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Is There Liquid Water on Martian Surface?

OMEGA, the combined Mars Express camera and infrared spectrometer, observed the southern polar cap of Mars on January 18, 2004, as seen on all three bands. Left: H2O, water ice. Middle: CO2, carbon dioxide. Right: Visible image of Martian south pole. Images credit: European Space Agency (ESA).
OMEGA, the combined Mars Express camera and infrared spectrometer, observed the southern polar cap of Mars on January 18, 2004, as seen on all three bands. Left: H2O, water ice. Middle: CO2, carbon dioxide. Right: Visible image of Martian south pole. Images credit: European Space Agency (ESA).
South Pole of Mars - Is there melt in the water and carbon dioxide ice? Image courtesy Malin Space Science Systems.
South Pole of Mars - Is there melt in the water and carbon dioxide ice? Image courtesy Malin Space Science Systems.
North and south poles of Mars are icy. Photo courtesy Hubble Space Telescope.
North and south poles of Mars are icy. Photo courtesy Hubble Space Telescope.

February 23, 2004  Pasadena, California - The stated goal of the Mars rover missions is to look for evidence of water that might once have flowed in rivers, pooled in lakes, or even created an ocean on the red planet. Photographs like the branching delta below taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera suggest a large flow of water.

 

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New Form of Mad Cow Disease Resembles Human Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD)

British cow infected by deadly misshapen proteins called prions which cause "Mad Cow" disease, also known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). Cow brain tissue on right is filled with microscopic holes like a sponge, produced by the deaths of brain cells. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.
British cow infected by deadly misshapen proteins called prions which cause "Mad Cow" disease, also known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). Cow brain tissue on right is filled with microscopic holes like a sponge, produced by the deaths of brain cells. Photographs courtesy www.mad-cow.org.
Left: is the normal prion protein, PrP-C. Right: is the abnormal, misshapen PrP-SC. These diagrams are from Huang, Z., Prusiner, Stanley B. and Cohen, Fred E. from "Structures of Prion Proteins and Conformational Models for Prion Diseases in Prions," (ed. S.B. Prusiner) Berlin: Springer-Verlag, © 1996.
Top: is the normal prion protein, PrP-C. Bottom: is the abnormal, misshapen PrP-SC. These diagrams are from Huang, Z., Prusiner, Stanley B. and Cohen, Fred E. from "Structures of Prion Proteins and Conformational Models for Prion Diseases in Prions," (ed. S.B. Prusiner) Berlin: Springer-Verlag, © 1996.

February 19, 2004  San Francisco, California - "Mad cow" disease once thought to be confined to England has spread to other countries the past few years, including most recently herds in Canada and Washington State. And this week came another disturbing discovery: Italian researchers have found a second type of deadly prion disease in cattle that closely resembles the prion proteins that sporadically and spontaneously attack and kill humans in what is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or CJD. That means controlling what goes into cattle feed won't stop all mad cow disease - and that there are even more deadly prions in the food chain than anyone knew until now.

 

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Update On Mars with Cornell Astronomer Steve Squyers, Principal Investigator on the Mars Rover Missions

February 20, 2004  Pasadena, California - Only one month ago, the Mars Rover called Spirit started working inside the Gusev crater and extended its robotic arm for the first time toward that large pyramid-shaped rock, "Adirondack," to find out what it was made of.

Big "Adirondack" rock that was Spirit's first test of its Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT). Turned out to be dark volcanic basalt under a layer of the reddish Martian dust. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell.
Big "Adirondack" rock that was Spirit's first test of its Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT). Turned out to be dark volcanic basalt under a layer of the reddish Martian dust. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell.

The answer is dark volcanic basalt beneath a dusty coating of red iron dust. In fact, many rocks in the Gusev crater seem to be basalt and scientists are trying to figure out if they came from a volcanic eruption IN the crater? Or were carried by a river of water into the crater long ago? Or maybe were even blown into the crater by strong Martian winds?

 

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Distorted Distance Perspective in Martian Rover Camera Images

Actual length of the entire bedrock outcrop is only 50 feet long and the distance from the outcrop to the small, white, unidentified object at the bottom of the frame is no more than about 14 feet. The small "horned" object, according to Prof. James Rice, is about "the size of a man's fist." Original Opportunity panoramic image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell.
Actual length of the entire bedrock outcrop is only 50 feet long and the distance from the outcrop to the small, white, unidentified object at the bottom of the frame is no more than about 14 feet. The small "horned" object, according to Prof. James Rice, is about "the size of a man's fist." Original Opportunity panoramic image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell.

