Re: Question about an alternate abiotic origin of Martian "blueberries"

From: Carsten Troelsgaard (carsten.troelsgaard_at_mail.dk)
Date: 12/04/04 

Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 07:54:56 +0100

"Andrew Diseker" <adiseker@lexonia.net> skrev i en meddelelse
news:adiseker-A926C0.10153703122004@news-50.dca.giganews.com...
>
> Sorry about the title, I didn't want to be ignored as a crackpot
> before someone read my post. Afterwards, you can call me insane! :-)
>
> At any rate, I've been checking the Opportunity site daily looking
> at the raws, and something struck me about the "blueberries" in so
> many images. I know the accepted wisdom is that they were all formed
> by flowing water leaching out hematite and forming the spheres, but
> what struck me is that they looked a lot like hailstones after a
> storm, scattered all over, especially sitting on top of the rocks.

Makes me think of a 550 mill year old fossil droplet-mark in a shale I once saw. The point is, that
the blueberries as concretions are characterized by growing in the subsurface without leaving any
kind of scour-marks or shape up any wind/water-lee structures in their vicinity. They would also
aggregate in sorted layers as Aidan points out, if left in a streaming environment. The blueberries
that has not been erodet out all show the above characteristics. The odd-looking surface of Mars
probably stems from the thin atmosphere - it has no mechanical erosive power compared to Earth, but
what it has may have acted over a very long time.

> What I was wondering, has anyone thought that there might be an
> atmospheric origin of the blueberries? Could they have been formed
> in a thicker, more humid Martian atmosphere via accretion, until
> they were too large to remain suspended?
>
> Feel free to obliterate this scenario: Dust in the current Martian
> atmosphere can remain suspended for a year or more, at the present
> density. There are also clouds of ice crystals present in the
> atmosphere, forming under various conditions. What if the atmosphere
> temporarily thickens and becomes more humid, maybe due to volcanic
> activity, increased solar activity, or impact of a comet? It would
> seem that a denser atmosphere could hold dust for a much longer time,
> and with more water vapor there would be more ice clouds. Could the
> dust clouds of a global storm interact with ice clouds, such that
> dust particles coat ice crystals, melting the ice, and attracting
> more dust and ice crystals? Since the dust and ice particles are
> very small, it would seem that any "mud" that resulted would form
> into a very tiny sphere, and would form the basis for further
> accretion in a way that retained the spherical shape. Once the spheres
> had reached enough mass they could no longer be suspended and would
> fall out of the air. If this occurred on a cyclical basis, there
> could be layers of these "blueberries" such as we see in the various
> rock formations in Endurance. The original spheres could even dry
> out from evaporation, as long as they retained the shape for later
> particles to accrete to.
>
> Anyway, that's what occurred to me. Please, be polite if not kind
> when slamming my idea! Also, if there is a more appropriate group,
> please redirect the followups there.

We have a continous discussion of the topic, so it's appropriate.

> Thank you for your time!

Carsten

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