Martian “Blueberries” as a weapon?

[craterchains (Norval]

Martian “Blueberries” as a weapon?

Just a thought that is being kicked around. Maybe these are just a kind of big Claymoore mine?

:m:

 

[(Q)]

The Martian "Blueberrie" is an effective weapon, but recently has been taken out of commission in favor of the deadly, "Oompa-Loompa Bomba."

 

[Communist Hamster]

Um...you aren't being serious are you?

 

[Stryder]

Unlocked for discussion once more, However:

Please explain what a Blueberry is rather than allow everyone to start chucking fruit about.

 

[craterchains (Norval]

With all due respect to the moderator of this forum for the obvious lack of knowledge concerning blueberries along with an unprecedented inability to deduce what was being discussed and a strong personal desire to marvel at ones own witty pseudoscience concepts, let me say this.

No.

This topic would be best discussed in a forum where the moderator has at least a rudimentary understanding of physics and sciences over all. This is not the case at SciFoolems, therefore I will continue this discussion in a more appropriate forum where there is adequate moderation to deal with the fruit chuckers.

 

[(Q)]

This topic would be best discussed in a forum where the moderator has at least a rudimentary understanding of physics and sciences over all.

Stryders understanding of science is not in question and neither is yours - that has already been confirmed - neither is your ability to discern fantasy from reality.

That is why you and your topics don't belong in the science forums. Kapeesh?

 

[Stryder]

Norval,
For one not being an American, what you call a blueberry to me is just Iron with a dose of peroxide, similar to what comes from Welding. If you and whoever else wants to run round calling them some berry then fine, although due to the honeycombed chambers inside your better off calling them a 'pomegranate'.

Norval it was hard to deduce what was being talked about, You have to look at it it like this. If your going to start a topic not everybody in the world read the same material you did. If you don't explain yourself properly then your not going to be understood properly.

I should point out that I should lock this post again, not down to your commentary Norval but again due to your lack of explaination as to what a Blueberry is. (Albeit I'm not actually locking it)

 

[FieryIce]

Stryder then part of your lack of understanding the word blueberry must be the cultural difference. As I already explained in the “Pseudoscience Section Rules New Moderation” thread, the word blueberry was coined by the lead principal investigator for MER not by Norval or any civilian research investigator. So any problem with the word blueberry is your own personal prejudice, for you to deal with on your own time.

principle investigator for the MER mission, said the spheres looked "like blueberries

Astrobiology Magazine

There are three theories about these blueberries (named by MER mission investigators), one theory is almost off the table but the remaining two theories are important to consider.

Three hypotheses remain on the table about the origin of the spherules, said Squyres, but "one of them's fading fast." Losing favor is the notion that they are lapilli, small globs of airborne volcanic ash that stick together, forming spheres that then fall to Earth.

Another possibility, one that is still in vogue, is that the spherules formed from molten rock that was sprayed or splashed into the air, where it froze into little droplets.

The third contender is that the spherules are "what geologists call concretions." Concretions form when water flows through a rock, carrying tiny bits of dissolved sediment along with it. The sediment "precipitates around a nucleation site," Squyres explained, "and it grows these little spherical granules within the rock."

The layered rock is tan, while the spherules are gray

As you will notice the blueberry in the center of the RAT grinding area is not ground down, it looks somewhat polished unlike the rock has been grounded by RAT. So the blueberries are much harder substance than the rock and of a different substance than the rock.

These blueberries are scattered everywhere in this image from NASA's Opportunity Pancam and microscopic imager in Endurance Crater. But have these science investigators considered what happens to substances other than rock when either heated to melting point above ground or what happens to hot melted substances above surface when propelled or in movement?

 

[Blindman]

Where I grew up as a child the hills where covered in hematite appearing very similar to the mars images. Placing a magnet on the ground and they would stick to it which fascinated me as a kid. They made a great ammo when used in a ging (sling shot), many a broken bottle owed its destruction to hematite. It was used to create road surfaces, and is mined for iron.

The hematite deposits are hundreds of feet thick and stretch for some 300KM south.

Hematite is very common and its formation is well understood. They are not artificial.