February 18, 2004  Pasadena, California - The NASA/JPL Martian rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, each came down near the Martian equator about 6,600 miles apart protected inside many inflated airbags. Each airbag was about 13 feet (4 meters) in diameter and had a stitched pattern of a ring with lines radiating from it. The idea was that each lander would be dropped from its orbiting spacecraft and fall to a bouncing landing inside the airbags. Soon after Opportunity came to rest on January 25, 2004, the rover's panoramic camera took a 360 degree image of the shallow crater surrounding it on the Meridiani Planum near the Martian equator.

 

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Another Puzzle On the Martian Soil

The upper arrow points at the end of a filament that starts at the spherule, appears to go under the soil grains and reappears near the upper arrow. The lower arrow points at a filament that bends. For size context, each of the pebbly grains below the larger round spherule and other rocks is about 100 to 200 microns in diameter, about the size of a sugar grain. So the two long, unidentified filaments laying on the little soil grains are about 1 to 2 microns in diameter. Source of image: Opportunity Microscopic Imager Non-linearizedFull frame EDR acquired on Sol 19 (February 12, 2004) of Opportunity's mission to Meridiani Planum at approximately at approximately 11:25:52 Mars local solar time, Microscopic Imager dust cover commanded to be OPEN. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS.
The upper arrow points at the end of a filament that starts at the spherule, appears to go under the soil grains and reappears near the upper arrow. The lower arrow points at a filament that bends. For size context, each of the pebbly grains below the larger round spherule and other rocks is about 100 to 200 microns in diameter, about the size of a sugar grain. So the two long, unidentified filaments laying on the little soil grains are about 1 to 2 microns in diameter. Source of image: Opportunity Microscopic Imager Non-linearizedFull frame EDR acquired on Sol 19 (February 12, 2004) of Opportunity's mission to Meridiani Planum at approximately at approximately 11:25:52 Mars local solar time, Microscopic Imager dust cover commanded to be OPEN. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS.

February 14, 2004  Tempe, Arizona - The NASA/JPL rover called Opportunity has been rolling along the light-colored bedrock in the Meridiani Planum taking spectrometer measurements of the rocks and stopping here and there to examine closely the soil through its microscopic imager (MI).

 

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More High Strangeness in the Michigan Sky

February 14, 2004  Jackson, Michigan - Since the middle of December, residents of Horton and Napoleon, Michigan, south of Jackson and west of Ann Arbor, have seen some very strange lights and objects in the sky. Another mystery was a large, nearly perfectly round ice circle discovered on December 28th at Mud Lake near Horton. The ice circle was probably created by Nature, but a local resident saw a bright light over the lake.

As recently as Saturday, February 7, and three nights before on February 4, a Jackson, Michigan, resident videotaped unidentified objects and sent me copies of the tapes to see. The man is a professional who works in computer technology support and has asked that I not use his real name. He asked me to call him "John." John is 36-years-old and has lived in Jackson, Michigan, all his life. He remembers seeing bizarre diamond-shaped, oval-shaped and triangular-shaped craft and large orange lights back in 1992 when there was a UFO flap over Napoleon. But he hasn't seen any strange aerial lights since then ­ until now.

He and other residents from the Napoleon, Horton, Litchfield area of Michigan south of Jackson have repeatedly seen unidentified lights. In John's videotape, a very bright light that seems somewhat stationary begins the sequence of events that went from 9 p.m. to about 9:50 p.m. EST.

 

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Part 14 – UFO Crash/Retrievals, Status Report VII by Len Stringfield

To be more computer-upload-friendly, the reprints will be divided into parts. Here begins Part 14 of Status Report VII, from February 1994.

(Continued ) The Macabre Case of "Agent" Robert L. Malone

Mrs. Robert Malone's Interview Comments Continue from Part 13:

1958: Bob was the 'consummate man' - all man. He was a hero. He was a he-man. He was tough and dedicated to the Corps and the right which, in his mind, was anything pro-America. But he was also very tender and nurturing. In uniform, he was tough, but never without a cause. He was an admirable man of many talents and deep convictions. I was proud of my husband.

 

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Part 13 – UFO Crash/Retrievals, Status Report VII by Len Stringfield

"While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, (we) witnessed low-level UFOs over the camp, even alarming the German authorities."

- Mrs. Robert Lee Malone

To be more computer-upload-friendly, the reprints will be divided into parts. Here begins Part 13 of Status Report VII, from February 1994.

The Macabre Case of "Agent" Robert Lee Malone

Here is still another sobering, high-intrigue case slinking its way out of the Hall of Mirrors that defies any cut-and-dry explanation. With so many key details missing, I would have dismissed the case had it not been for the 6 months of prior, in-depth investigation by Georgeanne Cifarelli of San Marino, California, who is MUFON's Assistant State Director for Southern California.

 

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