Comments on: Mars is depressed!

By: Grinspoon

Grinspoon — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:23:47 +0000

It’s obvious, the soviets used to secretly detonate nukes on mars!!!

Vela wasn’t thinking big enough!!!

By: tracer

tracer — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:23:53 +0000

Indeed, I have a terrible problem even looking at ordinary craters on pictures of other planets. They all look like domed bumps to me, sticking out rather than sticking in. I have to trick my eyes into seeing them the “other way” until they pop into view properly.

By: JB of Brisbane

JB of Brisbane — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:24:06 +0000

I have to admit I thought this was a raised feature when I first looked at it – my first thought was, “The Zit On The Face On Mars”.

By: tracer

tracer — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:15:56 +0000

I hope you realize, Phil, that you made me look up the word “anaglyphic”.

You kids these days and your synonyms for “stereographic”!

By: Boingo

Boingo — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:45:21 +0000

Perhaps the rays and the sink hole were created at the same time by the same event. You said it is in an old mudflow. If the mudflow was caused during a volcanic event, then it is possible that a basin of boiling or near-boiling water (or watery mud) created from melting earlier in the same event could have been overridden by the later mudflow. Steam from the hot water would could then have built up under the thicker mud from the boiling water (or watery mud) underneath, forming a bubble. The bubble then ruptured, spewing out a mix of water and mud, forming the rays. Then, as the mud and water in the basin cooled, and the water evaporated, it contracted and was no longer able to support the thicker mud over top of it, causing the sink hole a few weeks later.

Sound plausible?

By: zeph

zeph — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:04:58 +0000

I isolate the blue and red parts and pasted into an image:

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/7595/mars3dxf8.png

You have to cross your eyes/stare into space like a Magic Eye poster – you may have to back away from the monitor for the two images to come together, but your eyes should lock in once you have.

By: Dusty S

Dusty S — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:16:55 +0000

If it were convex rather than concave I would swear that it is a cow chip. Remember the cow that jumped over the moon. Maybe one jumped over Mars. Dusty

By: dunno

dunno — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:26:02 +0000

Well, looks to me like someone started to weld something and then stopped after the initial touch. Looks exactly like that actually. . . . inter-planetary lightening? or plasma lightening (if such a thing exists) – intense energy would be needed to create something like this if you ask me . .

By: Gary Crowell

Gary Crowell — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:25:38 +0000

I agree with Jack/Daniel; you can almost see the little dumptrucks.

By: Joe Anderson

Joe Anderson — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:53:32 +0000

Of course if W was still in office, we’d be wincing every time he said analglyphic

By: Moose

Moose — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:56:39 +0000

Well, if we ever need to get rid of a pesky bounty hunter, we know where to go.

By: Nemo

Nemo — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:52:38 +0000

Were the superbowl glasses red/blue or the amber/blue?

Yeah, I’d call them amber/blue.

By: Radwaste

Radwaste — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:40:31 +0000

Hey, it’s a particle beam strike. Just like the Richat Structure. You can see the signs of battle all over the solar system!

By: Grand Lunar

Grand Lunar — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:29:24 +0000

If I look at it long enough, I get a sort of Pareidola moment of my own; it looks like a maw.
So, would this mean Mars is hungry? Are Mars Bars still around? Or just Milky Ways?

By: Spunk-Monkey

Spunk-Monkey — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:33:15 +0000

Wow!! I fiddled with the resolution on my monitor and got a better view, and it is most *definitely* a deep hole, not the raised feature i was “seeing” before. Mostly it was the cliffs where the surrounding terrain is separating into chunky cliffs; that was reading to my eyes an entirely different kind of shape. Dayum, this is a cool image! How large is the whole depression?

By: Jack Hagerty

Jack Hagerty — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:27:11 +0000

Two words: Anaconda Copper.

- Jack

By: Levi in NY

Levi in NY — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:01:07 +0000

@Santoki: Those little “divets” in the lower-left must be raised features. Rather, compare the depression to the craters on the right.

By: Buzz Parsec

Buzz Parsec — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:56:02 +0000

It’s a giant frog. I for one wish to be first to welcome our new giant martian frog overlords.

By: Spunk-Monkey

Spunk-Monkey — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:46:26 +0000

My gut says it’s definitely taller than the surrounding landscape, but it’ll be interesting to find out from a different pass/angle/etc. 3D effects like this are harder to determine the more one looks, as the longer the brain starts to become convinced which way the depth is working it gets set in our perceptions. I wonder if there is any more data on that particular feature?

Were the superbowl glasses red/blue or the amber/blue? I didn’t see it myself, but had i known there was a 3D commercial i might have watched.

By: Paul M.

Paul M. — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:41:23 +0000

I don’t have 3D glasses here but if you look at the lighting of the two smaller features to the right of the sinkhole they are lit the same way. I’m assuming those features are craters, they look very much like it – so the large feature must be a depression as well… wanders off to find some coloured cellophane.

By: Menyambal

Menyambal — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:47:35 +0000

It looks like a sinkhole to me, and I’m sitting about ten blocks from a sinkhole that ate a house. I downloaded the photo, put on my red/blue glasses and flipped it, rotated it, reversed it and squinted at it–it still looks like a sinkhole. It definitely goes down, and the terrain around it is depressed enough to get surface flow into it. The surrounding flow is pretty obvious, too, so there’s either water or dust going in. It could be where a block of underground ice melted, which is called a kettle lake or pond here on this planet.

By: Santoki

Santoki — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:27:42 +0000

Wait a second, this *is* a raised surface. Look at the shadows: if this was a pit, the bottom left of the object would be lit, not the upper-right. Compare this to the little divots at the lower left side of the picture: those are indentations and they appear lit from the bottom left.

Also, when you put on your 3D glasses you’ll notice that the planet surface is L+R aligned, but surface features are negatively offset, meaning you have to cross your eyes to line them up. Going from neutral to crosseyed means that we are looking at something closer than the planet surface.

By: Nemo

Nemo — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:13:11 +0000

Should this work with the 3D glasses they handed out for the Superbowl ads? It’s not working for me.

By: Sci-Fi Si

Sci-Fi Si — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:10:42 +0000

Looks like a volcano, but with lava being sucked in…

By: CherryBomb

CherryBomb — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:50:14 +0000

Ditto what Sundance said about the direction of flow. What the channels remind me of is what happens when you scoop a hole in a water-saturated material, like mud. The water in the mud around the hole flows in to fill it, and the mud left behind compacts. The channels are not really eroded out, they just kinda look like they were.