40 replies to this topic

[JohnDoe1234]

http://www.universet...overed-on-mars/
http://planetary.org...rticle/00000984 (a more detailed article)

Anyone seen these yet? I thought it was kind of weird... Apparently the Mars Orbiter has returned pictures of what seems to be just black spots but are probably deep caverns with nearly vertical walls... check it out.

[Live Forever]

I saw this story the other day. Kinda freaky. I am assuming it is an entrance to some type of cave system or something.

[Live Forever]

100 meters diameter, too. That is a pretty huge hole.

[JohnDoe1234]

I have to say though... pictures A, C, (and specifically D) look like something sticking out of the ground which are casting a shadow (I could compromise on A and C), but D really does look like something sticking out of the ground.

Probably just the same as the others though...

[zoolander]

The largest photo just looks like the surface with a a black hole drawn on it. Perhaps there is something on the lens of the camera.

[Live Forever]

I have to say though... pictures A, C, (and specifically D) look like something sticking out of the ground which are casting a shadow (I could compromise on A and C), but D really does look like something sticking out of the ground.

Probably just the same as the others though...

True, although they seem to think it is a hole of some kind, because of the light not being visible that enters it:

HiRISE is a very sensitive instrument, and Mars' dusty atmosphere scatters quite a bit of light around, so there is certainly light entering that cave hole and bouncing around the interior. But it seems that the cave is so big and so deep that almost none of the light that enters the cave comes out. It's deep, and it's big; the hole that we see really is just a skylight on a big subterranean room. How big? We'll never know for sure without visiting it, but I expect that Cushing and his coauthors and the HiRISE team will be crunching the numbers on the illumination conditions and the sensitivity of the camera to put a lower limit on how deep that cave must be for HiRISE to be able to see nothing at all inside it

Maybe there are some Martians down in there. [sfty]

[JohnDoe1234]

True, although they seem to think it is a hole of some kind, because of the light not being visible that enters it:

Yeah... I'm not trained to analyze pictures like these people at NASA... but in a few of them there is either:

a) A lighter colored material exactly opposite of the shadows which coordinates perfectly with the angles of the other protruding objects in the picture...

- or -

b) There is something actually sticking up near the hole on the side exactly opposite of the shadows which coordinates perfectly with the angles of the other protruding objects in the picture...

Now, if an underground chamber of some sort was going to have part of its roof cave in, it would be sort of weird for it to leave lighter material near only one side of the hole, and it would also be very weird for it to leave material above the hole itself around one half of it...

I would really like to see these from another angle, I have a feeling that they are just misinterpreting these.

However, I have no way to explain (F or the two largest photos) because they don't seem to have that lighter semi-circle around them like the others...

[Live Forever]

I hope it is a cave. I want to go caving on Mars some day.

[biknut]

Nasa claims that the last picture is 100 yards across and that the hole must be very deep because it's completely unilluminated by the Sun.

[JohnDoe1234]

I would have figured they might have had some sort of laser ranging system onboard for ploting terrain, and if they did... it would be nice to have a well placed beam tell us exactly how "deep" these "caverns" are...

[Brainbox]

The soil must be very solid for these holes to persist over a long period of time I guess.
It's a strange coincidence that the darker "holes" are exactly aligned with the direction of the shadows of the other objects.

[knite]

Doesnt look like anything protruding to me, looks like the top inner edge is being illuminated. Take a hollow cylinder, put a light source above it (not directly above), and it will illuminate the opposite inner wall unless the light is below the rim. At least thats what im seeing. These are actually rather oddly similar to what Kim Stanley Robinson described in his Mars series as moholes. (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars for those interested.) Those thermal images are actually somewhat revealing, it seems unlikely that they are above the surrounding terrain because they seem to hold heat longer than the terrain (or emit it from geothermal sources).

[Richard Leis]

We plan to target the same hole again with the HiRISE camera, but at a different angle with the Sun to see if we can spot walls. If it is a huge skylight to a deep lava tube, we may still see nothing.

Some estimates suggest the floor must be greater than 160 meters below the skylight because we did not even detect scattered light (and Mars' atmosphere is very good about brightening scenes). Performing a hard stretch of the hole results only in a little noise, so there is obviously no floor image data present in the observation.

Our new website launches June 06, btw. It is gorgeous. The change is long overdue.

[JohnDoe1234]

Sweet! I can't wait... I really want to know what is going on with those pictures [thumb]

[Richard Leis]

The soil must be very solid for these holes to persist over a long period of time I guess.
It's a strange coincidence that the darker "holes" are exactly aligned with the direction of the shadows of the other objects.

There is probably no soil here, just some relatively thin dust deposits over basalt lava flows down the side of the volcano. The skylight might be opening up into a lava tube. If this theory is correct, at some point over the past many million or billions of years, the thin basalt bedrock over the lava tube collapsed to create a few (seven?) skylights. That would suggest the bedrock is actually very strong and rarely breached. It would also suggest that the lave tube is a massive cavernous space that may extend for many kilometers. Definitely an awesome place to explore someday.