 

[Stryder]

They look to be spherical rather than splatter (As if when hot thrown into the atmosphere to give the spherical shape rather than have gravity "Pancake" them, this means they have either travelled some distance from an erruption or spattered from a Lava channel.

If they were projectile shots then they would be deformed with the impact, If they were claymore mines they would be spaced apart more and arrange in a blanketing formation. So obiously they aren't mines otherwise one going off would chain react the rest (This is allowing Norvals whim of a space war, however the reality is nothing like that and never will be anything like that purely because it's proven costly just to probe planets within our own solar system for an "Interstellar War" the costs would be too great in resources, Alien(man) power, Time, Effort and distance)

 

[blackholesun]

Fiery,

First off its been concluded that the blueberries are hematite through both spectrometers as will as the mini-tes.

Secondly that image you have is of a brushed area before it is ground. Given it is a concretion it is stuck in the area where it concreted into. Therefore a mere brush won't dislodge ones that are still stuck in the terrain. Look around through the microscopic archive. You'll see dozens and dozens of examples of where blueberries were ground in half with the area was truly RAT'ed.

 

[Blindman]

From my youth hematite shatters when it strikes a hard surface at speed.

 

[FieryIce]

BlackHole, you are correct in that the circular area was brushed and not ground but where does NASA state that the blueberries are hematite?

I have come across the statements that the area Opportunity is examining was identified as having hematite but not necessarily the blueberries specifically being hematite.

Such as:
The Lure of Hematite

Gray hematite has the same chemical formula (Fe2O3) as its rusty-red cousin, but a different crystalline structure. Red rust is fine and powdery; typical grains are hundreds of nanometers to a few microns across. Gray hematite crystals are larger, like grains of sand.
"Red and gray iron oxides on Mars are really just different forms of the same mineral," explained Hamilton. "If you ground up the gray hematite into a fine powder it would turn red because the smaller grains scatter red light."
Hematite minerals, on the other hand, might have been formed by hydrothermal water deep underground.

And:
The Hematite Group of Minerals

The Hematite Group is a more or less informal group of closely related trigonal oxides. Their relationship is linked through their similar structures. The general formula for this group is A 2O3. The A cations can be either iron, titanium, aluminum, chromium, vanadium, magnesium, antimony, sodium, zinc and/or manganese.
The structure is composed of alternating layers of cations and oxygens. The cations occupy spaces in layers between the oxygen layers and each are bonded to three oxygens in the above layer and three oxygens in the bottom layer. Not all of the sites for these cations are occupied as only two out of three are filled. If all the sites were filled then the formula would be AO in stead of A 2O3.
In the Ilmenite Subgroup, alternating layers of cations are occupied by only titanium or antimony and the other cation layers are occupied by a dissimilar cation

And:
Hematite, JPL's Dr. Joy Crisp

Hematite is made up of iron and oxygen-a type of iron oxide. It takes its name from the Greek word for "blood," and is a rusty color in powdered form. Fine-grained hematite helps gives Mars its characteristic red hue.
"We want to know if the grains of hematite appear to be rounded and cemented together by the action of liquid water or if they're crystals that grew from a volcanic melt," says Crisp. "Is the hematite in layers, which would suggest that it was laid down by water, or in veins in the rock, which would be more characteristic of water having flowed through the rocks."

It seems only Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA) authors and editors of the APOD site are stating the blueberries are "hematite rich blueberries" not the scientists for the Mars Exploration Rover Project, atleast not that I have found yet.

Blindman, where is site that has hematite balls littering the area? Where is hematite balls mentioned geologically?

When hydrothermal or volcanic activity was mentioned as a contributor to the formatation of Mars hematite, where is Mars closest volcano to account for the hematite in Sinus Meridiani, where Meridiani Planum is located?
Thermal is the only thing in common between hydrothermal and volcanic but there are other sources for themal.

 

[Stryder]

Simply put using a bunch of peroxide balls in a theory to premote that they were infact remanents of some weapon is bogus and therefore discussion on it would have to cease.

If you want to discuss the actual way that such balls were created through Volcanic or Solar methods then I would suggest taking this into another forum and keeping the topic well away from Alien warfare.