Spirit Has Blueberries, But No Mention Of Them
It seems a little unusual that this is not mentioned widely
(This page was published months before the admission! New material at the bottom.)
Everyone is aware that Opportunity has loads of "blueberries" all around it. In Eagle Crater, where they were first found, they appear to carpet the floor of the crater and are found eroding out of the surrounding sedimentary rocks. There are still many people expressing the opinion that these are concretions, a mineral formed by the slow movement of water through a rock. Concretions grow somewhat like a pearl in an oyster, but by purely non-biological means.
Later spectrographic studies showed the presence of a form of iron oxide that is a major constituent of the mineral hematite, which is very often formed by the action of water. From that finding, the NASA staff has concluded that the "blueberries" are actually made of hematite.
Well, finding the presence of iron oxide is not a guarantee that the mineral is hematite- it just means that it is present in the spherules. And for their theory to hold, you would expect that this rare occurrence of literally billions of concretions would be just that- a rare occurrence.
In fact, when MER-B emerged from Eagle Crater, the scene showed trillions of these spherules everywhere as far as the cameras could scan. This implied that some huge piece of rock, many kilometers in extent, had to be worn away after producing a truly phenomenal number of concretions. But what about Spirit?
As it happens, Spirit has had "blueberries" from the beginning, but nothing seems to have been made of this. Now, if this rare hematite concretion theory is to be believed, then we must somehow have been exceedingly lucky to have had both landers end up right on top of a literal fortune in hematite. And, just as at the Opportunity site, some huge layer of rock filled with concretions had to have weathered away to leave them behind. But, there are boulders of "basalt" all over them- which would require something to put them there, like a very large eruption, and then somehow weather them down as well, into their fractured and tumbled state.
Spirit shows its colors
| This is a Sol 091
image from the Spirit panoramic cameras, which I have assembled into a
full color image. While this is only a sub-frame image, it still
shows very clearly the "blueberries" that we find littered
all over the Opportunity site.
The whole left of center is showing a large number of the spherules that were supposedly formed under special conditions that were present in Eagle Crater, and then later must have been present all over Meridiani Planum. What this implies is that both regions must have been under water for a long time, and that in both cases, large strata of rock were eroded away to leave these behind. My findings are much simpler- these are aquatic fossils that lived in vanished oceans, and that explains them simply and easily. |
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| Here is the close
up view- the image is blocky because there is limited resolution
available. But are there other images of these things in
everyday pictures? Some microscopic images would be nice too.
Well, there are. I have compiled a short list of these by Sol that Spirit has found. The original image data for this color composite is here at the NASA site. I used the 601 nm for red, the 535 nm for green, and the 482 nm for blue. |
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| My favorite Spirit
spherule is found in Sol 049 images- a very clean picture of something
that cannot be a simple mineral. Look at the complex structure and
the ring of radial spokes around the round bump. This particular
specimen is covered by dust.
This is identical to the features seen on the urchins in the Opportunity pictures, like the "hand" patterned organisms. They have this structure, very much like an eye, under the hand. This is cropped from the upper left corner of the original image, but no enhancements or alterations have been done. I circled the spherule in red. The original image is located here at the NASA site. |
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| Now for the close
up shot. This is very clearly not just a piece of rock. Look
at the perfect circular bump in the center, and the perfectly ordered and
outlined "tile" pattern surrounding it.
The lines are exactly uniform and follow the outline perfectly, not like some random erosion feature. This is the product of ordered processes, something called "life". Looking at the terrestrial fossil records, I find that this seems to resemble paracrinoids or cystoids in form. |
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| This is a very
good image from Spirit, Sol 122 panoramic cameras. It clearly shows
hundreds of the same spherules that Opportunity found, and in precisely the
same settings- below the fine dusty silt that is blown about by the winds.
Overall, I find that most of the spherules are either in a rock, just eroding out, or stuck into the soil. Note that the soil comes in distinct layers on Mars- a thick, heavy (evidently damp) lower layer that stays put and the spherules are often imbedded in, or the thin dust that blows around over everything. When it rains or when geysers vent, the dust sticks to the spheres and the sides of the rocks, creating that orange layer that we see often. When it gets worn away by the winds and dust storms, we see the clean spherules emerge. Apparently the fossil spheres are not very dense as they tend to get washed or blown into lower areas. I would estimate that they are of about the density of limestone, perhaps a bit more. |
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This is absolutely the best image of Spirit's "blueberries" embedded in the soil that I have found so far. It clearly proves that these fossils are all over the planet. But you know what? I have examined the Sojourner/Pathfinder images and find that they also show blueberries! This is not so hard to believe now, as it is clear that Mars was an ocean covered world, and at least three of our rovers show aquatic fossils and coral. The original NASA image is here.
| And here is another
fantastic find. On Sol 156, Spirit is approaching an area where the sand
covering the bedrock is thinner, and the bedrock turns out to have two
interesting features.
First, notice the thin, wafer-like shells of rock. More stromatolites? They surely resemble them. But second, see the blueberries sticking out of this rock? It looks identical to the types of deposits found in Meridiani Planum by Opportunity, and it clearly shows spherules. There is layering, as in the sedimentary rocks present on the other side of the planet, as well as spheres of something embedded throughout the rock. |
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Now to view this feature in stereo and slightly enlarged so the details can be resolved more readily. Also, these images are at the NASA web site here.
There is absolutely no doubt that this shows spherules and they are even on stems! I was recently told by a "professional geologist" and an astronomical software writer that "Spirit blueberries were impossible and nothing but a delusion". So much for those claims. This absolutely proves that Spirit has "blueberries" and this shows that they even undergo the same processes that occurred at Meridiani Planum. This is a sedimentary rock, it holds spherules, and they are on stems. They are located in Gusev Crater, a suspected dried-up lake bed.
Furthermore, they appear to be right on top of a stromatolite. The wafer-thin rock layers beneath are part of a larger pattern that is identical to the previous rock "shells" and stromatolites I located in other images.
For a look at some of the older Pathfinder images showing blueberries and coral, click here.
Because they are present everywhere, but mostly in Spirit's panoramic or navigation camera shots, we have but few good microscopic images to work from for the Spirit spherules. What can be seen, however, makes it clear that the standing concretion/hematite theory does not hold up to scrutiny. The next page shows full color images of the blueberries, proving what they are. Also, I have three dimensional and false-color images that show the details clearly, along with more stromatolite findings.