[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...aving_larry.jpg (476kb)

Larry is the outcropping to the right - Methuselah is the layered rock on the left.

As an interesting point to judge distances - assuming zero slip the marks made by the hold-down-brackets on the wheel tread are 80cm apart - or about 2ft 7inches

Doug

[Guest_Edward Schmitz_*]

Good discussion. Let me jump in here. There are a few things I would like to bring up.

1) Gusev has a number of compression faults that are generally aligned north-south and perpendicular to the direction to the tharis bulge. In fact the tharis bulge is ringed by compression faults in all directions. This is most likely due to the relaxing of the bulge. Picture a cone on a desk. As you push down on the cone, the sides either have to compress or they split. It seems that tharis is doing both. And it seems to have occured as far out as Gusev.

Further, this could have been active before the lava flows embayed the hills. Thus the hills could easily be formed by thrust faulting.

2) Sedimentary rocks can form at an angle. These rocks need not have tilted at all. Air born ash falling on a hill side or the rim of a crater will have angled layers. Think of snow falling in the mountains.

3) On the point of active volcanism, it is posible that Mars has seen it's last eruption. However, some very good studies have pegged the ages of lava flows in the tharis and elisium region at less than a million years old. This means that the last flows occured in the last 0.025 percent of the planets age. It is highly unlikely that we would get there and miss the volcanic age of Mars by just a tad. It is more likely that there is still molten magma in the mantle and that future reruptions will occure.