NASA-JPL May Have Cooked Their Own Goose! From: Ray Stanford Subject: NASA-JPL May Have Cooked Their Own Goose!
"NASA-JPL has diagnosed the 'blueberries' as concretions formed within a wet substrate. Aside from a few of the spheres and at least one textbook splash-form dumb bell-shaped small object that seem to be composed of translucent glass possibly knocked up and frozen in flight by cosmic impact, my examination of many images of the 'blueberries' taken under diverse light angles suggests that they are right as to the origin of at least most of the 'blueberries'."
"Well, if NASA-JPL really intend to hide evidences of past or present life on Mars, as some on this List feel is the case, they have probably cooked their own we've-found-no-evidence-of- life-on-Mars goose in making that diagnosis!
How so?
The geologists employed by NASA-JPL must not be very well- informed on research during recent years concerning the function of bacteria in a vast array of diagenetic (rock forming) processes and, including the nucleation and growth of concretions. Yet, in my research into diagenesis in paleoichnites (ancient traces such as animal tracks and their fossilized droppings, coprolites) it has been necessary to get into current research on that, in order to better understand the things my colleagues and I in paleoichnology find in streambeds and in broader areas of anciently tracked-upon substrates.
To make a long story short (I shall over-simplify for sake of brevity), there is increasing evidence of the function of bacteria in rock-forming and even in some sand-forming processes (wherein bacteria serve to nucleate the growth of small silicate crystals). On Earth, in formation of spherical concretions, bacterial colonies and/or other organic matter infused with bacteria nucleate crystalline silica growth. I suspect it would likewise be the case where Mars was wet over extended periods.
In the wet, mushy or 'muddy' environment, the resulting micro- concretion slowly grows (sometimes incorporating or encapsulating adjacent grains of silt or sand, sometimes simply by crystalline growth from colloidally suspended silica crystallizing and pushing adjacent silt ahead of its growth, sometimes by a combination of the two processes), increasing its diameter spherically across time. If conditions for the bacterial colony's growth are episodic, one can sometimes see (upon slicing the concretion) rather distinct concentric layers of growth that formed the concretion, but where conditions for growth are constant, the concretion may show a crystalline pattern with virtually no concentric layering.
Notice the concentric layering in the sphere lower left
Nowhere known to me on earth are spherical concretions found in anywhere nearly the concentration we have been shown within the layered substrate in that Martian crater or in adjacent areas where the concretions seem to have weathered (or have been knocked) ex situ. Wherever I have found concretions in Early Cretaceous substrates (Barremian-Aptian) they have formed where the 'muck' that was turned to rock (likely with the help of bacteria) was (when wet, in dinosaur times) full of organic material and bacteria, both ferrophagic (iron eating) and other.
Thus it is that I seriously doubt we would see the vast numbers of concretions in the crater on Mars if bacterial life had not once been abundant in the wet, concretion forming substrate. As recent years gone by, it has become more and more understood how terrestrial rock formation and rock breakdown, as well, are involved with bacterial processes of diverse types.
When will the seemingly old-fashioned geologists at NASA-JPL wake up to recent advances in petrogenesis, etc., and realize that they have likely been showing us concretionary evidence of (at least) a former abundance of some kind of bacterial life in a (at least) once water-abundant environment of Mars?
When? Well, I'm not holding my breath. Those people are probably blind and petrified with paranoia of what colleagues on the outside might say if they should be even slightly wrong. Such was not the way of the great scientific pioneers, and never will be.
Is that a goose I smell cooking, somewhere? Hmmm... could that be blowing in from Pasadena?"
Ray Stanford
"You know my method. It is founded upon the observance of trifles." -- Sherlock Holmes in The Boscombe Valley Mystery
The Stromatolites of Stella Maris, Bahamas
- Siderite as a Component of an Ancient Stromatolite
"Mossbauer spectra at two temperatures of a freshly slabbed portion of a 2.09 Ga (Early Proterozoic) hematic chert stro- matolite from the Gunflint Iron Formation (PPRG 2443) are shown in Figure 26. The high-velocity ferrous peak migrates from its position at 100 K to overlap the fifth peak of hematite at 19 K. This behavior and the agreement of the splitting pa- rameters with those of siderite argue that this sample contains a small fraction of siderite. (dominant siderite peak at -1090 cm-I). The sample investigated was freshly slabbed for the Mossbauer transmission measurement, so the iron carbonate is interior to the native stromatolite rock. Its occurrence in this 2.09 Ga old rock in- dicates that long (billion-year) survival times for siderite are possible when preserved in silica."
(Fig 26 page 16, please compare with blueberry bowl chart for siderite signature)
A Bowl of Hematite-Rich 'Berries' Mar 18, 2004
"This graph shows two spectra of outcrop regions near the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's landing site. The blue line shows data for a region dubbed "Berry Bowl," which contains a handful of the sphere-like grains dubbed "blueberries."
Blueberry chart
Yellowstone mudpot
"THEIR height in heaven comforts not, Their glory nought to me; 'T was best imperfect, as it was; I'm finite, I can't see.
The house of supposition, The glimmering frontier That skirts the acres of perhaps, To me shows insecure.
The wealth I had contented me; If 't was a meaner size, Then I had counted it until It pleased my narrow eyes
Better than larger values, However true their show; This timid life of evidence Keeps pleading, "I don't know."
By E Dickinson
Jonathan
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