rpageAS usual your #400 is a seminal c...

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AS usual your #400 is a seminal contribution.

I've been thinking along similar lines. But I am not looking for earth like stromatolites although some earlier Oppy images, ignored for MI treatment, suggested such, but just for structures that suggest possible life to me, the circles, the spheres, the filaments, the discolourations, etc. These are all there in numerous images from Meridiani to Phoenix and when one adds the "weird" cohesivity of the soil that was noticed and ignored from at least early "Spirit" observations and now the apparent impermeability of the surface skin at Phoenix that does not appear to allow water to pass through its structure in either direction but yet in OM images appear to be friable, soft, fluffy, etc., there is the possibility that we are looking at a Martian phenomenon without any Earth analogue where some kind of martian life abounds in a type of relationship at the surface that allows for the maintenance of ice in the soil and diurnal humidity changes in the atmosphere and may even have a source of Oxygen for its aerobic types.

The ME Rovers and Phoenix have only scratched the surface physically and figuratively so far so who knows what other reactions and relationships a future well equipped rover or lander might find deeper in the soil that would deafen Hortonheardawho?

There is real hope for a reawakening of real Science and exploration of the unknown from the little that has been leaked so far of the Phoenix results.

I have practically given up hope of seeing typical earth microbial forms on the OMs but I think they are possibly there staring and whispering at us. However, we have seen no further AFM images. I wonder if there will be more! and if they are, will they choose some innocuous standard recognizable pebble or clay like particle to work their magic on or could we hope they would choose some of the particles (magnetic or not) that hint at some degree of strangeness, for the AFM?

I think it is quite possible that Hort has pointed out several signs of mars bugs along the way, the latest of which just might be in reply #397.

Winston