"spidery black things" on Mars

[Richardisgreat]

Melange from the giant sand worms perhaps

[RogerTheDodger]

G'wan say it - just think of the kudos if you are right

[toxic]

ok i will say it ...its some sort of plant life we dont know what kind of life could live in the martian atmosphere then it could die back in winter and the wind covers it up then along comes spring and the cycle begins again or its ruins uncoverd by the wind each year.

nature will and often dos find a way.i hope it isnt oil 1 planet ravaged by us is enough. oh and ridicule me all you like

[Richardisgreat]

It would be super cool if it was plant life, so obvious and out in the open like that. I personally think it could be frozen layers under the surface thawing in the summer and causeing land slides on the dunes and revealing a hidden layer underneath, as posted earlier. Either way plant life is obviously life, and liquid thawing so near to the surface could also mean the potential for life. I do believe that Mars once held life in some form i just have a gut feeling, i would even go as far to say i think there might still be life up there in some form or other be it bacteria or something else. I really hope Curiosity finds the ingredients needed for life on Mars.

[glowjet]

Out of curiosity I have spent some time with the HiRISE website quoted by Lewis, fascinating images of the Mars surface detail, images on pages 23 and 45 taken in October 2012, show the same Dune effect described as melting ice features

John.

[Alastair Rae]

There are other features in the second picture. It looks a bit like hair on the dunes. Anyone know what they are?

Are they not just ripples in the sand?

[Ganymede12]

Are they not just ripples in the sand?

It's hard to tell at the angle the picture was taken at.

How long would it take Curiosity or Opportunity to get there?

[glowjet]

It's hard to tell at the angle the picture was taken at.

How long would it take Curiosity or Opportunity to get there?

To me the second close up picture looks like a rocky outcrop that has been sand covered, if you look carefully you can see the gulleys in the sand at the base of the formation formed over the millennia by the river-lets of melting ice, the black areas appear to be holes exposing the bed rock/ice with finger fissures of collapsing sand around the edges, I don't doubt that some of these holes may be connected under the frozen sand and leading to the base giving rise to strange features in the surface above, something akin to the sinuous and graben features found on the surface of the Moon

John.

[sologuitarist61]

ok i will say it ...its some sort of plant life we dont know what kind of life could live in the martian atmosphere then it could die back in winter and the wind covers it up then along comes spring and the cycle begins again or its ruins uncoverd by the wind each year.

nature will and often dos find a way.i hope it isnt oil 1 planet ravaged by us is enough. oh and ridicule me all you like

Doesn't Occam's Razor apply here? Always assume the simplest explanation is correct. Whatever it is appears in spring as the ground warms (and presumably the sub surface ice melts) and that sounds awfully like plant life to me as well!!

[glowjet]

Doesn't Occam's Razor apply here? Always assume the simplest explanation is correct. Whatever it is appears in spring as the ground warms (and presumably the sub surface ice melts) and that sounds awfully like plant life to me as well!!

I think if NASA had the mere slightest inclination that there was plant life here they would have been on it like Bees to honey

John.

[Shibby]

Doesn't Occam's Razor apply here? Always assume the simplest explanation is correct. Whatever it is appears in spring as the ground warms (and presumably the sub surface ice melts) and that sounds awfully like plant life to me as well!!

That's the simplest explanation? Alien life!? I would absolutely love that to be true However, to me, the defrosting explanation is a bit simpler - and has already been identified in many other areas on Mars as I say.

[m sutton]

They are looking for life as we know it

but maybe its life as we dont know it

Bet it tastes like chicken.

[Richardisgreat]

well if we cant eat it or hump it we had better kill it