Very peculiar flow features on Mars
Click for full image.
Today’s cool image focuses on one of the weirdest flow features I have yet seen on Mars. The first photo to the right, rotated and cropped to post here, comes from a January 27, 2021 picture by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This cropped section focuses on the middle of three such weird features, two close flows heading downhill on the interior rim of very eroded 28-mile-wide crater. For some reason the flows also have depressions on their crowns. The depressions almost look like someone carved them out with a spackling spatula. In fact, the MRO science team agrees, labeling this image as “Spatulate Depressions with and without Upslope Gullies.”
The second image to the right shows a wider crop of the same picture, and explains the reason for the last half of that label.
In this view you can see that the left two flows both have gullies uphill from them, while the right two do not. That of the middle two flows, so close together, only the left has an uphill gully is even more striking.
This crater is at 38 degrees south latitude in the southern cratered highlands, so it is possible that these lobate flows are signaling the existence of water ice below ground. Moreover, the uphill gullies for the two left flows suggests they are the source from which the material of those flows originated. That the right flows don’t have gullies however suggests otherwise, that the gullies and the lobate flows are not directly related.
But why do these flows have those interior depressions? I can make two wild guesses. First, maybe when these flows occurred they happened quickly, so that the flow front outpaced the material following, leaving more material at the head than behind it. Second, maybe the ice in the crowns of these flows had become exposed and began sublimating away, leaving the present depressions. The higher edge did not sublimate because it is made of the dust and debris, not ice, that the flow pushed ahead of it.
Click for full image.
The last image to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken by the wide view context camera on MRO. It shows the entire western half of this crater, with the white box marking the location of the second image above.
The impression left of the crater’s interior is that it has ice below the surface, and that this is sublimating away to leave the cracks and canyons, while also removing supporting material at the base of the rim and thus causing the type of avalanches geologists call mass wasting. The flows above are typical of that kind of avalanche.
The interior depressions in the flows however remain a puzzle. While I personally favor my second hypothesis, that the ice inside these flows has sublimated away, leaving a depression surrounded by the flow’s moraine, I have no enthusiasm for that explanation.
Above all, the most significant aspect of these features, despite their strangeness, is that they once again reveal the likelihood of underground ice in the mid-latitudes of Mars. There’s ice in them hills!
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Click for full image.
Today’s cool image focuses on one of the weirdest flow features I have yet seen on Mars. The first photo to the right, rotated and cropped to post here, comes from a January 27, 2021 picture by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This cropped section focuses on the middle of three such weird features, two close flows heading downhill on the interior rim of very eroded 28-mile-wide crater. For some reason the flows also have depressions on their crowns. The depressions almost look like someone carved them out with a spackling spatula. In fact, the MRO science team agrees, labeling this image as “Spatulate Depressions with and without Upslope Gullies.”
The second image to the right shows a wider crop of the same picture, and explains the reason for the last half of that label.
In this view you can see that the left two flows both have gullies uphill from them, while the right two do not. That of the middle two flows, so close together, only the left has an uphill gully is even more striking.
This crater is at 38 degrees south latitude in the southern cratered highlands, so it is possible that these lobate flows are signaling the existence of water ice below ground. Moreover, the uphill gullies for the two left flows suggests they are the source from which the material of those flows originated. That the right flows don’t have gullies however suggests otherwise, that the gullies and the lobate flows are not directly related.
But why do these flows have those interior depressions? I can make two wild guesses. First, maybe when these flows occurred they happened quickly, so that the flow front outpaced the material following, leaving more material at the head than behind it. Second, maybe the ice in the crowns of these flows had become exposed and began sublimating away, leaving the present depressions. The higher edge did not sublimate because it is made of the dust and debris, not ice, that the flow pushed ahead of it.
Click for full image.
The last image to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken by the wide view context camera on MRO. It shows the entire western half of this crater, with the white box marking the location of the second image above.
The impression left of the crater’s interior is that it has ice below the surface, and that this is sublimating away to leave the cracks and canyons, while also removing supporting material at the base of the rim and thus causing the type of avalanches geologists call mass wasting. The flows above are typical of that kind of avalanche.
The interior depressions in the flows however remain a puzzle. While I personally favor my second hypothesis, that the ice inside these flows has sublimated away, leaving a depression surrounded by the flow’s moraine, I have no enthusiasm for that explanation.
Above all, the most significant aspect of these features, despite their strangeness, is that they once again reveal the likelihood of underground ice in the mid-latitudes of Mars. There’s ice in them hills!
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
the finger prints of God?
Graham Hancock –
“Fingerprints of the Gods”
July 2016
https://youtu.be/1wJw1DcI2e4
1:45:02
Olde wind blown Bigfoot Prints ????