Here’s something fascinating and puzzling, maybe WUWT readers can help figure this one out. There’s also a neat flipbook animation below the read more line.
Wayne Jaeschke writes:
Here’s a stumper for any Mars experts. While processing my Mars images from last night, I found a strange feature over Acidalia (top right of the animation below). I made this 5-frame animation of the green-light images. The feature appears in all the channels, but is most visible in blue and green and least visible in IR. Also, it moves with the planet (ruling out dust motes on the sensor) and seems to rise over the limb. Fog rolled in after this, so there is no additional data later than this. If anyone caught Mars after 2:15UT last night, please check your images… particularly after 2:51UT.
Update Note: for those of you Mars geographers, the most appropriate geographic location to cite for where the feature resides is Terra Cimmerium. Acidalia was where I thought it was at first glance, but the measured location is 190 degrees by 43 degrees (South) placing over Terra Cimmerium.
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My thought is some sort of volcanic eruption, as that would be the only thing I could think of that would make an elongated plume that high…but this seems to be even too high for that, but then again Mars has the tallest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons, at 22 km (14 mi) high. If it were volcanic, it would be a first. According to Wikipedia: [Astronomers] have never recorded an active volcano eruption on the surface of Mars; however, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter photographed lava flows that must have occurred within the past two million years, suggesting a relatively recent geologic activity.
Barring that, maybe some sort of gravity induced comet disintegration?
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If it is not an early 1 April joke
(green?)
I am thinking it must be (mainly) CO2
so a volcanic thing.
There was a publicity push today re this movie poster’s release http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1839183616/tt1386703
If I was a betting man..
I would say an impact. Looking at this person’s photos, I see a “double hump” like a circular wave of dust is radiating outward, the center already somewhat cleared.
http://alpo-j.asahikawa-med.ac.jp/kk12/m120321c4.jpg
Well since it is Cimmeria it is obviously the dust raised by a horde of Cimmerians circling some happless Roman army.
I read through two of your references and saw nothing to support the ice-comet bombardment hypothesis. Maybe you could be a little more specific and quote the supporting parts.
In any case, all the supporting evidence in the world doesn’t override a single failure as far as a scientific theory is concerned. As a reader of WUWT, you should have that tattooed across your chest. Where are the over 1000 per day comet strikes on the moon?
Obviously an event… or some sort of occurrance. Possibly even an unfolding situation but we don’t want to be that presumptuous at this stage. I vote we hold off on presumptuousness until tomorrow at 5:00 pm EST.
No IR in it? Should rule out volcanic and even a comet strike I would think.
Since the Earth’s gravity is about 2.64 times greater than that of Mars, vapour or dust would rise on Mars to the 2.64 grater altitude and volume would be ~ 18.4 times grater (I think).
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Mars.htm
On a hunch, I went back to William Abbott’s Iowa U site and, aha, there it was: “The small comets may contain organic materials, though this is only speculation at the moment. If they do, they would seem to be ideal vehicles for carrying organics safely through the atmosphere; they do not burn up the way meteors do, and their icy interiors may protect the organics just long enough to slip safety to Earth on a cushion of water vapor.” By Jove, I got it, taa-taa-taa-taa: Panspermiaaaa!
There. So, the origins of this small comet hypothesis may not be observations, which appear a tad weak, but another hypothesis, panspermia, which is even a weaker one. That one postulates that life is unlikely to have begun on Earth, for all sorts of complicated reasons one needs advanced degrees to understand, but would have been introduced by water and organics-carrying meteorites. This of course takes it off our hands and pushes it even further back into the history of the Universe or the mists of theololgy, wherever one’s tastes may lie. Alas, two weak theories don’t combine to make a stronger one in the rational world, but who needs that. I haven’t surfed enough to see if there is any feedback effect between these two school of thought, but my bet is on them feeding off each other in a circular way. And now we have this volcanic erruption/plume/mushroom cloud on Mars to compete with the “face” and the “cigar shaped mothership.” Yup, this is getting more convoluted than Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum!
If I had any brains, I would blend all this crap together, mash it and cook it up into a “mysterious descoveries” paperback and plan for my early retirement at a five million dollar chalet on the Golan Heights with pink ponies for our young daughter. People have written wild fantasies on the circle, of all things, and then we have the global warming thingie, which is even more ridiculous than any of this.
