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The past month's big pictures from space include a giant "Bootprint on Mars," provided courtesy of the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter.
This elongated, 240-mile-long crater, known as Orcus Patera, is arguably even more enigmatic than the famous "Face on Mars": The face is basically an eroded mesa that just happens to look like a face with the right lighting and focus. But scientists really don't know how Orcus Patera came about.
As explained in today's ESA image release, the term "patera" is usually used to describe deep, complex or irregularly shaped volcanic craters. Orcus Patera is situated between two huge Martian shield volcanoes, Olympus Mons and Elysium Mons, but it's not clear whether volcanic activity is responsible for the bootlike shape. The depression could have started out as a round crater that was subsequently deformed by geological movements. It could have developed from the erosion of separate craters that were lined up next to each other.
"However, the most likely explanation is that it was made by an oblique impact, when a small body struck the surface at a very shallow angle, perhaps less than five degrees from the horizontal," the Mars Express team says.
Mars grazed by a meteor? Sounds sensible to me. It'd take one giant leap of logic to believe that giants once walked the Red Planet. Almost as big a leap as it'd take to believe that someone left a human-sized bootprint on the Martian surface.
You'll find more big pictures in our newly published Month in Space slideshow. Click on these links for bigger versions of the images, plus the stories behind the pictures:
- Colorful clash: Antennae galaxies, as seen by NASA's Great Observatories.
- Wonders of Earth and sky: Perseid post-mortem, plus the big picture.
- Readying the Robonaut: Kennedy Space Center gets r0obot set for liftoff.
- Live fast, die young: The star WR 22, from European Space Observatory.
- Ice on the loose: EO-1 spots Petermann Glacier's breakup in Greenland.
- Tsunami on the sun: Magnetic storm seen by Solar Dynamics Observatory.
- All dressed up: Get the big picture for Dmitri Kondratyev's dunking in Russia.
- A mudslide's mortal blow: Chinese landslide, as seen by WorldView 2.
- Land of the crescent: The moon looks even bigger in this big picture.
- Rovers ready to roll: Learn about Desert RATS and see NASA's big picture.
- Before and after the flood: Pakistan tragedy documented by Landsat 5.
- Fixing the space station: More about repair spacewalks plus the big picture.
- Glorious galaxy: No slideshow is complete without a Hubble galaxy image.
- Great view: Check astronaut Doug Wheelock's Twitpic account.
- Ghostly mystery: Hubble provides a spooky view of a dark nebula.
If you're in the Seattle area this weekend, stop by the downtown Seattle Public Library at 2 p.m. Sunday and join me in a conversation about "The Case for Pluto" and the search for planets in our solar system and beyond. Even if you're not in the Seattle area, you can join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter.
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wonderful pictures! It's ridiculous to even mention a giant martian, since after all Who would only take ONE step? lol ;-P
My first thought upon seeing the crater was a shallow angle impact, and then I read the article and sure enough that's the likely cause. It'd be interesting to see a computer model (or animation) of what this impact would look like.
Great call. Looks like a slide in hit.
Shhhh, not too loud...Obama will end up wanting to find them and put them on the new healthcare plan so he can get another leg.
maybe that was the only place it was muddy that day?
kathy, martian baseball? now that's an advanced lifeform!
i thought that too, especially with the pairs of hook like forms at the distal narrow end.
A REALLY BIG Flatfoot!
The very fact that there is a term - "patera" - used to describe deep, complex or irregularly shaped volcanic craters indicates that it isn't such an unusual phenomenon. And yes, I agree i my first reaction was an oblique impact of some sort.
Like Mob_Barley said, Who takes just ONE Step?....for anykind???...
Really, at the left end it sort of looks like a couple of meteors have left craters, there is obviously something about the geology of mars we just don't quite get yet and the more I think about it the more I suspect that the sun may flare up a bit more periodically than we imagine. Of all things there must be areas that resemble quicksand, even in the sub,sub-zero atmosphere. We need more robots on the planet ASAP. Long before we send the dell dude to mars, we had better gather a heck of a lot more data! A while ago I clipped a picture from a mars shot that looks curiously familiar to art works on earth. Now I think about the rogue nasa worker that was allegedly putting "touchups" to astro pictures in an effort to make people think they were seeing things that are not really there....I would love to see a follow up on that "experts" work. Nice picture alan, I am sure this area is on several go-to-mars-teams explorations list. If not, I am sure it is now.
