Comments on: The Mysterious Mars Mounds

By: Covenant

Covenant — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:25:36 +0000

It looks to be a heated bubbling uplifting of the surface material from the center of the crater created on impact. Far, far too smooth and differently shaped to be stromatolites. Doubtful its wind creations either.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:40:52 +0000

Looks like an island chain to me…

By: Stephen R. Deens

Stephen R. Deens — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:48:24 +0000

It also resembles what happens to the human skin around the corners of our eyes; as we age it wrinkles quickly as skin is drier and shrinking and not as robust or pink as it once in our youth when more blood and moisture flowed thru those cells of the skin…a doctor could probbaly explain this better.

so my gues is the subsurface is not nearly as dense near the surface and its collpasing back in on itself as the water or ice underneath dry's out or evaloprates too quickly; as it was mentioned earlier "geological uplifting of Elysium Planitia" is also a possibility…

also possiblly seismic disturbance could really be a an excellent trigger to start the wrinkle ball rolling, especially its drying out too qiuckly underneath.

afterall we are seeing this at the MARTIAN EQUATOR and Mar's season are very similar to Earth's since our aixis of tilts are very close….and its also July right now on Mars.

I'd like to see these pictures in February when its winter.

should one expect to see such things near Equators where things dry out more unevenly and are more potentially sesismic especially during the summer months?

By: Nexus

Nexus — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 03:17:47 +0000

I'm sure that infamous crank Richard Hoagland is at home right now drawing lines and angles all over that photo in MS-Paint.

By: TD

TD — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:09:03 +0000

Jorge,

thanks – so from reading it, the explanation is that is highlights differences between materials. It's interesting in many "fossae" images that the material within the fossae is very different than the surface material. It's also interesting that "fossae" means "ditch or canal" in Latin. I wonder why U of A didn't have the spine to call them canals?

By: Jorge

Jorge — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:47:33 +0000

@TD: there's a FAQ in the HiRISE pages at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/faq/ which explains pretty much all the most common questions regarding these images.

It only misses (or maybe it was I who missed) mentioning the fact that HiRISE images show near infrared data on the red channel, red data on the green channel and blue-green data on the blue channel and maximizes contrast in each of the channels individually.

By: Unbeliever

Unbeliever — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:31:48 +0000

these are definitely ancient graves left over from an ancient civilization

By: TD

TD — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:52:29 +0000

Does anyone have a reference to explain what the colors mean? I suppose they're not the color that a human would perceive, but whatever spectral information is contained was picked for a good reason – I hope. I'd just like to find out.

Thanks!

By: Stephen R. Deens

Stephen R. Deens — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:39:03 +0000

Its looks to me like these ripples are more influenced by seismic distrurbances and less by wind–you will note that they seem to concentrate at the bottom of the craters in the same pattern as above and around the craters.–wind might swirl or funnel down a crater possible producing a different shape;

yes the anlogy to coral is very interesting because I have similar sand ripples off southern california at the bottom of the ocean when I scuba dive, and we don't have much wind at the bottom of the ocean but alot of seismic turbulence.

or it could be a combination of both, mars is quite wind turbulent, but what do we really know about underneath?

By: watchful stone guardian

watchful stone guardian — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:03:15 +0000

I agree with Acy. They must giant martian stromatolites.

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:48:18 +0000

Is it possible that these are artifacts from the geological uplifting of Elysium Planitia? If you had a region of subsurface ice covered by volcanic ash and then pushed it up from beneath, wouldn't you get similar patterns as the exposed areas of ice melted or sublimated? The ice that was still covered would remain to give you these mesas. If the process took place over a long period of time, I imagine it might even have the appearance of eroded terrain. Maybe the ice isn't even a requirement. I'm just guessing.

By: Topcat

Topcat — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:10:57 +0000

The direction of wind doesn't seem right. With this picture, it looks like the wind is coming straigh down.

Pretty interesting though and a pretty picture, too.

By: Acy

Acy — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:03:18 +0000

Looks like stromatolites or coral to me.

By: TD

TD — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:46:17 +0000

It would be nice to see the true colors.

By: Wade

Wade — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:59:12 +0000

Ancient Martian Burial Grounds!