Bulls-Eye on Mars and, Apparently, an Industrial Complex

By Nancy Atkinson - July 30, 2010 at 8:02 AM UTC | Planetary Science
bullseye-on-mars.jpg

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Here's some doses of coolness and craziness for your Friday. This top image is one of the latest from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and shows what looks like a target on the Red Planet. Researchers from the HiRISE team aren't sure yet whether this is two impacts -- one impact that occurred dead center within another -- or just unusual subsurface layering within one impact. I'm voting for two impacts, just because it is such a cool, lightning-strikes-twice concept. While no ejecta from the interior crater can be seen, the team says the ejecta could have been removed by extensive periglacial modification. Additionally, the floor fill around the inner crater resembles impact ejects elsewhere at this latitude, and some of the "landslides" to the East could be flow-back of ejecta off the walls of the larger crater. Likely the team will be looking closer at this impact to sort out the history and likelihood of a double impact. (

UPDATE

I just saw that the

Bad Astronomer has posted a more detailed CSI into this image,

which you should read!)

Now, this next one is the crazy part...

[caption id="attachment_70047" align="aligncenter" width="368" caption="Mars industrial site with (a) nozzle spray and (b,c) domes. Credit: NASA, annotations from Farsight Institute, via the SciGuy."]

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There's a guy, and apparently a team of "remote viewing experts" who have found what they believe is a massive industrial complex on Mars.

Eric Berger at his SciGuy blog

at the Houston Chronicle wrote about this today, and it is just way too wacky to believe, kind of like the people who zoom in on rocks on Mars and say they see Bigfoot. Anyway, these folks say they can even tell that there are artificial structures at this site with a laboratory. What's more they can see that there are lifeforms there wearing uniforms, and there are more men than women. Yep.

Check out SciGuy for all the nonsense.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com