Huge seas 'once existed on Mars'

US scientists have found further evidence that huge seas existed long ago on Mars.

A geological mapping project found sedimentary deposits in a region called Hellas Planitia which suggest a large sea once stood there.

The 2,000 km-wide, 8km-deep Hellas basin is a giant impact crater - the largest such structure on Mars.

The researchers say their data support a lake between 4.5 and 3.5 billion years ago.

Some scientists believe that conditions on Mars were more favourable for the evolution of life at this time than they were on Earth.

"This mapping makes geologic interpretations consistent with previous studies, and constrains the timing of these putative lakes to the early-middle Noachian period on Mars," said Dr Leslie Bleamaster, research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson.

The researchers say that fine-layered outcrops around the eastern rim of Hellas are likely to be sedimentary deposits.

They were formed through the erosion and transport of rock and soil from the Martian highlands into a standing body of water.

The results support earlier studies of the western part of the Hellas basin.

Further study of the region could provide clues about where this water went and to how the Martian climate changed over geological history.

The mapping effort used data from a number of instruments aboard Nasa spacecraft, including the Viking orbiter, Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10264182.stm

Trees found on Mars' Surface - NASA Photos

A NASA probe has sent back photographs of what appears to be trees on the planet's surface.

The images appear to show rows of dark "conifers" sprouting from dunes and hills on the planet surface. But the scene is actually an optical illusion.

The photographs actually show sand dunes coated with a thin layer of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, less than 240 miles from the planet's north pole.

The "trees" are really trails of debris caused by landslides as ice melts in Mars's spring. You can even see a cloud of dust, just to the left of centre of the picture, where an avalanche is caught happening.

The photograph was taken from orbit around Mars by HiRISE, the most powerful camera sent to another planet.

NASA's Candy Hansen told The Sun: "The streaks are sand, dislodged as ice evaporates, which slide down the dune. At this time of the Martian year the whole scene is covered by CO2 frost."

Last month Nasa announced a new telescope had detected five planets outside the solar system. The observatory, which was launched last year to find other Earths, made the discoveries in its first few weeks of science operations.

Although the new worlds, called exoplanets, are all bigger than Neptune, Nasa said their discovery showed that the planet hunting telescope was working well.

Article Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6979855/Nasa-photographs-trees-on-Mars.html

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So what is NASA's official cover-up alibi? The scene is an optical illusion, and the "trees" are actually just trails of debris caused by landslides as the ice melts...That is by far the stupidest idea of a cover up explanation I've heard yet from NASA.

Let's take a look at this photo a little more closely:



You can see here in the zoomed in picture that the "traces of debris" are individuated columns of great trees in height. It is not an optical illusion. The image is very clear and shows in detail the amazing height of these columns of trees. You are not going to have trails of debris perfectly individuated from each other forming columns of structures that is obviously that of rows of trees. You only have to look at our own trees to see how they are individuated to see a pattern here. It's very obvious.

NASA, your images and data is great, but from where I'm sitting, no one has any interest in your theories or speculation that you bring forward. The people are much smarter than you take credit for and we can see through such weakly fabricated hypotheses. So are these trees on Mars? There is no doubt in my mind that that is what we are seeing here.

You'll also see through this video below a double confirmation in regards to vegetation on Mars as well as several other phenomena that NASA has not revealed to the public:

U.S. researchers allege EBEs on Mars

American lawyer Andrew D. Basiago on Exopolitics radio talks about his insights about evidence of life on Mars in NASA photographs PIA10214, which is a panoramic montage of a series of snapshots of the Martian surface that were taken by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit in 2007, when Spirit was perched on the western edge of the Home Plate Plateau in the inner basin of the Columbia Hills range inside the Gusev Crater on Mars. Mr. Basiago used legal methodological approaches to uncover critical evidence of life of Mars.

Andrew D. Basiago is a lawyer, writer, and environmental scholar educated at UCLA and the University of Cambridge. He maintains a private law practice in Washington State. He was the editor of Exopolitics: Politics, Government, and Law in the Universe (Universe Books, 2005) and The Fatima Trilogy (Anomalist Books, 2007). In 2008, Andy discovered a cosmic treasure trove of life forms and ancient artifacts on Mars in photographs taken by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. He presented his findings in a landmark paper entitled The Discovery of Life on Mars and founded the Mars Anomaly Research Society (MARS) to foster research, disclosure, and education about the fact that Mars is inhabited and craft law and public policy pertaining to the discovery of life on Mars.

Evidence four typologies of possible humanoids are apparent in the NASA photograph:

(1) First typology: Humanoid beings with bulbous heads and spindly bodies, like the Gray “extraterrestrials” of the UFO literature;

(2) Second typology: Transparent forms, like glass totems; (3) Third typology: Human-insect hybrids, such as The Scorpion Man that can be seen in The Turquoise Field; Human-reptile hybrids, such as the Gumby Lizards that can be seen in and around The Rock Garden; and beings with humanoid heads and larval, worm-like, or slug-like bodies that can be seen throughout photograph PIA10214;

(4) Fourth typology: The forms that are almost “all head,” which might not be a life form but a building.

Evidence of intelligent humanoid life on Mars suppressed by NASA includes:

(1) Abstract artwork, with many carved heads and faces formed from indigenous rocks predominating; bas reliefs and intaglios on the sides of rocks, which are also ubiquitous; and ground drawings seen in the far distance from both the western edge of the Home Plate Plateau in PIA10214 and the southern edge of the Home Plate Plateau in PIA11049;

(2) Architecture, including The Face of the Bull that can be seen on the right edge of the Home Plate Plateau, which is a terraced, multi-levelled platform that might have once have served as a home or a viewing platform at a natural vista point that overlooks the valley terrain depicted in PIA10214.

