Are Those Spidery Black Things On Mars Dangerous?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/10/02/162147810/are-those-spidery-black-things-on-mars-dangerous-yup

by kaffeinecoma • 14 years ago

491 118 14 years ago

freehunter• 14 years ago

Dangerous how? Toxic to humans? At risk of unsettling sand around a rover/human? Is the question asking if they are something that would consciously attack someone?

Everything is dangerous. The key to mitigating that danger is planning ahead for it. A leaf seems harmless, but infection from a cut the leaf gave you could kill you. A marshmallow is fluffy and soft, but if you swallow it without chewing, it could expand and suffocate you.

Asking if something is dangerous is ridiculous. Asking what it is and how to safely handle it is not. The article does a much better job portraying this than the headline does.

dpcx• 14 years ago

Seems like they're just trying to get some more clicks.

ljd• 14 years ago

Betteridge's Law of Headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines

ximeng3• 14 years ago

We know.

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+be...

It's been mentioned 19 times already in the last month according to Google.

Codhisattva• 14 years ago

Breaking Headline! "Is Betterridge's Law of Headlines actually a Law?"

jhuckestein• 14 years ago

Without a scale those images are largely useless.

ximeng3• 14 years ago

I can't quite figure this site out, but if I've got it right, should be around 10 miles.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_024736_2565

Edit:

Ahah, here we are, about 1km:

http://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/EXTRAS/RDR/ESP/ORB_024...

marcoamorales• 14 years ago

I'm glad I'm not the anyone who noticed this. I don't know if those are just a few millimeters or several meters.

tocomment2• 14 years ago

> they might be colonies of photosynthetic Martian microorganisms, warmed from the sun, now sunbathing in plain view.

That's incredible. Is that really possible? I wonder why the rover doesn't check them out? It seems weird it's digging through soil looking for chemicals possibly related to life when there's potential life out in plain view.

NASA has some very strange priorities.

kaizendc• 14 years ago

When planning a landing site for each rover mission, NASA considers a variety of factors and makes a best-guess as to the fruitfulness of each site from a scientific perspective.

Clearly a team of brilliant scientists has not failed to consider the possibility of exploring these strange spidery features, but they have decided against it for the time being.

It doesn't really make sense to assess their "strange priorities" as an outsider looking in with very limited knowledge as to how their decision making process actually works.

gwern• 14 years ago

Yeah; just for starters, such a sandy area seems like a serious risk on its own to a rover, never mind the risk actual geysers would pose. The geysers are interesting, but are they worth jeopardizing an entire rover expedition for?

qdog• 14 years ago

The guess is random geyser's powered by CO2 plumes, so probably dangerous for the rover to check out directly. Or, maybe they will check it out during the time of the year it's cold. Not sure how far away the rover is from this, either.

gfosco• 14 years ago

From what I read, there's a big concern about contaminating Mars with Earth-based bacterium. To ensure the drill would be useful after landing, they pre-set one of the drill bits. By doing that, they broke the sanitized enclosure, and there may be contaminants present that survived the trip. They are supposedly avoiding signs of life with Curiosity.

JoeCortopassi• 14 years ago

I would be very interested in the source for this info

ChuckMcM5• 14 years ago

This stuff blows me away. I think, holy crap this planet has all sorts of real exo-planet kinds of weirdness. I love the idea of reverse icicles although for the life of me I can't imagine what would hold them up once the CO2 gas has vaporized out.

One part of me wants to build another Curiosity style rover and catch the next Earth/Mars orbital cycle and put it down near stuff like this.

I can believe folks would find this as inspiring as looking back at the planet from the Moon.

brador3• 14 years ago

Is there any chance they could be plants? relying on underground water reserves and appearing every spring to throw around some pollen before slinking back into the cool darkness.

ChuckMcM5• 14 years ago

I'm not a xenobiologist so I couldn't quantify the relative chance of them being 'plants'. But this is the kind of stuff we can speculate on.

First, we'll need to be a bit loose with our definitions since 'plant' means a very specific kind of thing.

So if we define a 'plant' as a chemical process which creates structure in the presence of certain chemicals such that a transformative chemical reaction is enabled whereby energy in the form of sunlight or heat is used to build additional structure. Then we can see if there is a chemical mix that would have this characteristic output.