Still, nothing on Mars is very certain. The volcanoes tend to be covered in heavy dust that obscures their real stories. Unfortunately, our rover technology is not yet ready to explore these more interesting findings. We have to find safe landing sites near semi-interesting areas that won't result in the loss of a rover down a deep hole. Mars Science Laboratory will be much more capable than Opportunity and Spirit, but not that capable.

[Cyberbrain]

That amazing!

I've never seen these photo's before. I'm perplexed!

[forever freedom]

Maybe we will find giant worm aliens. Or snakes.

Edited by sam988, 30 May 2008 - 05:59 AM.

[mentatpsi]

they probably built their own large hadron collider and tested it lol. See what happens! lol

Edited by mysticpsi, 02 June 2008 - 08:45 AM.

[Cyberbrain]

It's possible that those caverns are geothermal vents.

[Cyberbrain]

Just realized there is no way these could be geothermal or volcanic vents ... 100m in diameter ... wow.

Still, shouldn't we expect to see some sort of light bouncing off the side of the caverns like in a hole?

This may actually be proof that there is something else going on mars? Possibly an entrance to an underground civilization. OR! It's like the movie Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer ... and mars has been sucked dry by Galactus!

Edited by Kostas, 02 June 2008 - 06:29 PM.

[mentatpsi]

On panel [C] (4 am) there appears to be heat emitting from the cave... am i interpreting the image incorrectly (never looked at a B&W thermal before)? Would that be a natural feature of sun exposure, or could it be something else? I see knite was going towards this direction, any assumptions?

Edited by mysticpsi, 02 June 2008 - 07:54 PM.

[forever freedom]

Would be nice if there was a robot NASA could send in those holes... maybe Phoenix and other robots could have smaller robots in them like those mini military robots with cameras. Maybe Phoenix even has something like it, dunno.... I'm very curious to see what's going on with these holes, although i'm very sure that it's much less spectacular than what i would like it to be.

[mentatpsi]

Would be nice if there was a robot NASA could send in those holes... maybe Phoenix and other robots could have smaller robots in them like those mini military robots with cameras. Maybe Phoenix even has something like it, dunno.... I'm very curious to see what's going on with these holes, although i'm very sure that it's much less spectacular than what i would like it to be.

cynic! lol i'm just kidding. I'll allow it to captivate my imagination for the time being, but i share your view.

[forever freedom]

Would be nice if there was a robot NASA could send in those holes... maybe Phoenix and other robots could have smaller robots in them like those mini military robots with cameras. Maybe Phoenix even has something like it, dunno.... I'm very curious to see what's going on with these holes, although i'm very sure that it's much less spectacular than what i would like it to be.

cynic! lol i'm just kidding. I'll allow it to captivate my imagination for the time being, but i share your view.

Yes, i mean, it's not the first time that we find something and get excited about it only to study it more thoroughly and have all the magic taken away from it.

[mentatpsi]

Yes, i mean, it's not the first time that we find something and get excited about it only to study it more thoroughly and have all the magic taken away from it.

Well considering where the imagination is going with this, it's more likely it'll get taken away once realism sets in. Though, the planet could have supported life at one point.

[Anaxim]

I never knew about these, great find! Now I'm wondering what's down there. A lost civilization?

They might be good place to build bases, if we ever get to Mars.

[brokenportal]

Hopefully we will all live long enough to go repeling in there. Maybe one day we'll be able to hold a conference in front of a podium at that hole. Then from there we can move on to all the next further out holes and interesting things out there.

One of the biggest parts that baffles me about peoples indifferences or opposition to life extension is their complete lack of care as to the infinite lake of mystery out there and the fact that with out life extension we will never know it.

Being born and not wanting that is like being born in say, a closet in New York city and never wanting to come out. Just sitting there and eating and contemplating the closet until you die. Sure you could do that, but that would be rediculous. I think the world needs to come out of the closet.

[Cyberbrain]

Hopefully we will all live long enough to go repeling in there. Maybe one day we'll be able to hold a conference in front of a podium at that hole. Then from there we can move on to all the next further out holes and interesting things out there.

I can't wait to go to that conference!

One of the biggest parts that baffles me about peoples indifferences or opposition to life extension is their complete lack of care as to the infinite lake of mystery out there and the fact that with out life extension we will never know it.

So true.

On another note ...

Am I the only person who thinks this is like the movie Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and mars has been sucked dry by Galactus?

Edited by Kostas, 04 June 2008 - 10:06 PM.

[mentatpsi]

Hopefully we will all live long enough to go repeling in there. Maybe one day we'll be able to hold a conference in front of a podium at that hole. Then from there we can move on to all the next further out holes and interesting things out there.

One of the biggest parts that baffles me about peoples indifferences or opposition to life extension is their complete lack of care as to the infinite lake of mystery out there and the fact that with out life extension we will never know it.

Being born and not wanting that is like being born in say, a closet in New York city and never wanting to come out. Just sitting there and eating and contemplating the closet until you die. Sure you could do that, but that would be rediculous. I think the world needs to come out of the closet.

damn, i couldn't agree more... how can people possibly live life without curiosity of the ever existent wonder inherent in life. This is precisely why i wanna be alive when we colonize planets and discover the universe around us... expanding our sphere of influence, though i'm terrified of heights and flying

[Cyberbrain]

More detailed pics:

Edited by Kostas, 04 June 2008 - 10:32 PM.