How has this recent find flown so low under "the radar of public scrutiny?" This is of reasonably recent vintage - Jan 26th /06. None of the major Space News sites have carried it!! Turn back! - we want a better look! We deserve a better look!! And not just another never-to-be-resolved mystery < that's not the stuff of science. Path looks to be pretty clear for a close-in look (especially on the right hand side.) What is going on? Helllo? Wake up call for Mr. Steve Squyres! Get on the horn - people.

Rock shows characteristic friction-induced aerodynamic smoothing (imho.) Also notice linear striations in "soil" - a light, somewhat regular corrugation - between Mars rover and rock in question. No good theories on dual-nature of this particular specimen. Comment was made - "Why would someone wrap a big piece of watermelon in a towel and leave it on the beach?"
I'm thinking some kind of stange skull bone! Any ideas?? Google for "two-tone +mars" < brings it up right away.


Astronomy Pic of the Day < only site that carried this .....

Theres also an indian chief in their. At the bottom right in front of the rover.

Pareidolia is a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. Seeing faces in semi-random or random patterns is a well-understood psychological phenomenon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

That was addressed very well in "Broca's Brain" by one of my fav authors

It's looks for all the world like a busted milk carton to me.

Could be a harder conglomeration of whatever softer rock formed the dunes behind it.
Could also be an extremely hard meteorite that is now exposed due to dust storms and wind.

I wanna go look at it!
Dammit!
We need to send humans up there.

I'll volunteer!

I'm sorry I take it all back - it's just my eyes playing tricks on me - it's all an optical illusion. The whole planet is an optical illusion. It's just swamp gas reflecting off Venus. Personally I like the busted milk carton explanation the best. I can't imagine it's a brain - Broca's or otherwise. Perhaps it's Broca's skull. It would be quite an unusual skull series - surely that would merit closer inspection.

I have to discount the watermelon hypothesis - a watermelon would have evaporated long ago.

Surely a chondrite would break up more thoroughly - it looks pretty fresh so where's the crater this sizeable meteor(ite) would have generated? eh Chief? Verdict is still out and will remain out - Broca's Brain not-with-standing. We need to go back! Straight up! I'm not looking for volunteers - this is a dangerous mission - one where failure is not only unacceptable but severly punished. It's going to be a solo mission - and since I posted here first... I get to go! Simple as that. Snooze you lose!

There's no reason to believe it would have broken up more thoroughly. We have perfectly intact meteorites with perfectly fused surfaces on this planet. We have no idea what the surface conditions were like when it struck. The light color and fuse surface would seem to indicate a carbonaceous chondrite. It's actual size is debatable as well. As for a crater, again surface conditions would have played a role (mars was quite wet at one time) and erosion can erase many signs of a crater. Below is an image of a what was determined to be a meteor out in the middle of nowhere with no sign of a crater. I'm not saying that's what it is for sure but it can't be ruled out from that image. Only sampling would determine for sure.

Wait a minute! Upon closer inspection! It’s a cat!

LOL, A cat with a space helmet made from... a watermelon?

That rock somehow doesent fit in with the rest of the picture....Then again it could just be a weird shaped rock.I dont think its anything very mysterious though!

Peace

I know I know but I'm going to say it anyway. The muti colored rock almost looks as if the 2 different colors in the rock, look as though they were carved to fit together crazy. I know but what the hell

It is the severed head of an alien cadaver. The dark coloured portion of the cranium is the jaw with a protective armor plate around it. To the right of the jaw is an eye. Look reall hard at it. Its lieing on the back of the head, looking upwards. Sexy, isnt it?

Trippy...

I really really hope you're joking

It's a cool rock, but nothing that uncommon. Here's an Earthly 2 tone rock...

http://www.rockroost.com/images/YLE24.jpg

No matter what, that still is a really cool looking rock. I know that if I were exploring Mars in person, I would at least pick it up!

The image is typical of some very unusual rock formations found on Mars.
All of this skips under the radar of public scrutiny, because the general public doesn't, in large part, know or care that we have rovers cruising around on Mars taking thousands of pictures and have been for a couple years or so. Not many Spirit / Opportunity images are even known of generally speaking...save of course to those of us who are interested enough to look.

This image is on the Spirit site, along with all the others.

There are no good theories about this particular rock because its too early to theorize about it. Nothing all too unusual about the fact that everything about this rock is speculation at this point.

