Martian Dust Devil

Watch a dust devil work it's way across the Martian landscape in this NASA clip.

Not being a meteorologist, I wonder what that says about the density of the atmosphere. How much atmosphere does there have to be to reproduce this?

Richard Hoagland Press Conference Update

I haven't seen a thing on the Hoagland press conference as of yet.

My guess is that this is because it was little more than some free publicity for his latest book, complete with grainy photos. I could be wrong, and I do actually hope that I am, but something tells me he didn't exactly deliver with rock solid proof of his claims yesterday.

If anyone's heard anything more on this story, though, I'd be interested to hear it.

Richard Hoagland Press Conference

Today I was sent an e-mail by a friend of mine with details of the press conference Richard Hoagland is hosting at the National Press Club next week.

I'm actually curious to see what comes out of this even though I'm cautious with anything Hoagland does these days. At times I've thought that he's put out some interesting info, and made some nice connections. Other times, particularly more recently, I feel like he has no problem stretching(or possibly even more than that) a story to make it more sensational and to claim more headlines.

As I've said before, much of that seems to be human nature. Once people get headlines, sometimes they feel like they have to go bigger and more wild to keep getting headlines. I think that has happened to quite a few people who are at heart decent researchers over the years, and maybe that's part of why I'm wary of any claim Hoagland makes these days.

In the end, call me cautiously optimistic that something interesting comes out next week. If he's got legitimate proof of more happening on the moon than is known, then it's certainly going to be worthwhile. If he throws out a bunch of speculation that's light on the proof and big on attempts to grab headlines, then it's probably going to do more harm than good.

While it's not exactly new news to a lot of people, more evidence of water flowing on Mars has come forward. This time images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter seem to show rocks that have been recently weathered by flowing water.

As the evidence mounts I wonder how long it will be before NASA starts working the very real possibility of water on Mars into their future plans. I also can't help but wonder long NASA has known about the water, and why most of the exciting Mars news most recently seems to come from scientists outside of NASA studying NASA data.

Going along with the About.com article on the moon which I wrote about recently, Victoria Hardy of the American Chronicle has written an article about the possibilities of past and/or current habitation on the moon. It contains links to many of the information that's supposedly been leaked from various sources about what NASA/JPL really knows about the moon. For example:

Karl Wolfe, states that while he was in the Air Force he was shown photos of the moon taken by the Lunar Orbiter, before the Apollo landing, which clearly displayed artificial structures. Mr. Wolfe had a top-secret clearance and worked with tactical air command at Langley AFB in Virginia. He claims that in the photos he saw towers, spherical buildings, large things that were similar to radar dishes and some structures that were half a mile in size.

According to only one document I could find, it was reported in March of 1996 that NASA scientists and engineers participating in the Moon and Mars exploration met in front of the Washington National Press Club to discuss their findings. Although they spoke cautiously, they announced that man-made structures and objects were discovered on the Moon. The article goes on to say that there is evidence of lost cities on the Moon. An unnamed mission control specialist is quoted as saying, “Our guys observed ruins of the Lunar cities, transparent pyramids, domes, and God knows what else, which are currently hidden deep inside the NASA safes, and felt like Robinson Crusoe when he suddenly came across prints of bare feet on the sand of the desert island.”

Are these stories really true? I certainly don't know, but I've always thought it was strange that we abandoned the idea of putting bases on the moon shortly after visiting for what really amounts to no apparent reason. At this point I wouldn't bet all my money on the existence of ancient cities on the moon, but I wouldn't bet against it either, as far out as it seems. If you take ancient Indian texts about vimanas and Native American stories of the Second World at all literally, you have to consider the possibility that either man, or visitors, harnessed the power of flight long ago.

UFO Media Matters has a review of a few of the images from Mars Anomaly Research up under the title "Is NASA Still Touching up Photos?" The blog points out a few of the more striking images that look as though they've been obfuscated, and links to Mars Anomaly Research for more. A long time ago I used to check out Mars Anomaly Research pretty regularly, and while I think the analysis went a bit overboard from time to time, I think it hit the nail on the head regularly as well. I haven't been there in a long time, but I'll have to get around to checking it out again soon to see what's going on there now.

Thanks to Mac Tonnies for pointing out a nice little article from Meta Research on the Mars face. Titled, "Let’s “face” it: The Cydonia Face is not pareidolia" it takes a look at all the different images that have been taken of the face, and comes to the conclusion that it's "unquestionably artificial."

There were a couple of exciting announcement from NASA on the space exploration front this past week that are certainly worth noting.

In the first, NASA has announced plans to set up a polar moon base which they hope to permanently staff by 2024. While I certainly think they could pull it off sooner if they wanted to, and I have my doubts that this program will survive the next 18 years through however many administrations there might be in that time, I think this is a major step toward colonization of other planets and moons. Which, I believe, we must undertake in my lifetime if we hope to survive as a species. As we stand, all of our proverbial eggs are in one basket, and that basket's not in the best of shape at this point, not to even mention the possibility of a catastrophic natural event, meteor impact, nuclear warfare, etc.

Secondly, NASA announced that they've found evidence of water flowing on Mars. While I've seen people presenting evidence that they've found on NASA photographs of this for years, it's very exciting to see NASA jumping on board on the idea that there might be liquid water occasionally flowing on Mars. I think as we explore more in the universe we're going to find that there are more similarities on "alien" worlds than we expect. We're also going to find that there are many strange things we've never thought of, in all likelihood. However, if there's confirmed water on Mars, it certainly opens up the possibilities for not only life, but manned exploration and, eventually, permanent habitation.