| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Water Falsifies Mars Rocks.
Tuesday, March 15, 2016 22:11
% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.
All articles by Wretch Fossil are here: http://www.wretch.cc/blog/lin440315&category_id=0
Last edited on Oct. 22, 2015
“Rocks” in Yellowknife Bay, Gale Crater, Mars, are actually remnants of man-made concrete material rather than natural rocks. Reasons for the claim: 1.Those objects contain basaltic composition in “sedimentary rocks” (notes 1, 2); 2. The objects formed quite fast, with the water going away very quickly (note 3); 3. The objects lie in a former lake that was once filled with water for millions of years (note 4). 4. Evidences for the concrete are listed in
http://wretchfossil.blogspot.tw/2014/10/a-new-album-for-concrete-foundations.html
http://wretchfossil.blogspot.tw/2014/10/a-new-album-for-concrete-foundations.html
Explanations
In geology, there are only three kinds of natural rocks: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks. As a general rule, a natural rock cannot be both igneous and sedimentary (note 1). I will talk about the objects’ composition, their formation process, and water's effect on the objects.
Composition: Their composition is concrete (water, cement, aggregate) or “a simple mix of two endmembers: chunks of broken-up basalt, and a finer-grained material that looks like the ash you'd get from explosive eruptions of very iron- and magnesium-rich komatiites.” (note 2)
Formation process: Artificially molding concrete into blocks, pavements, etc. or “through mechanical rather than chemical weathering” (note 3), “And then whatever water-related experience moved those sediments from their point of origin and deposited them into layers in Gale must have happened quite fast, with the water going away very quickly.” (note 3)
Effects of water on the objects: If the objects were natural rocks, millions of years of fresh water would have turned them (basaltic composition in “sedimentary rocks”) into clay, etc. (notes 4, 5), as they lie at the lowest place in Gale Crater. Most importantly, most of the objects did not touch water at all (note 3) before a catastrophe ended all life on Mars. Most of the objects were once protected from water by underwater architecture (see http://wretchfossil.blogspot.tw/2014/04/advanced-civilization-in-distant-past.html).
Note 1: “There are two main unifying points to the Curiosity results I saw at GSA. First: Every rock that Curiosity has seen is sedimentary. Second: nearly all of those sedimentary rocks have the bulk composition of an igneous rock called basalt. If you're a geologist, those two statements almost seem contradictory. Sedimentary rocks say “Mars was wet.” Basaltic composition says “Mars was dry.” Let me explain why, and then I'll try to explain where we go from here.” Quoted from the second paragraph in
Note 2: “There was an entertaining presentation by Ezat Heydari that showed that you can pretty much explain the entire diversity of rock compositions seen by Curiosity as a simple mix of two endmembers: chunks of broken-up basalt, and a finer-grained material that looks like the ash you'd get from explosive eruptions of very iron- and magnesium-rich komatiites.” Quoted from the last fourth paragraph in the above-mentioned article
Note 3: “But there's still the pesky problem of having rocks made of very fine-grained sediments that, ought not to have a basaltic composition, because the very water that is required to transport, deposit, and lithify sediments into rocks should've also attacked the basaltic minerals and turned them into something else — a fact that Allan Treiman emphasized in his presentation on Curiosity CheMin results. That's telling us something important, too. For one thing, Allan said, it suggests that the way that Mars turned basaltic lava rock into sediments was not through the action of water — that Mars broke basalt into basaltic grains through mechanical rather than chemical weathering. And then whatever water-related experience moved those sediments from their point of origin and deposited them into layers in Gale must have happened quite fast, with the water going away very quickly.” Quoted from the last third paragraph in the above-mentioned article
Note 4: “The latest results from Curiosity indicate that these wetter scenarios were correct for the lower portions of Mount Sharp. Based on the new analysis, the filling of at least the bottom layers of the mountain occurred mostly by ancient rivers and lakes over a period of less than 500 million years.” Quoted from the seventh paragraph in
Note 5: “Basalt is common in the solar system, but it doesn't get along with water very well. Water chemically attacks the crystal structure of olivine, pyroxene, and feldspar. It weathers those primary igneous minerals into other minerals that have tons of water stuffed into their crystal structures, such as clay minerals. Water oxidizes the abundant iron and in basalt, turning rocks from dark gray or green to red. If the water can flow away from the rock it's attacking, it can leach out and remove iron, magnesium, and calcium, leaving behind a rock that's relatively enriched in silicon and aluminum.
Chemical weathering of basalt happens fast, in geologic terms. It goes even faster if you bust up a piece of basalt into lots of tiny little pieces, making a large surface area for water to work on. So if you take a basalt, fracture it up, and then get it wet — which is what you need to do to make a sedimentary rock out of basalt — you would expect the resulting rock not to look very much like basalt.
Sedimentary rocks that have a basaltic mineral composition are not common on Earth. If you start with a basalt, and break it up due to physical or chemical weathering, and then you transport it somewhere in a river and deposit it in a lake or ocean, water will act on the basaltic rock fragments, carry away their iron and magnesium, and leave behind a much more silicon- and aluminum-rich sedimentary rock. Instead, it would bemade of clays.” quoted from the 7th, 8th, and 9th paragraphs of the article mentioned in note 1.
Read more at http://wretchfossil.blogspot.tw/
Wretch Fossil’s website:http://wretchfossil.blogspot.com/
Source: http://wretchfossil.blogspot.com/2015/10/water-falsifies-mars-rocks.html