We can only hope that you're joking about the strange skull bone idea....especially one with "friction induced aerodynamic smoothing"

Seen somewhat similar rocks- concretions of sandstone.

Take 1 part water, 1 part hematite, 1 part Mars. Stirred, not shaken...

Looks like some kind of giant snail, or an ant eater. Quite cute really.

It looks like a really crappy job done on Photoshop.

Come on, guys, you can't tell me you're SERIOUSLY thinking this photo is real!

The gradations are off, the pixilation is off. It's not even a good c&p job. I can do a better fake than that.....using MS Paint.

Later,
The Oracle

Yup, NASA is just publishing fake pictures now.

It would help if you knew what you were talking about.

Amazing how every picture that raises an eyebrow these days is accompanied by a photoshop comment. Annoying.

Thanks all for your well-crafted, well-structured responses. In pursuing the meteorite hypothesis - I have sent this NASA photo link to a half a dozen 'meteorite guru's' - asking for 'their take' on matters. Should prove interesting.

Learned a new word today.. regmaglypt...regmaglypts are the Swiss cheese thumb-print-like impressions decorating the of classic irony meteorites - not particularly evindent in this photo/specimen. ... More soon.

Link to the following journal abstract

Abstract
An investigation of the regmaglyptic reliefs on 5500 individual samples of the Sikhote-Aline meteorite shower was conducted. Five different types of regmaglyptic outlines were discussed: polygonal, round, amygdaloid (almond-shaped), furrow-shaped, and indefinite. Various characteristic features of the regmaglypt meteorites were discussed including the regmaglyptic rosettes on the front face of the meteorites. The relationship between the diameter, the index and the meteorite diameter were measured for half of the total meteorite shower specimens and were classified into nine categories according to mass. It was determined that among meteorites of both iron and stone types it is possible to find completely smooth-faced ones without any regmaglyptic relief, although they did not differ in either composition or structure from the meteorites showing distinct regmaglyptic reliefs.

Fairly readable overview of "things meteoritic."

as regarding terrestrial meteorite "infall frequency..."
Particles of a gram or more in weight (about the size of a small pea), are estimated to fall at a rate of less than 8 per square mile per year. Similarly, objects of about 10 grams in weight (approximately a U.S. Quarter sized stone sphere) fall at something less than the rate of 1 per 1,000 square miles per year. And ... as the size of the object gets larger & larger, the rate of in-fall becomes exponentially less, so that one could expect an object over one Kilo (approx. 2.2 lbs or about baseball size) falls to Earth (in a given 1 square mile area) only about once every 50,000 to 100,000 years!! Estimates for meteoritic in-fall rates - vary widely, the above numbers are in all likelyhood over-stating the infall frequency...

......There is less total known meteoritic material on Earth, inclusive of all known collected varieties (excepting meteoritic dust infall) - than recovered terrestrial gold. Most of our meteorites originated as the bodies of Asteroids

Well have yet to hear back from the meteorite Top Guns - hardly surprising as it's only been an hour or so So in the mean time - I thought I should do a bit of home-spun image analysis... I took the inverse of the original - it's negative. Perhaps some interesting things to note...

1) structure in question seems photogramatically coherent with surrounding under-rock shading (especially in comparison with smaller rocks) - first large rock left of structure seems unusually dark (light) and 'blotchy.'

2) structure seems less out-of-scale than in original positive image - lending further support to non-touched-up hypothesis.

3) interesting faceting to central portion (the skull case )

also.....
4) notice small speck on horizon...possibly a model 534-ZZ Tholian observation platform

Possibly.
{i}Probably[/i] Either Phobos or Deimos. One of the "missing" Martian moons.

possibly a flying cow aswell.

Dude... Star Trek is a TV show... its fiction.

Flying fridges are popular in space I hear. Useful for a Spaceman on a spacewalk. I think two tone rock seems closest to explaining it and could lend further evidence (If we dont know alread) , that Mars had river/streams and was geographically shaped by 'forces' similar to Earth..