Article Source: http://exopoliticsnews.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/u-s-researchers-allege-ebes-on-mars/

New Study of Meteorite Provides More Evidence for Ancient Life on Mars

This image of the meteorite, seen through a scanning electron microscope, shows bumps that resemble a fossilized colony of microbacteria. Some of the rounded bumps are preserved at the top of the surface and resemble individual spherical and ovoid-shaped microbes. Image credit: NASA.

(PhysOrg.com) -- In 1996, when scientists examined a meteorite from Mars previously uncovered in Antarctica, they were intrigued by what looked like microscopic fossils of ancient Martian life forms. Now, using new technology that wasn't available 13 years ago, NASA scientists have found further evidence that the materials and structures in the meteorite are likely signs of ancient life, rather than the results of inorganic processes.

ALH84001 History
Scientists estimate that the meteorite, called Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001), formed on Mars about 4.5 billion years ago, making it one of the oldest known objects in the solar system. Because the meteorite contains microscopic carbonate disks that are about 4 billion years old, scientists have previously hypothesized that the meteorite interacted with water that may have existed on Mars at this time.

Much later, about 15 million years ago, a larger meteorite likely struck Mars and ejected ALH84001 into space. After spending most of that time traveling throughout the solar system, the meteorite landed on Earth about 13,000 years ago. Then, in 1984, a team of US scientists discovered it in Antarctica. The meteorite finally made news headlines in 1996, when NASA scientist David McKay and others peered at the rock under a scanning electron microscope and saw what appeared to be nanoscale fossils of bacteria-like life forms.

Bacterial or Thermal Origin?

Now, McKay, along with Kathie Thomas-Keprta, Everett Gibson, Simon Clemett, and Susan Wentworth, all of NASA's Johnson Space Center, have revisited the original hypothesis with new observations of the meteorite. The study is published in a recent issue of the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.

In the new study, the scientists used advanced microscopy techniques to investigate the carbonate disks and, more importantly, the magnetite nanocrystals within the disks. These embedded magnetites are the apparent fossils that exhibit features similar to contemporary magnetotactic bacteria.

During the past 13 years, different groups of scientists have proposed competing hypotheses to explain the origins of these magnetites. Some of the leading hypotheses are non-biological, suggesting that the magnetites were formed via thermal decomposition of the carbonates in which ALH84001 was struck by other meteorites.

Such impacts may have increased the temperature of ALH84001 and caused the carbonates to decompose into magnetites via bond redistribution. In some models, ALH84001 may have experienced this shock by a random meteorite impact while still on Mars, while in other models, thermal decomposition may have occurred due to the impact event that ejected ALH84001 from its home planet.

But whatever event might have triggered a thermal decomposition process, the scientists argue in the current study that very few - if any - of the magnetites embedded in ALH84001 carbonates are a product of thermal decomposition. By analyzing details such as the percentage of magnetite volume in the carbonate disks, the trace amounts of impurities observed in some of the magnetites, and the lack of siderite which some previous models suggested may have decomposed to form magnetite, the scientists concluded that these new observations were inconsistent with the previous inorganic-based thermal decomposition hypotheses.

By showing that it’s very unlikely that the magnetite originated from the decomposition of ALH84001’s carbonate, the scientists argue that possible biological origins of the magnetite need to be considered more seriously than before.

“For the past 10 years, the leading (and only) viable non-biologic hypothesis for the origin of the nanophase magnetites concentrated in ALH84001 has been thermal or shock decomposition of iron-bearing carbonates, a process known to produce small magnetite crystals,” Thomas-Keprta told PhysOrg.com. “Our paper has falsified this non-biologic hypothesis by showing, based on thermodynamics and minor element chemistry, that this non-biologic hypothesis simply cannot produce the ultrapure magnetites actually present in ALH84001 as a significant population of all magnetites. By falsifying this non-biologic hypothesis, we are left with only the biologic hypothesis to explain the detailed properties of the magnetites in this martian meteorite.”

Magnetite Biosignature

Although they have not yet developed a model for the origin of the magnetite in ALH84001, the researchers’ new observations are consistent with the possibility that the magnetite has an “allochthonous origin,” in which it was exposed to aqueous solutions such as water.

As Thomas-Keprta explained, the magnetite in ALH84001 could have been one of several ferromagnetic minerals produced by magnetotactic bacteria that live in aquatic environments. When these bacteria die and their shells degrade, a chain of magnetite is released into the environment. Without its confining shell, the magnetite chain configuration cannot be maintained, so individual magnetite crystals begin to mix with inorganic particles in the water.

On Earth, magnetotactic bacteria are quite common in aqueous environments, and scientists often find magnetites in surface and subsurface sediments.
“For many years, the presence of the specific kind of nanomagnetite formed by magnetotactic bacteria on Earth have been completely accepted as a biosignature when found in any Earth sediment or rock,” Thomas-Keprta said, noting that these magnetite have very specific properties.

“When we first documented these specific properties in the ALH84001 carbonates, the only alternate non-biologic hypothesis that was commonly accepted as viable was the thermal decomposition of iron-bearing carbonate,” she said. “Now that we have completely falsified this hypothesis with this latest paper, we are still left with the specific properties of the ALH84001 magnetite that, if found on Earth, would be a robust biosignature indicating production by bacteria.

“We also point to the many discoveries since our original paper showing supporting evidence such as an early strong magnetic field on Mars (necessary for the development of magnetotactic bacteria); the presence of near surface water at many locations on current-day Mars; the presence of possible oceans, major drainage channels, and other features associated with an early wet Mars; and the recent evidence for variable releases of methane into the Martian atmosphere. . . . We do not believe it is too incautious to restate our original hypothesis that such magnetites constitute strong evidence of early life on Mars.”

Article Source: http://www.physorg.com/news180264793.html