Starship Asterisk*

Science also includes recognizing facts when they are presented and admitting when you are wrong.

There is no question at this point that Mars was a water world, not so different from our own. It is smaller and gets less sunlight, but it still held its own for a very long time. It is only recently in the geological sense that its oceans have vanished, but the location of much of the water is now known.

We find large amounts in the polar caps, in glacier fields on the equator, in ice crystals in the dunes, trapped in minerals such as hydrated salts, and even, as some radar has shown, under the ground in reservoirs. All it would take is a small increase in the surface temperature to release the CO2 that is frozen and increase the atmospheric pressure to about 20-25 mb and melt the ice. Then we would see a large amount of water released back into the environment, and Mars would once more show tides and weathering similar to what we see on Earth.

Of course the tides are only solar in nature on Mars when there is significant enough water to support them. Its moons are far too small to have any real influence on the surface.

But consider the layering of Victoria Crater and it seems that we might be in one of the dry eras, waiting only for an increase of temperature to bring back some seas. It would not surprise me to find that this has happened before and the oceans have retreated, only to appear again. It would explain the varied layering very nicely.

aichip wrote:geysers are presently erupting there now

Quick question: do you have any evidence of these geysers beyond images of holes in the ground, or did I miss something? Were you thinking of the South polar CO2 geysers?

Yes, Pete- in fact, here are two chapters from my book that show everything you will want to know. The first (chapter 10) details the geysers and how water flows from underground on Mars and the second (chapter 11) shows up close the actual emergence and drainage path of water flows including the images of mud and erosion.

There are full color and anaglyph images and no, these are not polar geysers, but liquid water geysers sand sand boils located in the Endurance and other areas scouted by Opportunty.

http://xenotechresearch.com/fossilguide.htm

The images show that something is emerging from under the slabs and blowing their margins clean in Chapter 10, and shows that this effect is fairly widespread. It also shows how stems are formed in the process due to grit and sand being carried by pressurized spray, and explains how the laminations of the sediments end up being exposed as they do in specific cases. There are some 3D images (cross-eyed type) that show this in excellent detail.

In chapter 11, I show where water emerges, where it flows, and where it drains, along with the characteristics that identify both geysers and sand boils, low pressure vents of liquid water that create specific and unique features that wind definitely cannot. Then I show the presence of mud and how it reacts with the Mossbauer head on both rovers when they encounter it. This chapter also has numerous anaglyphs, because many features cannot easily be distinguished without the information that three dimensional images convey.

Enjoy.

Then we would see a large amount of water released back into the environment, and Mars would once more show tides and weathering similar to what we see on Earth.

Mars has no evidence of weathering similar to Earth. H2O flowage on Mars is attributed to volcanic and impact heating, topographic features at altitudes below the "cloud ceiling" (or where it should/could be) shows no evidence of H2O erosion from precipitation. The narrow band stratification of the sedimentary rocks points to a small amount of melt H2O slowly moving "salty-acidic-mud" uniformly over large depressions. Using crater dating, there has been no "significant" H2O activity in approximately 2.5 billion years.
Water Channels originate from hillsides, not collecting pools. There is no evidence of active subterranean hydrostatic pressure supplying surface lakes. With out precipitation, Mars terrain has/had very little in common with Earth in respect to it's H2O cycle.

Dr. Skeptic wrote:

Mars has no evidence of weathering similar to Earth.

Argue with the photo:

Note that the rock facing in the center of the image is rounded and smooth. Note that layering of sediments goes very deep, to the very bottom of the crater, and that the layering (as pointed out in a previous image) shows how the ground has tipped apparently, resulting in the sediments no longer being flat to the ground.

Victoria Crater is not over 2 billion years old, or it would be peppered with dozens of other craters. That is the nature of things, that newer craters are forming all the time on Mars. Since we do not see this, then Victoria cannot be that old. It is in fact older than Endurance, no question about that, but even Endurance Crater shows rounded weathered rocks and we therefore must conclude that something weathered them.

