An image released by NASA revealing a strange and distorted landscape on the surface of Mars is being dubbed a “matrix glitch.” The odd image taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows intriguing clean breaks in the planet’s surface deposits.
The new view shows the different effects of fault activity on the Martian surface, giving rise to everything from clean breaks to ‘stretched out’ distortions. This is likely an indication that the faults formed at different times when the layers were at various stages of hardening.
NASA explains the “glitchy” image in a second photo, using arrows.
In a second image offering a closer look at some of the features that look strange, NASA has pointed out where the faults have displaced individual beds. These areas, as noted by the yellow arrow, are where the faults produced a clean break. In other regions, as noted by the green arrow, the layers appear stretched out as they span the fault.
“These observations suggest that some of the faultings occurred while the layered deposits were still soft and could undergo deformation, whereas other faults formed later when the layers must have been solidified and produced a clean break,” NASA explained.Â
Speckling the surface of one of Mars’ oldest impact basins, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recently spotted a sprawling expanse of ‘honeycomb’ landforms, with individual cells of up to 6 miles wide.
The origin of these textured features has long remained a mystery, as scientists debate which type of natural process could be responsible, from glacial events to wind erosion. But it is still possible that multiple processes are at play, according to NASA. There is evidence suggesting the honeycombs and the surrounding landscape in Mars northwestern Hellas Planitia may still be undergoing activity today.
According to NASA, “the lack of impact craters suggest that the landscape, along with these features, have been recently reshaped by a process, or number of processes that may even be active today. Scientists have been debating how these honeycombed features are created, theorized from glacial events, lake formation, volcanic activity, and tectonic activity, to wind erosion.”
SO!!!
Little green men on Mars or what!!!!!!!
Sgt.
DAMMIT! They found my bugout!
that was…
kinda interesting.
Yum food for my inner geek. Fun article thanks.
I was scuba diving in a NY lake and found this crazy shaped stone that I thought at first was some kind of antler. Amazing the shapes that wind, water and ice can create in stone and soil.
Everyone needs to visit Bryce Canyon at least once in their life. It is one of the coolest places I’ve ever seen. When I was out that way I wanted to see Elk Canyon, but it was closed while they recovered the bodies of several French tourists who died there in a flash flood. Amazing so many people out west drown in the desert.
Many seem to be tourists, and I have heard of French ones, repeatedly.
There is a line of thought, in which sun and heat have health benefits.
We see sun bleached wood and animal bones. Glass windows get pitted from years of windblown sand. Mini blinds deform, in front of the window.
Most locals have expensive cable packages and run the air conditioning, non-stop.
Geologists would have a field day if they could get there and back safely. Pity it costs so much!
Obviously evidence of the Nuclear War that devastated the ancient civilization on Mars. After destroying their home on Mars, the liberals traveled here to Earth and are hard at work destroying our home.
People have believed in the ‘plurality of worlds’, probably, since the most primitive telescope, and have always talked about strange creatures.
It’s possible that unexplained phenomena, on the fringe of science, would not be controversial, at all, for moral adults.