Here's a link to today's image from Fram Crater, which shows lots of those same blueberry objects seen back at Opportunity's landing spot.

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p...00P2532R1M1.JPG

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Forming opinions as we speak

mmmm.....blueberries. :P

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I am forever striving for increased perfection of my understanding of this world we live in. My quest through life is knowledge and I am but a child on this ubiquitous journey, as are we all. Knowledge, like the universe, is infinite.

When asteroids strike, a whole lot of energy gets released along with the debris. I'm sure some of it liquifies as it is flying through the air. Maybe those blueberries are meteoric iron or something.

Well, now that I've looked at it, it may be something caused by water as they say. I think they have chemical evidence for that or something.

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Asei said- I think that is correct.

(Note to self...take good broom along to Mars)

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Pre-Quote: 'To survive one has to experiment. When the environment changes, the traditional way of doing things doesn't work.'

Quote:
"It's the outriders, the organisms that seem to be maladjusted before the change, which are the only ones that survive these changes...in that way a species continues."

Carl Sagan

I'd take more than one!


Also, when asteroids strike, they can melt the sand around them into glass.

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The point of the blueberries is that, based on their chemical signatures, they are believed to be concretions. Concretions are small spherical blobs of minerals that precipitate out of salty water. Hematite is a form of iron oxide that forms in water, and the bluberries are rich in hematite. Hence the salty sea theory for Meridiani Planum.

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...and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere; and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys...

I've never heard of that, but thats not saying a whole lot. You seem to be very well versed in science, is that what your degree is in?

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"Human curiosity and the desire to make the intangible tangible, has led us into a new age where the New World has been settled, and the West has been won. But if you think that we, the human race, has conquered everything there is to conquer, then just look to the sky--at space--last and greatest of the frontiers."

My first major in college was engineering, but I switched to business and now I'm an auditor. I still follow anything to do with physics, astronomy, and space, though. I also visit the Mars Exploration Rover site often to see the latest images and read the latest theories. There were also several news conferences carried by the regular news about this particular story and a Discovery channel special. It was hard to miss.

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...and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere; and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys...

Wow. I'm still making my way through high school...

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"Human curiosity and the desire to make the intangible tangible, has led us into a new age where the New World has been settled, and the West has been won. But if you think that we, the human race, has conquered everything there is to conquer, then just look to the sky--at space--last and greatest of the frontiers."

The 'Salty Sea theory for Meridiani' was announced as a direct result of the data returned from Opportunity; so it will be a few years before it makes it into schoolbook texts. To this point, the scientific community at large consideres the theory and the data behind it to be rock solid (pun intended) and accepted as an accurate description of that area of Mars at some point in the past.

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~\_/~\_O
Burmese

Oh, I didn't even hear anything about it in the daily mail from universe today.

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"Human curiosity and the desire to make the intangible tangible, has led us into a new age where the New World has been settled, and the West has been won. But if you think that we, the human race, has conquered everything there is to conquer, then just look to the sky--at space--last and greatest of the frontiers."