It is critical to note though that this would also classify a stalactite as a 'plant' which converts calcium carbonate into 'structure' (in this case rock) by exploiting a transfer agent (water).

Interesting questions would be "Why vanish in the winter?" what ever hypothesis we come up with has to include the observed effect and behaviors. This is my biggest issue with my 'frozen geyser' hypothesis, it seems like they would continue to exist during winter.

Finding better imagery from HiRise would be good too, in particular it would be useful to know if these were vertical structures or not. that would show up as shadows.

Lots of fun to think about.

k-mcgrady• 14 years ago

That was my first thought too but the speed at which they appear makes it seem unlikely (I know very little about this stuff though).

Zenst• 14 years ago

Certianly do seem to follow a frost/freeze pattern in some ways, even if they do tend to have a bag of flour type directional point. So can see the reverse icicles. Question is it a biological or a chemical reaction. I do feel that it could be chemical but thats just a hunch and that is what makes it a holy crap mystery.

martian• 14 years ago

This is awesome! I love that Mars continues to baffle, astound, and fascinate us. Sometimes our 21st century hubris makes us think we are reaching some kind of peak knowledge, but moments like this prove that we yet know so little.

In particular, the geology of Mars in an incredibly fascinating topic. If you're looking for a good primer on the subject, I highly recommend Mapping Mars by Oliver Morton.

Mapping Mars contains a history of the science, highlighting the major contributors to the field and augmented with interviews from such notable science fiction authors as Kim Stanley Robinson. A good discussion is, for example, how much water exists on the planet. Consensus is now that there is water somewhere, but exactly how much water, where it sits, how it flows: great questions that are attacked with lucid explanations.

Hats off to NASA and human curiosity for this grand adventure.

slashclee• 14 years ago

In the Mars trilogy (Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson, the term "areology" was coined for describing geology-on-Mars. I always thought that was a great word.

philbo• 14 years ago

Your point is a good one. However just to interject tangentially, hubris is demonstrably not a 21st century phenomenon, nor imho will it cease to be a phenomenon in any future period of human existence.

"Peaks of knowledge" have existed throughout our collective history and the single uniting feature of each is that they are never peaks. Local maxima perhaps, but the upslope of discovery always reasserts itself eventually. Afaik, nothing indicates that the future will differ in this regard.

fotbr• 14 years ago

Nope, black spidery things on Mars aren't dangerous at all. http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100117081507/babylon...

jl62• 14 years ago

Could they not simply be rocky outcrops that are covered and uncovered by seasonal sandstorms?

usefulcat• 14 years ago

If that were the case, they would cast shadows.

earlyriser• 14 years ago

I see some shadows in the bigger dune at the bottom-left (crossed by the yellow line).

qxcv• 14 years ago

Not necessarily. The rock may only be a few centimetres underneath the sand dune, in which case it would not appear to protrude out from the dune significantly. There is also the possibility that the "spiders" are black sand[0][1] or silt, as they look suspiciously like some formations on Earth (albeit on a much larger scale):

[2]: This is a sand dune on a sand island, but has some black discolouration from rock just below the surface. I'm not sure how far down this rock extends, but its visibility varies depending on the time of year and number of visitors to the island. Note that there is also some grass (brown) and other vegetation (green) around the edge of the clearing (particularly on the southern edge), which is difficult to distinguish from the black rock.

[3]: Same island, different clearing. There is still some vegetation in the picture, but it's easier to see the black sand and rock underneath the top layer of white sand.

Try playing with the time slider at the top of the page to see how the exposure of the rock changes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_sand [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_mineral_sands_ore_deposi... [2] http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-27.194111,153.379091&z=21... [3] http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-27.280641,153.410605&z=20...

macey• 14 years ago

This is such a trip! It kind of pisses me off that I'll die long before we gain a thorough understanding of this kind of stuff.

creamyhorror• 14 years ago

"Surely I'm not the only one thinking spiceblows..."

-- a commenter on that page, Melissa Swanson

thebigshane2• 14 years ago

context: http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Spice_blow

raverbashing• 14 years ago

I'm waiting for the sandworms

Eliezer• 14 years ago

Surely I'm not the only one thinking "Shadow ships! Aiiieee!"

