Spirals of Mars
Posted by Greg at 01:55, 27 Apr 2012More strange symbols on the surface of Mars:
Resembling corkscrew snail shells, these interesting patterns are actually rare lava flows seen for the first time on Mars.
NASA’s HiRISE spacecraft, currently in orbit around Mars, spotted the formations in an area called Athabasca Valles, a tear-shaped landform thought to have been created by catastrophic flooding.
Such coils are occasionally seen on Earth, mostly in the ropey pahoehoe lava flows on the Big Island of Hawaii or in the submarine Galapagos Rift on the bottom of the Pacific.
The Martian lava coils are about 100 feet across — much larger than their terrestrial counterparts, which are often only a foot or so in size.
Full story at Wired. (h/t @GrailSeeker)
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14 April 2009
7 weeks 6 days
OMG
(better comic, though)
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All that lives is holy, life delights in life.
--William Blake
2 May 2004
18 hours 43 min
It looks like a close-up of the hide of a Celtic elephant.
~ * ~
@levitatingcat
12 April 2007
8 hours 25 min
Ziggy played guitar, jammin' good with Weird and Gilly,
The spirals from Mars, he played it left hand
But made it too far
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy's band
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
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@red_pill_junkie
23 March 2005
50 weeks 3 days
Since smaller planets and moons seem to have larger geological structures than are found on Earth, probably due to gravitational reasons, it occurs to me that the same might apply to many life forms that evolve on such planets where life exists. Competitive evolution, and the ratio of body mass to the amount of energy required to move that mass, might allow larger, more dominant/harder-to-kill life forms to exist on planets with less gravity. On larger planets with a stronger gravitational pull, smaller life forms might be the norm, so they have less mass to have to move around. So if life had been able to evolve on Mars for billions of years, there might have been things like herds of mega-elephants.
6 April 2010
4 hours 15 min
more proof of water on mars :)
...I forgot how I got here but everyone seems to be heading off in that direction. I hope someone brought food. I have a feeling this is going to be a long journey................
18 September 2007
10 hours 23 min
Or things that behave like fluids.