Ming the Mechanic:
Mars cave
The NewsLog of Flemming Funch
 Mars cave2007-05-26 02:26
11 comments
picture by Flemming Funch

Closeup of one of several likely openings into recently dicovered underground caverns on Mars. This one is 100 meters wide.
At its highest resolution of 25 centimeters per pixel, the HiRISE camera can see the detailed shape of the slightly scalloped edge of a hole on the flank of Mars' Arsia Mons (left), but no amount of image enhancement (right) can bring out any further details inside the hole. That means that the walls of the cave are overhanging -- the cave is larger below the ground than the entrance we can see at the surface -- and that it is very deep. Mars' dusty atmosphere produces enough scattered light that "skylight" would illuminate the floor of a shallow cavern well enough for HiRISE to detect it.

The hope for the HiRISE images was that we could see some details from inside the hole. But as you can see by the highly stretched version at right, there is absolutely nothing visible inside that hole. It's black black black black black. HiRISE is a very sensitive instrument, and Mars' dusty atmosphere scatters quite a bit of light around, so there is certainly light entering that cave hole and bouncing around the interior. But it seems that the cave is so big and so deep that almost none of the light that enters the cave comes out. It's deep, and it's big; the hole that we see really is just a skylight on a big subterranean room. How big? We'll never know for sure without visiting it, but I expect that Cushing and his coauthors and the HiRISE team will be crunching the numbers on the illumination conditions and the sensitivity of the camera to put a lower limit on how deep that cave must be for HiRISE to be able to see nothing at all inside it.

Think about that. All these orbiters at Mars, and most of them are just seeing the surface and atmosphere. To be sure, there are two instruments up there -- MARSIS on Mars Express and SHARAD on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter -- that are probing the shape of the subsurface with ground-penetrating radar. But neither of those instruments have the resolution necessary to tell us what the inside of this cave looks like. It might as well be in the greatest depths of space. Here there be dragons. What's down there? Are there stalactites and stalagmites and crystals, or is it just a vast open room or tunnel?
Yeah, might just be something boring, like a parking garage.


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11 comments

26 May 2007 @ 07:29 by bushman : Hmm,
Ya kind of reminds me of a small worm hole in a hard Cedar seed. Anyway, there are lots of air pockets in most rocks, if you slice them open there are bubbles. Whats intresting to me is its not a sink hole, and theres no cracking around the edges, as if a meteor going thru glass like a BB. Ha, for a hole to be that dark with the sun shinning into it, with almost an egg shell thickness perimiter, Id say the whole planet is hollow, lol. It would be worth putting a satilite in geo orbit with it, and send in a lighted drone. Ive found so many odd structures on Mars with those HiRISE pics. You know, it could be a great big pool of oil. :}  

28 May 2007 @ 14:19 by shreepal : Circular hole
The hole looks a pefect circle. The questions are: 1) what is inside there, how deep is it and what is its inside formation? 2) how was it formed? The circular formation points to the possibility of its forming by an impact of astroid of the sufficient size to have this depth. If such an impact takes place on earth, the resultant hole would not be that circular and deep. Which are those conditions on earth that prevent that shape and depths? This would show those conditions are not present there on Mars.  

28 May 2007 @ 21:44 by ming : Hole
An impact would normally have thrown some stuff up around it, and it wouldn't be such an apparently bottomless hole. Unless there already was just a thin shell above an existing cavity, and the meteor went straight through. But what's underneath is the real mystery. Is the whole place hollow?  

28 May 2007 @ 22:34 by bushman : Hmm,
well unless NASA photo shoped it, it's there and real. Frome this larger pic, you can see brighter stuff pointing up, apperently blown by the prevailing wind maybe, some sort of ash build up, maybe machine exhast/white soot. Anyway there are a few of these open ports on Mars, all seem pretty much the same. So the only question is, is it an open hole, or super dark non-reflective black stuff. Im going more towards it being some kind of tar pit, or black water lake, if you look close, at the top edge you can see what looks like an island right off the coast. :}
Use this page to load up a super sized pic:
{http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/diafotizo.php?ID=PSP_003647_1745}  

31 May 2007 @ 22:46 by osvaldo @201.54.121.94 : Big hole???
Cave! and the rim?? do not look like a cave. look like a lake.  

6 Jun 2007 @ 21:56 by Boonie @63.144.17.200 : What has me puzzled..
I'm pretty new at looking at these photos so please feel free to educate me. I am viewing the hole shown above with the IAS Viewer.

At the top of the hole appears what I will call islands in the dark. Now look at the right hand side of the hole and you will notice that at the top of the hole wall it starts out bright and is fairly consistent until it gets about halfway down then turns to a darker grey until it reaches black. This, for lack of a better term, grey water line, appers level around the rim. I wonder if we are looking through something like when you see a lake or smoke filled crater from an aerial photo here on earth. Could it be a heavy fog or gas that is filling the hole? As a firefighter we use thermal cameras and the blackness reminds me of when you look at certain items like water. Could the reason we are unable to see into the hole be due to a spectral limitation on the camera with regards to whatever is filling it?

Also does anyone know if this hole is on an angled or flat surface?  

24 Aug 2007 @ 03:18 by ALEJO F. ESTEPA, ATTORNEY @203.76.221.158 : ASTRONOMICAL HISTORY OF PANET MARS
THE PRESENCE OF CAVES OR VAST CAVERNS IN MARS IS UNDERSTANDABLE BECAUSE THE RED PLANET - MARS - BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO WAS JUST LIKE PLANET EARTH, GREEN IN HABITATION, BLUE IN ITS ATMOSPHERE AND PLENTY OF WATER AS SEAS AND OCEANS. ALMOST HALF A MILLION YEARS AGO, IT WAS A SPACE "WAY STATION" FOR EXTRATERRESTRIALS, MINING GOLD ON EARTH AND BRINGING THEM TO THE PLANET WHICH PASSES CLOSET TO EARTH EVERY 3,699 EARTH YEARS AND ORBITING AROUND THE SUN LIKE A 'TWELVE PLANET' TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM, ALONG A CIRCUIT IN THE ASTERIOD BELT WHICH THESE ETS CALLED 'THE HAMMERED BRACELET'.EVEN NOW, ON THE SURFACE OF MARS, OUR MODERN DAY ASTRONAUTS HAVE SEEN AND HAVE TAKEN PICTURES OF A VAST GIGANTIC HUMAN FACE NEAR SEVERAL GIGANTIC FOUR-SIDED PYRAMIDS, EXACTLY THE SAME AS WE SEE AND KNOW IN THE GREAT PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX IN EGYPT... AFTER ALL THE BUILDERS OF THE EARTH AND MARS PYRAMIDS ARE ONE AND THE SAME ET RACE - THE IGIGI AND ANUNNAKI, COSMOLOGICALLY KNOWN AS NIBIRUANS BY THE ANCIENT SUMERIANS OF EARTH CIVILIGATIONS OF EARTH. thanks Fleming Funch.  

27 Dec 2007 @ 23:33 by crystal @65.164.52.2 : hummmm
Perhaps it’s the remains of an extinct caldera, the large magma chamber collapsed in on it’s its self, this would explain the over hanging edges and depth better than a impact creator.  

27 Dec 2007 @ 23:36 by crystal @65.164.52.2 : hummmm
Perhaps it’s the remains of an extinct caldera, the large magma chamber collapsed in on its self, this would explain the over hanging edges and depth better than a impact creator.  

26 Feb 2008 @ 04:47 by guy richards @75.21.116.96 : mars caves
They look like an underground spherical cavity where the top has collapsed inward where the top of the sphere is closest to the surface.  

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