Nasa's Stunning New Mars Photo Shows Mount Sharp With Earth-Like Lighting

[ArMaP]

The greyer material at the bottom of the mountain in the pictures above. 

It looks more blue than grey to me, that's why I didn't understand what you meant by grey.

It looks like the same blueish dust that can be seen almost everywhere on Mars and that many people think it's water.

I don't know what it may be.

[zorgon]

Thank for the Link Z I love the one re. Cloud Above the Crater Alphonsus - 1956

yeah it's an old page on lunar atmosphere but did you look at those two paid for links?

[Pimander]

It looks like the same blueish dust that can be seen almost everywhere on Mars and that many people think it's water.

I didn't say it looks like water.  I said my first thought was it looks like it could have been deposited by water.  It looks like it is a finer material, like clays on Earth that were deposited by....... water.

[zorgon]

It looks like the same blueish dust that can be seen almost everywhere on Mars and that many people think it's water.

Yes the Hematite spheres that NASA "scientist" called 'Blue Berries' (because he was eating a muffin at the time) They would have been deposited by water. There is a similar looking sedimentary bed in Utah that has the same spheres... but the ones on Earth are brown and generally bigger.

Martian Blueberries



Utah concretions



Hematite is used in jewelry/lapidary. A small percent is hard with a blue/black shiny luster. What makes the martian ones so blue and so abundant is still a big mystery

As to people thinking they are water, even one NASA "scientist" fell for that...made a big case for liquid water found on Mars... until a blogger pointed out that the photo he used as proof was actually on a hillside. i can't find that article right now as it's buried in the new articles. Maybe ArMap remembers... it was a picture like the blueberries above

..oops found it...



So from a distance they do look like water. And there are billions of them... entire fields of them. They are also extremely blue because no matter the intensity you set, they are bright blue



This one the swedimentary rock is about the same color as those here in Nevada and Utah desert..

I didn't say it looks like water.  I said my first thought was it looks like it could have been deposited by water.  It looks like it is a finer material, like clays on Earth that were deposited by....... water.

Those rocks are definitely sedimentary  there really is no question to any geologist looking at them. Since spectography has identified the spheres as hematite then they would have been deposited by water. I have hundreds of the blue berry pictures and the range from larger oblong shapes, through smaller spheres to a fine blue dust.  Since Hematite is iron ore it would collect in crevices as the finer sandstone surrounding it blows away

[zorgon]

Here is the story...

Tuesday, June 12, 2007
No puddles on Mars

It was an astonishing claim: Mars may have puddles of liquid water on its surface today. That was the conclusion Ron Levin and Daniel Lyddy of Lockheed Martin in Arizona, US, recently came to after analysing an image taken by NASA's Opportunity rover (see image at left).

But it turns out the claim is impossible for an entirely different ? and much more basic ? reason: the terrain in question is on the side of a crater, and is therefore sloped too greatly for water to pool into puddles.

In the end, it was savvy readers who first pointed the error out to us over the weekend, sending in panoramic images pinpointing the location of the purported puddles. Though it seemed clear from those images that the terrain was sloped, I found it hard to believe that the researchers themselves could have missed such an obvious ? and crucial ? detail.

But apparently they had, analysing just the smaller images without understanding the larger context of their surroundings ? missing the forest for the trees. "I want to retract the claim in the paper that the smooth area we discussed was 'standing liquid water'," Levin acknowledged on Tuesday. "I am sorry that we made such a large mistake."

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/space/2007/06/no-puddles-on-mars.html

Not NASA scientist but Lockheed Martin

[Pimander]

I only studied Geology to A-level so can't claim special knowledge.  I have to agree with you Z - if water was there to deposit the minerals then there is still water on Mars today.

If life started in Geothermal waters on Earth and there is water under the surface of a geologically active Mars then there is every chance there is life.

Then there is the Cydonia!  Well perhaps that is an SRI fantasy but the part about the water is true.....

[ArMaP]

I didn't say it looks like water.

I didn't say you did.

I said my first thought was it looks like it could have been deposited by water.  It looks like it is a finer material, like clays on Earth that were deposited by....... water.

From what I have seen on other photos, both from orbit and on the ground, that bluish dust looks heavier than the yellow/orange dust, as it remains in the lower areas, like inside small craters.

Clays have been spotted in other areas (I don't remember if this is one of those), but, anyway, I don't think of clays as a sign of water erosion, I think of them more as a result of water action.

To me, water erosion is something like rounded pebbles, created by rolling in streams, or gullies made by fallen rain. Not one of those is visible in this photo, while on Earth we would be seeing, at least, rounded edges on some rocks or marks of old streams in the lower areas.

[Pimander]

Clays have been spotted in other areas (I don't remember if this is one of those), but, anyway, I don't think of clays as a sign of water erosion, I think of them more as a result of water action.

Agreed.  Clay is deposited by water.

It may be heavier but it also may be deposited by low lying water that is no longer on the surface....

It must be fixed or it would have been moved by wind - like cement?  What do you think?