I have shown in my many posts that water is present on Mars now, and I have shown a clear a credible mechanism for stem formation and other types of weathering that are ongoing. Just look at the images that seem to indicate precipitation, perhaps from geyser spray.

These microscopic images show weathered rover tracks just a few weeks old.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ ... _m510.html
These images show unweathered rover tracks.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ ... _m023.html
Can you see the difference? It is very clear that something is weathering the materials on Mars at this very instant. Wind cannot create vertical pedestals for the spherules, but water spray can. In fact, water spray can do it in minutes, and that is consistent with what we see.

Compare to this image of soil pedestals from the Ocala National Forest.

This is virtually identical to the Sol 510 microcopics of the rover tracks. You cannot manufacture a credible alternative explanation for this erosion. And that is exactly what it is, erosion.

So now we can add this to the already known reserves of water such as the glacier fields on the equator and the ice crystals in the dunes, and the ice under the soil extending for a kilometer or so...

http://www.foxnews.com:80/story/0,2933, ... ence/space

The more they look, the more they find. The oceans are not gone entirely, just frozen. If the Earth had gotten cold, where do you think the oceans would go? Ice caps and glaciers, and with a little dust coating them, you would see a "dead, dry, dusty" world.

With a little heat, Mars could have its oceans again.

Sir Charles,
Any ideas why the Mars Rovers Image site hasn't seen an update since 02-07-07? Maybe I have an outdated link.

With a little heat, Mars could have its oceans again.

There is no evidence that Mars had oceans, only subterranean ice melting creating short term raging torrents and shallow pools acidic mud. The question has never been if H2O is present, the question is its history, there is absolutely no evidence of "rain" falling on Mars, the lack of such evidence completely rules out any H2O cycle that could be compared to that of Earth. Look at a satellite view of a mountainous region on Earth and compare it to mountains and volcanoes on Mars, it is obvious there is no V-channeling from erosion on Mars either recent or ancient. (V-channeling is caused by precipitation run off)

Do you realize how detrimental your pictures of "wind eroded" rocks as evidence of a H20 cycle is to your credibility?

The H2O near the Martian south pole is most likely a build up of layers where the temperatures are cold enough and is protected from the Sun to prevent the break down of the H2O molecules which has happened to the H2O in the equatorial plains.

Even with a increased climatic temperature on Mars, any H2O oceans would be relatively short lived due to the fact that Mars has lost its magnetic field, H2O would easily broken down threw numerous chemical reactions caused by UV light and radical solar winds. H2 would be separated from the O2 and if you knew about escape velocities of atmospheric gasses, Mars cannot hold H2 in its atmosphere (unless it was very much colder, under 60∘K).

To have your dream come true all you need to do to Mars is:

- Increase its temperature
- Recreate its magnetic field
- Increase its gravitational field
- Restore an atmosphere

Then you're set!

For BMAONE23 -

The NASA rover site shows updates from March 18:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ ... unity.html
The exploratorium site shows them also:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/
You may need to empty your cache and clean up your old temporary internet files. Sometimes windows does stupid things based on its history or a loaded cache. Good luck.

For Dr. Skeptic -

Dr. Skeptic wrote:

there is absolutely no evidence of "rain" falling on Mars, the lack of such evidence completely rules out any H2O cycle that could be compared to that of Earth.

Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. In fact, you are choosing not to see that evidence, which is in fact present. If short term torrential water flows were responsible for the sinuous channels and riverlike features, then the debris that these torrents would have washed out would still be in evidence. They are not. The conclusion is that the material was washed away over a longer period of time and done so in a manner that left it spread over a very broad range, like a river delta.

Look at the sedimentation. That took a very long period of time. Again, argue with the images. The layering is very flat, consistent with a watery deposition, not windblown at all. Windblown sedimentation layering does not have the same flat, uniform character as the layering we can see stretching nearly to the bottoms of the craters that have been examined.

