Vacuum Fossilization - A Unique Martian Process
Many of the "rocks" are really dried mud and crumble when cut or drilled
If my claim of vacuum fossilization is true, then there should be some good physical evidence of it. Let's see what happens when the RAT (rock abrasion tool) is applied to the substrate. If the theory is correct, then the cutting should produce crumbled, dusty material and the cut rock surface should be very dull- impossible to polish.
| When the RAT is applied to
a hard rock face, it cuts into the face and produces a round, shallow
depression. The tool can cut very hard stone and produces a nice,
smooth surface when applied to a hard mineral face.
There is a set of brushes on the RAT that can be applied to dust off the face and leave it clean enough to examine crystal structure, mineral veins, and other features in good detail using the microscopic imager. Here is just such a rock face from Spirit, Sol 085, against what is supposed to be basalt. It shows a clean and smooth surface once the grinding operation is done and the rock face brushed off. See how the rock is very flat and the crack shows fine details? The original image is here at the NASA web site. |
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| But when the RAT was used
on the dried leaves, this was the result. The material is literally
falling apart, like dried mud. It is exceedingly dusty, shows an
absolutely rough surface, and has deep grooves full of dust in the ground
off face.
There is no face definition- it is dull and crumbly with bits and pieces falling off it. Compare to the face above, and the difference is obvious. Now notice that there is a spherule in the lower center of the image here. It was embedded inside the mud and covered with leaves. When the leaves and mud were ground off, the spherule was ground off as well. But the grinding marks on the spherule surface are apparently not aligned with the grinder movement. The spherule is broken free (as can be seen by the fine shadow line around it) and seems to have rotated in place. The original image is at the NASA site here. |
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| If we look more closely at
the spherule, we can see that it is apparently much harder than the
surrounding material. It is completely loose but has left its print
in the mud surface. In fact, the surface seems to have deformed away
from the spherule, like clay.
Now look at the material itself. It has smooth, rounded "pills" of material. The grinding "dust" is soft and appears to stick together as if damp. That material face shows many holes and voids, and all are rounded and clumpy. Consider that the spherule is very likely calcium carbonate such as calcite or limestone. NASA says that it is hematite, which is much harder, but that is not a credible idea. It is far more likely that they are indeed carbonate which has been colored by iron oxide. NASA used the presence of a specific iron oxide to indicate that the spherules were hematite, but that is only an opinion. If we assume for the moment that the spherule is in fact calcium carbonate, then we have to conclude that the surrounding material is far softer. Limestone is one of the softest rocks, and limestone is made of calcium carbonate. The spherule cannot be very hard, and that limits the hardness of the surrounding material greatly. In other words, dried mud is the perfect answer to the composition of this "rock". The original image is at the NASA site here. |
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The bulk of the material suggests that this matrix of material is really dried ooze and mud that the organisms were trapped in. An impact would have heated the water slightly, and this will greatly accelerate its drying in the very thin air of Mars. The material contains what looks like fine bubbles and is pockmarked in a way very suggestive of vacuum dried mud.
The surface is rounded and clumped, the ground off material seems to stick together like it is damp, and the material itself crumbles easily and is softer than the spherules, which are fossils and likely made of a carbonate mineral like limestone. The material will not take a polish from a rock cutting tool, but instead falls to pieces and has a very dull surface.
This material is dried mud. The vacuum has killed and dried out the organisms and left this hardened mud, which was assumed to be a rock.