by aichip » Wed Apr 04, 2007 10:23 pm
This is absolutely correct- we can only see the shape of the remaining cast, not determine what formed it at all from a chemical standpoint.
The latest microscopic images from Spirit show spherules that are most definitely not concretions, and now the rover team members are backing away from that explanation (thank goodness somebody has seen a little sense here!) Look at the fact that these are small, absolutely uniform in size and more to the point- hollow!
In my opinion, they are millions of urchin shells swept into a mass of mud, where they fossilized. This is consistent with my other findings.
The point I am making is that Dr. Skeptic claims that there was no surface water ever, and no rain. He feels that groundwater welling up from beneath can account for the layering, and that the spherules are concretions, nothing more. My contention is that this is not credible due to the fact that if the spherules were concretions, then deeper ones would have been exposed to the subsurface water for longer and would have become larger. Since they did not, the theory is wrong.
His theory cannot account for the differing composition of the layers of sediment. For instance, the sedimentary layers are composed of mostly gypsum with large amounts of sulfate salts and iron compounds, but they alternate with layers rich in very fine grained silicates.
Desert winds and subsurface water intrusion could not form so many perfectly flat layers, and could definitely not cause silcates to be alternating in the layers. How would the wind know what to deposit at what time when the layering was forming?
And, when you take his concept of only subsurface water into account and his belief that the spherules are concretions, then you can see that this is ruled out by their uniform size throughout the layers.
So subsurface water cannot form this constant, alternating set of layers of silicate and gypsum- what would be the mechanism? If the answer is "water rose and fell over time" then you have to postulate some sort of seasonal means for this to happen. Still, what would sort out the fine grained silicates?
Now, terrestrial rocks formed on ocean beds have structures that are identical to the sedimentary rocks found on Mars- and this is because diatom populations grew and fell as the seasons changed, leaving layers rich and poor in silicates in alternating layers. We see exactly the same layering and structure on Mars, we know that there were oceans (contrary to what Dr. Skeptic claims) and then it is a small step to "hey, maybe diatoms were in the Martian seas also". His problem is simple- he has an almost religious conviction that life cannot have ever existed there unless it was some sort of "safe" form, like primitive bacteria billions of years ago, and after that they all died.
I have shown plenty of evidence that this is wrong, and he does not like it. Sorry, the facts speak for themselves. Life is probably one of the most common phenomena in the universe, limited only by its environment. Mars is an excellent example of a planet that "wore out" its atmosphere and became very inhospitable. Still, the loudest objections to finding fossils or seas are from the religious people who feel that the existence of God is somehow threatened by facts.
This is absolutely correct- we can only see the shape of the remaining cast, not determine what formed it at all from a chemical standpoint.
The latest microscopic images from Spirit show spherules that are most definitely not concretions, and now the rover team members are backing away from that explanation (thank goodness somebody has seen a little sense here!) Look at the fact that these are small, absolutely uniform in size and more to the point- [i]hollow![/i]
In my opinion, they are millions of urchin shells swept into a mass of mud, where they fossilized. This is consistent with my other findings.
The point I am making is that Dr. Skeptic claims that there was no surface water ever, and no rain. He feels that groundwater welling up from beneath can account for the layering, and that the spherules are concretions, nothing more. My contention is that this is not credible due to the fact that if the spherules were concretions, then deeper ones would have been exposed to the subsurface water for longer and would have become larger. Since they did not, the theory is wrong.
His theory cannot account for the differing composition of the layers of sediment. For instance, the sedimentary layers are composed of mostly gypsum with large amounts of sulfate salts and iron compounds, but they alternate with layers rich in very fine grained silicates.
Desert winds and subsurface water intrusion could not form so many perfectly flat layers, and could definitely not cause silcates to be alternating in the layers. How would the wind know what to deposit at what time when the layering was forming?
And, when you take his concept of only subsurface water into account and his belief that the spherules are concretions, then you can see that this is ruled out by their uniform size throughout the layers.
So subsurface water cannot form this constant, alternating set of layers of silicate and gypsum- what would be the mechanism? If the answer is "water rose and fell over time" then you have to postulate some sort of seasonal means for this to happen. Still, what would sort out the fine grained silicates?
Now, terrestrial rocks formed on ocean beds have structures that are identical to the sedimentary rocks found on Mars- and this is because diatom populations grew and fell as the seasons changed, leaving layers rich and poor in silicates in alternating layers. We see exactly the same layering and structure on Mars, we know that there were oceans (contrary to what Dr. Skeptic claims) and then it is a small step to "hey, maybe diatoms were in the Martian seas also". His problem is simple- he has an almost religious conviction that life cannot have ever existed there unless it was some sort of "safe" form, like primitive bacteria billions of years ago, and after that they all died.
I have shown plenty of evidence that this is wrong, and he does not like it. Sorry, the facts speak for themselves. Life is probably one of the most common phenomena in the universe, limited only by its environment. Mars is an excellent example of a planet that "wore out" its atmosphere and became very inhospitable. Still, the loudest objections to finding fossils or seas are from the religious people who feel that the existence of God is somehow threatened by facts.