Martian Tubes

Factual Questions
1

Okay, I’m going to go out on a limb here and ask this.

In one of his saner moments on the Art Bell Show (Yes, I do listen, I do enjoy it, but I don’t buy 99% of it!) Richard Hoagland in one his long, rambling stories talked about Arthur C. Clarke demanding to know exactly what the heck this thing was in some of the recently released NASA photos of Mars that looked like a “giant glass worm.” I wasn’t inclinded to believe this until I found an article discussing an interview with Clarke on space.com in which Clarke apparently does ask what the heck is that thing? (I’m desperately looking for the url as I type this.) You can go to Hoagland’s site to see the pics: http://www.enterprisemission.com/can.htm Anybody hear of an explaination of what it might be? The one on the Hoagland site, I really can’t buy. So what is it?

Damn it! Can’t find the Clarke piece on space.com that I was looking for! Anyway, has NASA said what it might be? This thing ain’t like that “face on Mars” either! It clearly looks like a long, glass tube like the ones in the movie “The Shape of Things to Come.” Ain’t claiming its artificial. Just wanna know what it is.

2

I’ve been looking at the pix for a few minutes now, and I have two hypotheses:

#1) it’s a Sandworm (ala Dune)! Run Away!!

#2) it’s a canyon bottom with a series of sandunes running along it… the “translucent tube” look is just an optical illusion.

#1) would be more fun to believe, but #2 is probably closer to the truth…

Anyone else?

3

I would put my money on it being an optical illusion also. The face, for example is thought to be nothing more than an illusion.

Sort of reminds me of the “space ship” they found covered in dirt.
Ahh heres the link-

http://www.enterprisemission.com/plumbing6.htm

4

Looks like sand dunes.

I’d actually be more willing to believe an “alien” hypothesis about the “bulge.” What would cause such a big reflection (the spot on the “bulge”) in a canyon?

5

I agree…optical illusion.

Just look at the image upside down.

6

I’d lean towards the optical illusion myself, if it weren’t for the fact that Arthur C. Clarke himself was asking about it. (Wish I could find that post!) I’ll admit that Hoagland is pretty nutty and certainly has taken things which were obviously optical illusions such as the ones mentioned before and the pics here: http://www.enterprisemission.com/sequel.htm

Those can’t be anything other than the human tendancy to create patterns where none exist. It’d be nice if NASA would at least say something about the tube. I suppose its possible that it could have been formed by some kind of volcanic activity, but if so how? Surely the folks at NASA have a theory about what it is, why don’t they say what they think it is?

7

Whoops! I meant cite! Just looked at the pic upside down and it looks like it might be some kind of glacial formation, but again, why the silence from NASA? (Not that I’m buying into Hoagland’s theories as to there’s a conspiracy involving the Masons, Old Navy, and who knows who else keeping alien artifacts from us, but surely NASA must have a theory as to what it is.)

8

Arthur C. Clarke, while a great author, is nothing more than that, A brilliant Author. (AFAIK anyhow) He hosts a show on the Discovery Channel or TLC, cannot remember which, called something like Strange mysteries. Some of the things he talks about on that show are pretty far out there. I would not put serious thought into it based only on the fact that Aurthur C. Clark is interested in it.

However, I, too would be pretty interested in knowing what NASA or some other expert in the area (Astronomy or Photogrophy) thinks of this, if it isnt JUST an illusion.

9

Clarke isn’t merely a brilliant author (though most of his latest works leave a lot to be desired), he is also the inventor of the communications satellite and worked with the British Planetary Society on developing plans for a workable lunar rocket back in the 1930s. His program, “Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World” is noted for debunking many of the theories expoused on Art Bell. He’s also quite friendly with the folks at NASA (see his afterword to “2001”), so if he’s puzzled by it, I’d have to say that there’s a good reason to be curious about the matter.

10

Warning: I am not a Mars expert, but I do have some experience squinting at Mars images.

Anyway, make sure to look at the bigger images, showing more context. You can see them here:
http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/ab1_m04/images/M0400291.html

Specifically, look at this image. You can see several other similar structures in the surrounding terrain that look totally flat and un-tube-like.

Also, take a good hard look at the area around the “glare.” The “worm” seems to split in two and reform–kinda curious physiology–but if the glare actually represents a topological feature, you’d expect it to divert the winds that create the dunes somewhat.

Keep in mind when looking at the images that, since it’s 3 o’clock solar time, the Sun is coming from the west, i.e. the left, so the dark band to the left of the “tube” is actually a shadow of a cliff to the left, NOT the shadow of the tube itself, or of a hill that the tube is on. To be sure you’re seeing it right, go to the bigger image and make sure that you’re seeing craters, not domes, in the surrounding terrain–it’s much more obvious with context, and at higher resolution.