The silicate material that is sandwiched between the layering is consistent with diatom deposits, which would change in density with the seasons, just as the layering rate would change. This creates the alternating pattern of harder and softer sediments, which is proven by the way erosion removes the material more easily in those layers. The result is the look of sandblasted wood, and is obvious to any geologist. It takes harder and softer alternating material to create this effect.

Groundwater seepage cannot and does not explain the layering material segregation, the variations in hardness, the uniformity, and the consistency of spherule size at all. Therefore, visual evidence alone is enough to discredit it as a theory.

More to the point, without water-based erosion, soil as we see it could not exist. Since soil does in fact exist, we must assume that some process created it. Soil does not erupt from a volcano. It is worn down over extended periods of time.

Compare this to the regolith on the Moon. It is loaded with glassy beads created in meteoritic impacts, and those are completely absent on Mars. Lunar regolith is also not very salty. Water dissolved the salts and transported them on Mars. Lunar regolith consists of extremely fine dustlike material, but in the microscopic images from the rovers, we can clearly see the sand grains. So, the conclusion from the visual evidence and the chemical evidence is that water erosion created the soil on Mars.

Dr. Skeptic wrote:

Do you realize how detrimental your pictures of "wind eroded" rocks as evidence of a H20 cycle is to your credibility?

Do you realize how detrimental your poor spelling and grammar are to your credibility? Oh, and the fact that you still refuse to acknowledge facts when they are presented?

Dr. Skeptic wrote:

Even with a increased climatic temperature on Mars, any H2O oceans would be relatively short lived due to the fact that Mars has lost its magnetic field

Assumptions, assumptions. You have never seen a planet with oceans that had a weak magnetic field, so you are completely out to lunch here. You are basing this assumption on... what? Atmospheric erosion rates would probably be different, but in fact nobody knows the answer to this! It is an assumption of the first magnitude. You have to do better than that.

Dr. Skeptic wrote:

and if you knew about escape velocities of atmospheric gasses, Mars cannot hold H2 in its atmosphere

I am fully aware of the relationship between molecular mass, temperature, and escape velocity. Nowhere have I claimed that Mars keeps hydrogen in its atmosphere. You are making a straw man argument. But ask yourself this question.

When Mars had a thicker atmosphere, where do you suppose all that water was? It certainly was not in the polar caps or the glacier fields then. If you say "underground", then you have to admit the possibilty that underground water is still emerging today, just as my documentation shows. If you say "aboveground" then you must admit that it was on the surface. This means oceans.

Think carefully before you answer. You have only two choices.

thanks AI
this is where I have been going
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ ... portunity/
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ ... portunity/
note no updates since 02-07

Do you realize how detrimental your poor spelling and grammar are to your credibility? Oh, and the fact that you still refuse to acknowledge facts when they are presented?

Evidently you cannot differentiate between a facts and a data interpretation - they are not the same. I will politely not bring forth the multitude of assumption that entangle your theory.

Careless typing and knowingly (or unknowingly) propagating poor science are hardly comparable character flaws.

I have presented a large body of material supporting my contention; Meridiani is indeed a seabed. You have yet to substantiate a single flaw in my presentation.

Be specific, stick to the material at hand. Explain away a single fact that we can observe from the image, such as:

1. Distinct geological layering that is only consistent with water deposition, and that is visible to the depths of the craters examined. Remember that NASA and JPL scientists themselves have identified this as showing "crossbedding"; that this was created by the flow of shallow water.

2. The fact that the layering is uniform over geological time spans, and that the layering is alternating hard and soft material.

3. The fact that the material shows alternating amounts of fine silicate that exactly corresponds to the layering; that the fine silicates' presence exactly matches the layering.

4. That the material at the top of Endurance Crater shows the exact properties of mud where impressions caused the material to bulge when pressed with the Mossbauer spectrometer; that indeed the landing bags themselves made markings that Steven Squyres said looked exactly like mud.