The 'Big Picture' is that the Mil.Gov TS/SCI 'Above Top Secret' Elites at NA$A are planning to soak you and
your children and your grandchildren for the most egregiously malfeasant TEN $Ts in American history, the
totally science fiction fraud of Mission to Mars. Ask any astrophysicist or rocket scientist, go ahead, how you
would strap two space shuttles together, or even refuel one orbiting in space, enough for a 30 million mile
trip to Mars over six months, more than 150% as long as those poor Chileans miners will be trapped, but
in their case, their cabin is the size of your SUV, and the odds of them safely returning, even if they just
wing around Mars and float back again, are slim to zero. Of course, that's the red, white and blue glory
hole, when they'll double the budget to TWENTY $Ts, so that the first pioneers won't have 'died in vain'.
That's how the game is played between the Have Mores, who CBO now estimates make THREE TIMES
more than you and I do in salary, benefits and lifetime pensions, than we can working in private side.
See, they're the 'Right Stuff'. White, male, Mil.Gov, with TS/SCI passports to the Land of Chosen of Job.
TEN TRILLION DOLLARS BLOWN INTO SPACE, WHEN 46,000,000 AMERICANS ARE LOOKING FOR WORK.
Did you ever stop to think that NOT ONE of Reagan's 'Star War's sci-fi fantasies was ever deployed?
The only 'Brilliant Pebbles' our TENS OF BILLIONS of life savings bought, were their wives' ring fingers.
The only 'Space Based Laser' our TENS OF BILLIONS of life savings bought, was keeping Boeing alive
long enough to outsource all of its commercial production overseas, so it pays no payroll deductions,
State gives it free property tax exemptions, and it skips sales tax by signing contracts at 30,000 feet!
Once the Elites get their ZERO capital gains tax and ZERO estate tax, we'll be taxpaupers in the Usury
Slaves of America, and what exactly we'll be slaving at, I don't know. All the computer and IT jobs are
being stolen by alien tele-commuters who surf by the MILLIONS under our borders every night on the
'network neutrality' internet that you pay for, and the Indian tele-aliens in Mumbai get FOR FREE, and
all the manufacturing jobs that haven't flown to China soon will, China and much of ASEAN have now
mandatory English language requirements, so they can start replacing American workers by internet.
Imagine landing at LaGuardia in your Boeing 787 built overseas, programmed overseas, and landed by
tele-alien airport controllers virtually tele-present using the high bandwidth that your fees have paid for!
It's coming! It's here! Mil.Gov has a strangle-hold on America, and our good jobs are fleeing to tele-aliens.
No wonder the Chosen of Job want to stir up the immigration fight. They don't want you to think anymore!
Herman, you need professional help (not to mention a good spellcheck and grammarcheck program)!
Hey Pee-Pee Herman - Grow up religious cheapskate crybaby, your anti-science rant is pathetic!
you are grumpy
Thanks Alan for the thought provoking picture. I think the oblique impact from a shallow angle by some kind of asteroid is most likely. I don't think we'd see such an elongated shape from volcanic activity unless the surface moved considerably in a short period of time. While we have moving plates on Earth that could theoretically make such a shape but the plates here move so slowly we end up with separate volcanoes strung out like a chain.
When are we going to get men sent to Mars to get a true examination made of this planet. It seems there will be Euro-trash there first.
Looks like a skid mark to me. Ill go with the oblique impact idea.
You might see this same type of crater on Earth if our planet was not 3/4 ocean and surrounded by a much thicker atmosphere. The thing I find interesting about it is that it appears to be relatively new geologically speaking given the number of craters around it and the relatively few inside.
Looks like a glancing blow from a flat skipping-stone of sorts, and the Martian trade winds took it from there with post-event erosion...evident around the impact craters and the rim moraine that occured afterwards.