VMG• 14 years ago

only Ziggy Stardust knows

nacker• 14 years ago

Him and Andrew Basiago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwE8m50sbWk&playnext=1&#...

jonknee• 14 years ago

Depends on your point of view I suppose, all of Mars is dangerous (100% lethal!) if you're a human.

diggan• 14 years ago

Unlike Tellus where nothing is lethal.

sidcool2• 14 years ago

The top comment here and on reddit is the same!! Either kaax is martian, or just a plagiarist. Here's the link:

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/10vrag/are_those_sp...

aw3c2• 14 years ago

It is a spammer that takes HN comments and reposts them at Reddit. Someone should report that behaviour at http://www.reddit.com/r/reportthespammers

tocomment2• 14 years ago

What's the benefit of doing that? (Is it an automated process?)

sidcool2• 14 years ago

I checked that guy's profile, he's not a spammer, just a karma whore.

MattBearman• 14 years ago

It would seem David Bowie knew about these way before the rest of the world

ktizo• 14 years ago

David Bowie has built a fortress of solitude out of these at the Martian South Pole.

thebigshane2• 14 years ago

context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Ziggy_Sta...

debacle2• 14 years ago

A good image of the formations is on Wikipedia:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/PIA11858_...

DougWebb• 14 years ago

That looks so much like mold.

jlgreco7• 14 years ago

It really does. However, one should keep in mind that humans have overzealous pattern-matching engines. We are really good at erroneously seeing things that we recognize.

dwd• 14 years ago

First thing that comes to mind is the xenofungus from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

squidsoup• 14 years ago

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a giant sentient fungus.

tripzilch• 14 years ago

I agree, that particular image really reminds me of roots of some sort (though obviously if you zoom in, they're not really roots). However, in this other picture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_Global_Surveyor_1.jpg the structure really looks more like a Diffusion Limited Aggegrate ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion-limited_aggregation ), which can also be generated by non-living chemical processes.

I'm not sure if these two pictures are of the same phenomenon, actually?

ry0ohki• 14 years ago

It seems like we'd be able to tell if they are geysers or something else by having a few frames of photos? A geyser would be moving in some way you'd think?

TallGuyShort• 14 years ago

My understanding was that the shapes shown in the pictures are the debris piles left after the geysers.

mhp• 14 years ago

Pardon my idiotic question, but why don't they just drive over there and check them out? Or are they just in a totally different place than the rover (like asking why someone in North America can't just hop over and check out Uluru)?

woodchuck64• 14 years ago

It's weird, like the article was written in 2006 when they first proposed CO2 geysers.

According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_geyser this only occurs in the south polar region and Curiosity is near the equator.

(Gale Crater: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolis_quadrangle)

shmageggy• 14 years ago

Apparently there are two active rovers on Mars right now [1], both of which have an average speed of about 0.02mph [2,3]. I haven't checked out the geography of the situation but it's not looking promising.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_%28space_exploration%29#A...

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_rover#Design_and_co...

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_rover#Specifications

lisper• 14 years ago

That is not an idiotic question at all, it's a very good question. The reason is that (as you surmised) the rovers are very far away. Which begs the obvious question: why didn't they land a rover closer? That's a much harder question to answer. Landing site selection is a complex and somewhat political process. But there have been two polar missions, one successful, one not:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(spacecraft)

InclinedPlane3• 14 years ago

Mars is an entire world, it's a big place, we only have two rovers on the planet and they can travel at perhaps 10 km per year.

malandrew• 14 years ago

Why are there so slow? Is this an engineering decision or a limitation of the environment they need to operate in?

melvinmt• 14 years ago

It feels weird to realize that according to Mars, we're the aliens invading the planet. Makes me wonder about all the extraterrestrial "rovers" on our planet.

systematical• 14 years ago

Crazy, looks like vegetation from 200 miles up but if the theory regarding CO2 is correct that is pretty crazy!

JabavuAdams• 14 years ago

WTF. How have I not heard about this, until now?

Are Those Spidery Black Things On Mars Dangerous?

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