I don't appreciate nor respond to "one-liners." I don't feel graced by your presence! One-line grunt-type responses are advanced typically by smug self-absorbed anti-intellectual types.. hardly worth the press on my down arrow. Go to a chat room if you want to engage in one-liners. It's like lewd bathroom scrawls on Shakespearean script! I'm a bit dismayed the sys-ops don't do more to discourage this sort of conduct. Post pics and post substantial script - I'm not interested in your unrealistically smug self-estimations. I put it at about the Grade 3 level. It would get a big round Homer Simpson donut - at the high school level - popular acceptance of this type of response not-withstanding. Inability to articulate is a hallmark of lower primates. I find spelling errors far less offensive than space-hogging abysmal one-liners. Also preview your posts - nobody aprreciates inactive coding. Having said that. Here is a well-crafted, well-structured response I received to an interrogative I submitted a "meteorite guru" who's job it is to identify meteorites from what are known in the trade as meteorwrongs


Hi,

Weird...it doesn't look much like a meteorite - I agree. The darker region has faces and looks like an orthorhombic crystal, the lighter material possibly some sort of matrix. The only time I've seen crystals this large are in pegmatites, geodes and submarine phillipsites. I'd speculate perhaps it was an evaporite at some stage.......this is an ellaborate way of saying I don't know .. but I can make an educated guess.

Best,
M. G.


Now if this guy doesn't know what it is or could be (with any degree of certainty) - then we have really shot ourselves clean through our intellectual thick skulls - by not having gone in for a closer look. This ommission "is right in there' with having failed to activate the primary transmitter onboard the Huygens Probe - this as it descended into the Titan atmosphere. Or right in there with the failed Mars Observor mission that ended up orbiting Jupiter as a result of a metric to imperial fuel conversion calculation < how sad. I think Homer Simpson should be put in charge of this mission. DOH! Bless our wooden heads.

I dont appreciate bs, but at least I have the decensy to reply to it and point out the faults in it.



Funny how you say that. You think that some probably juvenile who cant tell the difference between fact and fiction is worth OUR time?



Funny how you point out that the inability to articulate is a hallmark of lower primates. You took a whole paragraph to articulate yourself and to convey your point. These people you're complaining about took 1 line, and have done it far more effectively than you. So, who is the lower primate?



Is this guy as qualified as those who work FOR NASA?

Stellar sorry for being lazy , but what was NASA's official stance on the rock in question? To me it really should have been looked at closer. Where the two colors meet they are not fused together. It does look like they where put together but not by "mother nature". It just looks to ummm for lack of a better term man made.

Chondritic meterorite, accreted directly from solar nebula.
Small round granules. Sometimes brecciated by impacts, by which granules become angular.

Stony meteorites are from broken asteroids. They contain some iron or nickle fragments,
if from near the core of the parent body.

And, one other type are the nickle/iron variety. From larger, differentiated bodies.

The rock seen in the rover image does not fit into my simplest case scenario for
a meteorite. Maybe an asteroid struck Mars, and this is surface material that was displaced.


Perhaps we should take the RAT to this one, followed by the spectrometer.


Images-

Comparison of Chondrite and Stony

Examples of Nickle/Iron

I have the same belief about the rock, but I do not pretend to have as much knowledge on the subject as those who work for NASA.

the faceted/chipped stone does seem out of place with the smooth "probably eroded" bottom part. I wonder why its standing... seems it should fall over with the rounded bottom...

I think it is a piece of cheese. Yummy!

If it is man-made, my guess would be a form of space de4bris/remnants of other mars mission? Maybe its a piece of beagle

Ok I cooled my heels a bit - fantastic responses - thanks gang : )

Here's a brief response from a big-time (online) meteorite dealer/collector.

I am puzzled. I sent a link to the meteorite list and have not seen any comment(s) that would help identify it.

Amazing how the rovers are still active.

Clear Skies,
Mark


So still looks to be pretty puzzling .... hmmm

Not sure if NASA has an official take on this - I'd be interested in (I think we all would be) in some elaboration / expansion on the constituent components of the two obviously very distinct phases. I liked the observation of "why hasn't this thing fallen over!!" Certainly looks top heavy. Looks kinda fresh too - not particularly weathered - not that I'm an expert on Martian weathering. But certainly it would appear - based on cursory exam - to be of (much) more recent vintage than the surrounding "cinders."

Thanks for your efforts guys - it would be interesting to get something a little more definitve out of NASA on this. I think it fair to say - their silence is somehow deafening.

Did you notice all those cigarette butts?

The rock looks kinda fake...

EDIT: I just came into this, but I'm agreeing with the skeptics, that rock look really fake man...