5. That in no case has a distinct layer of salt been seen, although when the wheels churn the soil, the areas reveal a powdering of sparkly soil (NASA's words) that is completely consistent with flash dried brine leaving salt crystals behind.

I can go on at great length (to the weariness of many readers) and you are still left with no single credible alternate explanation except that this is a seabed and moisture is still present in the soil.

I await your single successful alternate explanation of these phenomena.

Shallow, short lived lake and stream beds. Raging torrents do to geological catastrophes. Some surface melt. Slow seepage from subterranean volcanic activity.

No seas. No oceans. No rain. No complex organisms or none at all.

Mars once was a warmer, wetter planet with a thicker atmosphere, that phase of the evolution of Mars ended 3.5 to 2.7 billion years ago. The distribution of H20 across the planet supports the theory that the surface H2O once residing in the equatorial plains is no longer present. O2 has oxidized many of the surface materials while the H2 evaporated away with most of the other atmospheric gasses with the loss of the Martian magnetic field. Because the mass of Mars is only 1/3 that of Earth, (more lighter elements also) it's core cooled quickly, without the protection of a magnetic field the atmosphere stripped away leaving the surface of the planet cold and desolate. The cracking or cross patterns on exposed sedimentary is the result of the rock losing virtually all it's H2O - cracking due to shrinkage. The time-line for the H2O and atmospheric losses is still up for debate, I agree with close to the 3 to 3.5 billion years ago mark.

This is all fine, but the visual evidence does not match what you claim. Short term seepage does not form the layering that is seen,nor does it create the alternating patterns of calcium sulfate and fine silica. This invalidates the opinions that you have posted. It takes long standing bodies of liquid water for this to happen.

And, what you see cannot be the result of something that happened billions of years ago, because the cratering would be far heavier if it were that old. Again, the visual evidence refutes your opinions.

This is all fine, but the visual evidence does not match what you claim. Short term seepage does not form the layering that is seen,nor does it create the alternating patterns of calcium sulfate and fine silica. This invalidates the opinions that you have posted. It takes long standing bodies of liquid water for this to happen.

I hope you don't believe that Calcium sulfate can only form from surface H2O or that wind erosion cannot create fine striated sedimentary rock.

And, what you see cannot be the result of something that happened billions of years ago, because the cratering would be far heavier if it were that old. Again, the visual evidence refutes your opinions.

If you require clarification, surface H2O was at its peak, not the planet being geologically dead in the stated time.

Dr. Skeptic wrote:

I hope you don't believe that Calcium sulfate can only form from surface H2O or that wind erosion cannot create fine striated sedimentary rock.

You always seem to arrive at some strange assumptions. What would lead you to think this? Calcium sulfate results from a chemical reaction that can occur anywhere, certainly not limited to surface water. The mineral is classed as an evaporite, normally considered to be formed in an ocean and then deposited as the water dries up. However, it can just as easily form as liquid percolates through mineral substrates underground. As for wind forming finely striated sedimentary rock, sure it can. The issue is that wind also forms dune structures, and you will never find a large, flat area with this sort of lamination because in wind formed sediments, the fluid turbulence makes small "sand bars" in the soil. Just look at a desert floor, even the ones on Mars to see this.

You would have to explain why in the case of these sediments, wind could somehow do the following:
a) form absolutely flat areas of sand (which is never observed anywhere)
b) somehow sort the sand and silicate into alternating layers
c) do so regularly for geological ages
d) somehow incorporate spherules evenly throughout the layers

Let's look at each in turn. For a) we can see that sand never creates those large, flat areas as I mentioned. Wind that is moving sand invariably makes sand bar patterns, or washboarding. That is a consequence of fluid dynamics and you cannot get around that. Only silt and sand deposited at the bottom of an aqueous environment can form such absolutely flat and uniform layering.