Could be the way the creator made it or COULD it be a way for him to say hay look I am still here and working so you will seek out for me! You want believe what else I have done! Have you noticed there is not another human race out there! Which makes you special! Keep looking even though I am not far from any of you it will take some of you longer to believe that I am here than it does for others and some want believe regardless of how many pictures I make so you can see.
Your so gullible Mr. Boyle. The face is no eroded mesa.
Why can't there be just one footprint from a giant martian? I mean, Bigfoot hunters have been touting as genuine much more out of focus shots of single footprints for years as proof of his existence! :P
I like the idea of a crater being excavated out by an oblique impact. But it certainly hard to imagine that
an impactor would maintain integrity long enough to plow the martian landscape without exploding upon contact even travelling at 30 - 40 miles/ sec.
Mars is a very intriguing planet. We now that it once was covered by oceans, which means that life did develop within that environment. The unmanned rovers are steaming back lots of important information that is being analyzed by many scientists;however it takes a manned mission to the red planet to assimilate the geographical nature of the surface and discover things that the rovers cannot. I am extremely dissapointed that a Mars mission has been put on hold. It took abiut 10 years to reach the moon after President Kennedy announced his proposal. I don't believe this administration understands the significance of a manned mission to Mars. The more I look at the photo's the more reason to step upon the surface and explore this unknown territory! We must commit to a mission within the next five to ten years. The moon mission was a priority and was accomplished. We must commit to Mars because it is our human nature to explore!
A manned mission to Mars would be so exciting! I hope such a thing happens within my lifetime.
I keep waiting for an explanation as to how high does the sky go and what is smaller than small - That nothing evolved something to evolve a brain for self explanation. Compelled to continue itself through sex stimuli! etc.
Perhaps MR Higgs has some new Boson proposal, Charles III.
Over 10 years ago, the "face" was declared an artificial structure. Dr. Thomas Van Flandern of JPL gave numerous public lectures and published peer reviewed scientific findings establishing the artificiality of structures, particularly the multiple "faces" present, cities, transportation infrastructure (what appears to be an airport) among dozens of other clearly established artificial structures.
Your comment that the face is an eroded mesa is not only misleading, it's a lie in denial of facts which are in evidence and statements to the contrary published by JPL. In the incredibly small number of images they've actually reviewed, they have established well beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a cataclysm on Mars that destroyed an advanced and vibrant civilization.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thomas+van+flandern&aq=f
http://www.metaresearch.org/solar%20system/cydonia/asom/pressconf_nyc/Artificial%20Structures%20on%20Mars-NYC.htm
Please stop re-iterating 10 year old errors. I would like you to publish a retraction of your statements. I am offended that you flagrantly ignore published science.
Let's get some real information to support this and then perhaps it will become a topic of discussion among the broader scientific community. Jumping to the conclusion that it simply must be artificial because "it's too uniform" is not a scientific approach but is instead a matter of faith (you have to believe in it in order to believe it, which as you know is not grounds for proving things). You may be offended that the author has ignored published science that you agree with, while I'm sure others would be just as offended that you ignore published science that you don't agree with.
A common sense approach to this says that Mars research from around the world, from a multitude of universities or independent scientists or governments, would generally agree that we haven't found active life on Mars, and thus let's continue studying to see what we find. Yet here's a scientist claiming not only that artificial structures exist on Mars, but that there are active denizens, we know there are more males than females, they wear uniforms, etc. These are specific facts spouted by a few but that someone like yourself believes in and is now spouting to the rest as fact. This is ridiculous. A scientist or select small group of them claiming to know all of this, while somehow the rest of the scientific community is totally in the dark about it, is absurd.
Technology and knowledge evolve quickly, hence something said about Mars 10 years ago need not necessarily hold true today. I'm sure eventually we'll have more information about this formation, but in the meantime there's no need for conspiracy theorists to mask themselves as scientists while making their claims.
Keyslammer- shhhh, Sara and Beck might flame it was a one legged momma grizzly bear put there by god! You jackass, only an @!$%# makes a political statement on a scientific article, get lost deutchbag!
It is high time earthlings do plant boots on Mars (we should have been there years ago). The flat spot we see in the picture looks fairely recent and would be a good place to land a rover to survey for a base. Set up green houses there and raise food crops. Plant life would love all that C02.