[X] My Assistant

[glennwsmith]

Those of us who are interested in exploring alternatives to the "cold, dry Mars hypothesis" and its associated basal surge mechanism (to account for Meridiani's layering) are in essence being subjected to denial of service attacks -- the available bandwidth is flooded with large, somewhat repetitive posts from the cold, dry Mars camp, though the intention is clearly educational and not malicious!

As a practical solution, I am therefore starting this new thread devoted to the basal surge theory, with the hope that discussions of such can be centered here. And, even though I do not believe in basal surge, I am going to present my own layman's analogy -- probably not original -- as an attempt to justify the theory, which analogy has two additional purposes, a) as a gesture of goodwill, and as a new way of looking at the mechanism which can hopefully prevent us from entering an infinite loop.

To me (and many others), the Meridiani layering is so uniform that it must clearly be the result of a seasonal/water-based process -- not basal surge.

So -- how could one possibly reconcile the layering uniformity with an origin of catastrophic meteor strikes?

Imagine, therefore, a series of balloons of varying sizes and each filled with a different colored paint. Imagine also that these are dropped sequentially -- but with time for the paint from each impact to dry -- at random but adjacent locations on a level surface such that the splash patterns tend to overlap.

Under this scenario, it must be granted that a cross section through the dried layers of paint might show that the layering was reasonably uniform, ie, the paint from each impact, even though its source is a "catastrophic", spreads out in a thin, uniform layer -- just as one might imagine that the pyroclastic outflow from a meteor strike might also create a uniform layer.

Anybody want to throw a dart at this -- and leave the other dart boards alone?!?

[Greg Hullender]

Can someone describe an experiment that would stand a good chance of settling the question? I'll admit I I only read the first quarter of that long 2-year-old thread, but it seems that if the argument has reached a stalemate based on current data, it would be interesting to know what sort of data some future probe could collect that would resolve it.

Also, can someone give a crisp statement of the question? Is it as simple as this? "The MER Team argues that the Meridiani geology has water-formed features, but Dr. Burt claims all those features are the product of impacts."

Apologies if this has already been gone over in detail. Just post the link. :-)

--Greg

[ngunn]

Also, can someone give a crisp statement of the question?

Question: Blueberry - hailstone or concretion?

Experiment: Close study of a blueberrry.

[Greg Hullender]

Question: Blueberry - hailstone or concretion?

Experiment: Close study of a blueberrry.

Unless you're pulling my leg, I don't see how that works. Unless you're including meteoritic infall as "hail" . . .

But if you are serious, please explain; this is very compact indeed! :-)

--Greg

[ElkGroveDan]

please explain; this is very compact indeed! :-)

Please don't. Doug was serious. Discussion closed.