It’s often devilishly hard to get images of the Martian surface to “pop” the right way–to figure out which features are concave and convex. To my eye, Nick’s lo-res, cropped image pops the wrong way. . . but, based on informal polls, about 50% of people looking at any particular image see it popped right, and 50% see it wrong, so this probably isn’t deliberate, much as one might like to think so. : )

The most reasonable explanation to me is the one offered (with distain) in the article: sand dunes produced by winds along the bottom of valleys. I find his reasoning against this pretty shaky, relying a lot on appleals to terrestrial intuition, which is notoriously misleading on Mars. He also seems to be making a lot of assumptions about the topography which he doesn’t bother to justify.

Too bad you can’t find that interview with Clarke.

11

Uh, do you have any conception of the rate at which images are coming down from MGS? Futher, the images are embargoed: Malin Space Sciences, the institute that built the camera, gets to look at them all first before they’re released to the community.

It will take a long time for each image to be closely examined, much less for hypotheses to be developed for each feature. And despite Hoagland’s earnestness and fancy website, he is not doing ground-breaking science that excites and discombobulates the Mars community. Most planetary geologists ignore him.

12

Boy does the orientation make a difference when you view those picture! If you take the first large picture and rotate it 180º and rotate the next two counterclockwise 90º, the repetitive features appear concave and the “worm” appears to be a large incised feature like a valley. It’s hard to say what the black that appears to cut off the view of the valley face might be - opposite edge or shadow of the ridge in the foreground, perhaps?

There’s another image here that really made me think of something like an escarpment with the repetitive features being erosional incisions in its face.

Flip that picture upside down and those “incised” features look like bumps.

My best guess for now.

13

I have some vague ideas of how long it takes for them to go over this stuff, but I thought that they had a team who had the job to simply look over images that the others had seen and found something odd in. I’d think that the “worm/tube” object would fall into that category.

Having looked at all the various images people have suggested, I can only say, hmmm. Nothing that proves the thing is a great sandworm ala “Dune” (Not that I would buy such an explaination anyway.), but nothing that shows what it might be or how it was formed.

I’ve never bought any of Hoagland’s claims as that he was shaking up the Mars community. Remember back in the early 90s he claimed that he was going to be able to raise enough money to send a rocket to the moon and take pictures of alien objects there all before the 92 elections. Didn’t happen. I will keep searching and trying to find that Clarke piece, but I think they’ve probably pulled it from their site.

14

Does This help any in hunting for the Sir Arthur statement?

15

Yeah, it gives me a dead link on space.com’s site, which says they took it down. Bummer. Hoagland mentions it on his page, but lets face it, he lacks any real credibility. In fact, I didn’t buy it all until I found the interview with Clarke on space.com. Oh well.

16

My high placed Government sources tell me that the “tubes” are actually long underground hangers/runways on Mars. The tubes are called "Basic Underground Linear Launchers or BULL. The BULL’s house the Super Hyper-Interdimensional Transport (S.H.I.T) “Chemtrail” aircraft/spacecraft. These are collectivly known as BULLSHIT.

Launched from Mars BULLSHIT look just like real airliners and leave a trail that looks just like water vapor. However, they aren’t fooling us. The very fact they look so much like real airliners give them away. Even real airliners don’t look as real as a real airliner should thus proving they arn’t real airliners, they are BULLSHIT. I don’t expect everyone to believe this, so any posts against this true story are, probably, the rants of disinformation agents.

NASA and Maitlen really screwed up on this one. Does anyone else think these tubes are BULLSHIT? Can someone provide further BULLSHIT information?
:slight_smile:

17

Thank you for risking your life to bring this information to us! We’ve got to get this out to the American people so they can put a stop to it! Call Art Bell! Call Richard Hoagland! Call Ed Dames!!! :wink:

18

Well, I’ll keep an eye out for anything that seems relevant to this–but, just like Viking, MGS is revealing lots of unusual surface features on Mars that we’ve never seen before, so I don’t know if this particular thing will be addressed (or that I’ll happen to stumble across it). If I have an opportunity to do so without annoying them, I’ll run this past a few colleagues (grad students and other assorted miscreants) and see if they have anything to say about it.

19

Thanks. I, for one, would like to hear a real explaination of what the stuff is, rather than Hoagland’s insane ravings about it being what was left over when the Martians built the great space ark and moved to Earth (Wasn’t that a Steve Martin routine?). Of course, it’d be the ultimate in cool if NASA said, “We don’t know, and we’re going to have to send people there to find out.”

20

Aw, they only say that about water. : )