For b) the wind is not smart- it cannot sort fine silicates from calcium sulfate dust and deposit it in alternating layers. I would be fascinated to see your explanation of the wind doing this. How would the gypsum dust be created in the first place? Then, how would it end up uniformly thin all over a plain? And then what would be the source of the very fine silicate dust? And how would the wind then decide to deposit it preferentially and uniformly all over the gypsum dust? There are too many things that would have to be in place to make this process happen, whereas if you look at an ocean bottom, you see this all the time. Fine gypsum deposits with the soil over the course of the year, and as the diatom populations increase and then decrease, their shells deposit the silica in a seasonal manner. Your theory has too many unexplained events happening on a cyclic basis, none of which are ever observed, yet if you just accept the evidence that this was a sea bed, then the whole picture is very simple. The large, uniformly flat deposits happen naturally there, the formation of calcium sulfate is there, and the uniform alternating layers of fine silicates are there. Occam's razor favors the simplest explanation and this is it.

For c), we only need to know that it is a natural consequence of the above explanation. For d), the formation of the spherules is ongoing, and they drop to the bottom and end up fossilized in the sediments over time, yielding exactly the resulting sedimentary structures we see.

So a sea bottom forms exactly what we see, with a single explanation. very simple.

Dr. Skeptic wrote:

If you require clarification, surface H2O was at its peak, not the planet being geologically dead in the stated time.

What needs clarification is your picture of geology. You continue to state things but then cannot explain them. Also think about this- you claim that surface water (let's not obfuscate here) was at its peak, but what is your evidence of that? You are stating a theory, but taking it as fact. And what has that to do with any of this? There is still surface water, and the soil is still muddy. When the rover wheels squeeze brine out of the soil, it dries and leaves the sparkly crystals in the tracks, which is salt.

Again, a very simple explanation. There is no "salt layer", there is only brine drying out as the wheels pass over the muddy soil. If the planet is truly geologically dead, then it fails to explain the 5 million year old event that created the glacier field on the equator. An impact event that yielded that much energy would have left immense scars, yet they are not to be seen. The best explanation that scientists have been able to advance is that subsurface heating (read "geology") released the immense sea (yes, it is called a sea by the scientists) five million years ago, which then froze into glaciers and was covered by surface dust.

Again, your explanations fail to cover any of this.

Nor do they create a description of something that it isn't.

If there truly was an ocean or a sea, there would need to be salt layers increasing in regularity as the planet became more arid, the sediment layers would be less uniform, lower elevations would have thicker striations ...

If you use geology, you need yo use all the data and not only the data that fits your theory

The "thicker layers" idea only holds if there was no rainfall or incoming water to dilute the salts. You have made one more assumption, and one with absolutely no data one way or the other.

How about the fact that the spherules are not and never were concretions- if they were concretions formed by groundwater welling up from beneath (as so many seem to assume, including yourself) then why aren't the lower "concretion" larger? In your scenario, water would be present longer at deeper layers and the "concretions" would continue to grow over time. But what we see is that the spherules follow a uniform population curve at all depths which is completely absurd if you assume that they are concretions.

If your salt layers should have been thicker, then so should the spherules be larger as we look deeper into the strata. After all, if concretions grow more when more water seeps into the strata, then deeper concretions, having been wet for a longer period of time, should have grown larger. What would make them all suddenly decide to stop growing at a certain range of sizes? I have never heard of an intelligent concretion.

But a rapid change in climate (perhaps related to the Milankovitch cycles?) would have removed the oceans in just a century or so, and we would not observe this change in layer thickness.

The "thicker layers" idea only holds if there was no rainfall or incoming water to dilute the salts. You have made one more assumption, and one with absolutely no data one way or the other.

Sorry, your theory is based on your assumption that precipitation aided in the sedimentary striations - there is no evidence of rain, only evidence that it has never rained on Mars which I have covered before.

