3/16/2004: Layered Mars

I saved this one from APOD before the Mars rovers landed and got all the attention. This is a shot captured from the Mars Global Surveyor, which orbited Mars. Considered interesting about this shot are the layers that you see on the hills. The layers around the hills are described as wide enough to drive a truck around, assuming that you had a truck and that it was on Mars and that you could start it and that you could drive it. The whole shot is about 3 kilometers across.

That looks like some good hiking!

Provided your eyeballs don't come flying out of your head.

Originally posted by Undertoad
This is a shot captured from the Mars Global Surveyor, which orbited Mars.

...and is still orbiting Mars, taking more and more of the best photos of Mars ever seen. Mars is now the second most well-documented planet in the solar system.

Well of course the martians practiced terrace farming. They invented the irrigation canal too.

Mars is now the second most well-documented planet in the solar system.

what used to be #2 ?

I don't believe this it's a hoax. That's a close up of a teenage boy's chin or a frog's back

The layer-things are cool, but what's all that black splotchy stuff?

Don't tell me-- this new planet has cancer already, doesn't it?

I think I once saw a Madonna video that looked like this. Is MTV really 'Mars TV'?

It is a perfect way to avoid FCC sanctions.

What interests me most about this picture is how each consecutively smaller circle seems to be higher. Anyone have an idea of what would cause this phenomenon? Water? Pressure? little martians with bull dozers?

Erosion of layers of rock of differing composition?

Originally posted by Elspode
Erosion of layers of rock of differing composition?

Martian sandstone.

Wind erosion and rockfall.

Originally posted by Skunks
The layer-things are cool, but what's all that black splotchy stuff?

I think they're oil spills from the Exon Valdez or the Prestige.

Mars is civilized. They too have contamination!!!

Originally posted by Olikat
What interests me most about this picture is how each consecutively smaller circle seems to be higher. Anyone have an idea of what would cause this phenomenon? Water? Pressure? little martians with bull dozers?

Where I live, we don't have lakes, per se, but resevoirs where a valley is dammed up, and the water is let out periodically for irrigation. The walls of the resevoir get ridges like that when the water sits for a while (the waves lap at the shore, eating it away) and then they let out water, and the water level drops. Once they stop letting out water, it starts eating away at the shore again. The longer the water sits at a level, the larger the 'cliff' becomes.

obvious signs of intelligent life
http://www.pbase.com/image/18263110/large

That really looks like someone just airbrushed out the Sphinx ...