The inset picture at exosky.net/exosky/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/21-March-0251ut.jpg is odd and obviously doctored, yet set alongside the apparently undoctored image. With the remake of Total Recall, it is remarkable co-incidental, but if it is an April fool prank it undermines the work of the astronomer somewhat. For instance, how long before April 1st is it safe to trust the information he presents as being true. Perhaps March 1st would be a good date, or Jan 1st, or “fool me once…”
REPLY: I think he isolated the horizon to run some image enhancement to bring out the detail. I’d do the same thing. – Anthony
“Terra Cimmeria”
You’re all so wrong, and when it’s so obvious. Terra CIMMERIA. It’s obviously Conan the Barbarian up there. He’s likely just pissed about something or other and stirring things up a bit.
Like I wrote, I don’t know …; the controversy appeared to me to be about incoming meteoroids, the make-up of which can vary, and considering the composition might be ice rather than rock, I see a smaller difference on the Kelvin scale regarding the melting points of the two.
Is it your contention that regarding ice meteoroids vs rock meteoroids that ice meteoroids may not leave ionization trails said trails _are_ detectable by radio means)? There are, of course, multiple incoming meteoroid events every given day; I supplied references documenting same, including the ability (real-time experiment) to ‘detect’ same (of course, one has to separate out the man-made satellite passes that occur as well).
Were you unaware of the ability to detect meteoroids using a number of radio techniques?
.
sherlock says:
March 28, 2012 at 12:01 pm
“Its not a jet of green gas coming from the surface of Mars is it? If so, watch out for giant cylinders landing in a few months.”
Bah – the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.
####
but still they come …
My first impression was of a meteor impact, not vulcanism (Mars hasn’t had a volcanic eruption for tens of millions of years). The cloud would be warmer though…
Peter, I assure you the origin of the small comets arises entirely from observation. Frank wasn’t looking for the comets. They were appearing in the images of the ionosphere as he researched the Aurora Borealis. It remains the only explanation for the observation. You don’t have to be serious. But right now you are not debating the question on its merit. How do nacreous clouds form up to 80 miles above earth’s surface? What was appearing in Frank’s images if it wasn’t comets? Come on, be serious.
Peter you are too late, Stockholm call has been cancelled, someone has already the ‘evidence’.
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/ice-meteorite-found-with-extraterrestrial-lifeforms-182667.php
I zoomed in for “enhancement” and got this…
http://benfry.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/collage123_600.thumbnail.jpg
http://www.mars-electric.com/pdf/Mars-Green-Logo.png
REPLY: OK this is getting to be too much – Anthony
d’accord.
What I find more disturbing is how the planets rotation has been affected. It seems to be oscillating through only about 5 or ten degrees. How much energy must that take?
yes i’m joking.
Is the green tint accurate?
It seems dust or volcanic from the surface would be reddish.
Unless sunlight over the horizon through a CO2 atmosphere makes dust look green.
Source of the mysterious Martian CO2 revealed?
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Mars1.jpg
I have no idea whether ice meteors can be detected by radio, but the ice-comet theory claims one every few seconds. I take it that ‘multiple per day’ is nowhere close to thousands per day. So what you presented is not evidence of ice comets. Interesting though.
A similar (but smaller) projection shows up at the same place on the limb of Mars in images taken from Puerto Rico at 2:31 UT, March 19 by Efrain Morales Rivera-about 49 hours earlier than Wayne’s image. This would seem to rule out an impact. Take a look at the excellent images of Mars and other planets taken continuously and worldwide by amateur astronomers at the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers-Japan website: http://alpo-j.asahikawa-med.ac.jp/indexE.htm
Maybe something to do with Methane…
“Brown dwarfs look green in WISE images because the methane in their atmospheres absorbs the infrared light that has been coded blue, Mainzer added. Since the objects are also too faint to give off the infrared light that is color-coded red, they show up as green.”
http://www.space.com/9509-misfit-failed-star-stinky-cold-glowing-green.html
I need to make a correction-I misread the date on Wayne Jaeshke’s image-the time is within a few minutes of Rivera’s. Nevertheless, images taken on March 21 and posted on the ALPO Japan site, especially those of Florida amateur Donald Parker, show that the appearance of the projection looks similar to what is seen on the 19th-not the rapid, dynamic change that I think an impact would have produced in 49 hours.