark dunes in the crater. This has been known from the very beginning.

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Lacking respect yourself, this is hardly a loss.

Reply to
Chosp

Why rush? It's a big planet! It's not going anywhere in the foreseeable future. The rovers will not (unless there has been a development I've not heard about) fall apart tomorrow. And remeber - Theres a lot of people trying to get time with these rovers, it's not just ONE person in complete control. It's possible some of the team agrees with you, and got enough time to do a brief exam of the features...Now that some of the other things on the docket are taken care of, maybe these few members are able to say "Hey...we need to go look at this feature again, we need more data!". Saying "NASA" is (insert anything you like here) is a bit misleading ... as with any other organization, there are many hands on the steering wheel!

Until there's some damn hard evidence, geologic ripples is a pretty decent term - They are ripples, and they are on the ground. At this point, without a great deal of investigation, that's about all that can be said about them.

You're damn right...A little common sense IS needed here. I think you're mistaken on who needs to use it though. The science teams are being cautious - You can't just scream "THIS IS DEFINATELY, BEYOND A DOUBT, ABSOLUTELY A WATER-BASED FEATURE!!!!" What the they are trying to do is exhaust the pool of possible explanations, and likely they'll "contrive" some pretty interesting out-there ones (and disprove them - or not), before they make ANY kind of statement as to thier origins. This is good science.

It's not about trying to find what you want to be there...it's about finding what is REALLY ACTUALLY there, how it got there, WHY it's there, and being able to prove all of it, to the vast majority of the scientific world.

Why would you lose respect for scientists doing thier job? YOU can say "This is obviously a feature that could only have been created if there was water and/or life on the surface". YOU don't have a professional reputation as a person of science involved in this exploration. YOU won't get laughed out your workplace for making claims you can't prove. YOU aren't in the international spotlight, with millions of eyes on you. Try and see it from the other side, before you say something like that, please!

-Alex

Reply to
Alex Wisnieski

What I find particularly offensive about attitudes like this is that I'm sure most any scientist at JPL would consider a conclusive, unassailable finding of life on Mars to be wonderful beyond their wildest dreams.

Real scientists have more drive, imagination, and hope than you could ever comprehend; because they endure all the tedium, grunt-work, and politics; _despite_ knowing full well that the probability of finding life is slim-to-none.

Reply to
Kenneth Chiu

AAAAARRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Get me out of la-la land!!!!!!!!

Where in the heck to these crazies come from?

Mars???

And how do we get them out of comp.ROBOTICS.mosc and into sci.crazytheoriesfromnonscientistdimwits.theory?

(Present company excepted of course!)

Reply to
Alan Kilian

Just killfile him. Sorry for the crosspost.

Reply to
George

You wait patiently for the data proprietary period to expire.

Or, you can use a filter file. It's very easy, even for you.

Actually, it also helps to ask. Consider it done.

Delete comp.robotics.misc.

Thomas Lee Elifritz

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Reply to
Thomas Lee Elifritz

Classic reductionism! Start with as much detail as possible in order to construct and understand the whole system later. This is the method of the dark ages.

In my chosen hobby, complexity science, just the opposite is the standard. Start with the largest scale first and look only at the global ....behavioral...patterns or characteristics. With this method one should deliberately avoid the component details to avoid introducing bias and error. Such as the bias of looking at a system from only a geologists point of view. A specialist is constrained to a myopic explanation. The details should ....always come last.

The global view of the Opportunity site was ....immediately... clear.

The uniform and random distribution of the spheres meant only two options are available to explain it. Either the spheres fell from the sky or are a product of a living system.

Since there is virtually no evidence at all of impact debris or a nearby recent volcano at the Opportunity site, the first solution is easy and quick.

The order is generated by life.

In complexity science this means the components are highly constrained to a very ...narrow.. subset needed to explain that global pattern...life.

The Opportunity site consists primarily of outcrops, soil and spheres. These components are now constrained to an ecosystem capable of producing life.

The only ...logical... explanation of the global order is that the outcrops are reefs producing the life that builds the soil. It becomes a simple exercise then to deduce what kind of life would live in such an environment and produce the spheres, since those patterns highly constrain that second solution.

These are two entirely different types of search algorithms. Bottom up brute force vs top down logic.

There's one detail you seem to forget. The most accurate and comprehensive scientific measuring device in the known universe is our....eyes.

So I guess we know what that shiny spot is in the following pic, and the cause of the gentle ripples in the distance. For Nasa to be generating computer wind models to explain such things seems almost funny if is wasn't so embarrassing.

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Nasa is clearly biased against life, I am biased for. But the reason I am is because the ....universe... is biased for life.

That is the fundamental discovery of chaos and complexity science. That will be the fundamental discovery of this mission. Don't you see, with classical methods the analysis is just beginning. With non-linear methods this mission is pretty much wrapped up.

Jonathan

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Reply to
jonathan

I don't doubt that at all.

The only problem with that bias against life is it's inaccurate. I've already stuck my neck out in an effort to demonstrate that complexity science is the better method. Time will tell. Those spheres are gemmules of a sponge. Just the type of sponge in this picture.

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If I'm correct we can then revisit which method shows the greater imagination and comprehension of the natural world.

I've done the math and have complete confidence time is on my side.

Jonathan

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Reply to
jonathan

PLONK

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Reply to
George

Better than what? Better than actually going there and looking for it? Whatta dweeb.

You are neither qualified, nor intelligent enough to make that determination.

Reply to
George

You have not demonstrated a NASA or anyone else has shown a bias against discovering life.

  1. Show us your numbers.

  1. Show us a complexity scientist who agrees with your assessment that you can know with "mathematical certainty" that there is fossilized life in Meridiani crater on Mars without any confirmational data whatsoever. And that you were the first person to speculate that the spherules might be the remains of fossilized life. To be credible, you must back up your "complete confidence" - or, to put it more accurately, your faith in things unseen.

Reply to
Chosp

Yeah, and it works really, really well.

And that has not been shown to work well at all. So there you have it. Another nut.

Reply to
Greg Crinklaw

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