Dr. Skeptic wrote:

Sorry, your theory is based on your assumption that precipitation aided in the sedimentary striations - there is no evidence of rain, only evidence that it has never rained on Mars which I have covered before.

No, you have not. You are doing nothing more than "this is so because I say so". Show me the evidence that "it has never rained on Mars". Of course, as usual, you will not. You have no such evidence. But more to the point, the spherules themselves are not concretions.

If the spherules were concretions, then spherules formed in lower layers of the rock would have been around longer, and they would have been wetted by subsurface water longer, and they would have grown larger. You can't get around that. Since the spherules are uniform all the way down as far as we can see, then the theory is wrong.

In other words, the evidence is against your claims, and we can see it clearly just by looking at the crater walls. Concretions that are wetter for longer periods of time will become larger. They did not, as we can see. So you would have to explain how the "concretions" in the lower layers of rock just stopped growing while the ones in the newer layers grew to match their size. Sounds like magic to me, not science.

Shall we focus on this one point until we reach a resolution on it? It would force us to look at the empirical evidence, and not bounce all over the place.

If the fossilization process is the gradual replacement of tissues (bone or shell or leaf) with minerals, then fossils are nothing more than a mold of a bone, shell, or other object that has been cast in minerals. (Cast in stone so to speak.) Given this fact,we can only determine the mineral composition of anything found on Mars and not the source of the mold in which it formed. As to weather it is a fossil or not, this can only be determined by the shape of the mineral (shell like, or bone like) and possibly the composition of the matrix in which it resides. But the fact that it is comprised of minerals that formed in water would not indicate that it is or is not a fossil.

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.

The only way that I see as feasible for the blueberries to be concretions is if they were to form in volcanic pumice that had nearly uniform sized air bubbles and further which sat under or within a watery enviornment or at the water table for millions of years. This pumice layer would then, over time due to erosion, become uncovered allowing for what would need to be a softer pumice stone to erode revealing a harder concretion to be left behind.
I'll admit that I don't know much about geology, but pumice is the only stone that I know of which is pourus enough to allow for the concretion process to occur within its natural air pockets.

BMAONE23 wrote:The only way that I see as feasible for the blueberries to be concretions is if they were to form in volcanic pumice that had nearly uniform sized air bubbles and further which sat under or within a watery enviornment or at the water table for millions of years. This pumice layer would then, over time due to erosion, become uncovered allowing for what would need to be a softer pumice stone to erode revealing a harder concretion to be left behind.
I'll admit that I don't know much about geology, but pumice is the only stone that I know of which is pourus enough to allow for the concretion process to occur within its natural air pockets.

Concretions:
http://www.priweb.org/ed/concretions.htm

aichip wrote:Dr. Skeptic wrote:

Sorry, your theory is based on your assumption that precipitation aided in the sedimentary striations - there is no evidence of rain, only evidence that it has never rained on Mars which I have covered before.

No, you have not. You are doing nothing more than "this is so because I say so". Show me the evidence that "it has never rained on Mars". Of course, as usual, you will not. You have no such evidence. But more to the point, the spherules themselves are not concretions.

If the spherules were concretions, then spherules formed in lower layers of the rock would have been around longer, and they would have been wetted by subsurface water longer, and they would have grown larger. You can't get around that. Since the spherules are uniform all the way down as far as we can see, then the theory is wrong.

In other words, the evidence is against your claims, and we can see it clearly just by looking at the crater walls. Concretions that are wetter for longer periods of time will become larger. They did not, as we can see. So you would have to explain how the "concretions" in the lower layers of rock just stopped growing while the ones in the newer layers grew to match their size. Sounds like magic to me, not science.

Shall we focus on this one point until we reach a resolution on it? It would force us to look at the empirical evidence, and not bounce all over the place.

Let me remind you of what I have posted.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsro ... g_id=17551

Ancient terrain subjected to precipitation.

Ancient terrain not subjected to precipitation
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020808.html

Even an untrained eye can note the difference.