New image of the Cydonia Face 4-13-06

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by starjim</i>
<br />It is an assertion or conclusion that the face must be composed of some metallic material either in part or in full for it to react to a meteor hit in the manner described.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Gravity imposes a minimum velocity for any impactor from space. For Mars, this is 5 km/s. Natural rock vaporizes at impact speeds of a bit less than 3 km/s and up. This is why most craters are circular instead of oval even though most impacts occur at oblique angles -- The crater is made by a vaporizing explosion, not by excavation.

There is no other known example of a crater producing a melt flow. So I deduced that the surface was not natural rock, but something much harder with a much higher melting temperature.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Many Asteroids in particular are composed of mostly metal.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">No, all asteroids are rocks. A very small percentage (less than 1%) show metals in their spectra. These are presumed to represent ores present. For example, if Earth's crust were broken into asteroids, compositions would vary greatly, and some of those asteroids would have a high ore content. But no one would say they were made of metal because the ore is unrefined and a small percentage of the total.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">there could have been other forces at work<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I do not discount this possibility.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">One further thought regarding impact, is this the only impact on the face, was the face lucky enough to avoid multiple impacts?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The odds mildly disfavor even one impact, assuming the Face is millions and not billions of years old. -|Tom|-

If the Face structure is elevated above the ground, a meteor would pass through and hit the ground. A melting of the elevated structure above the impact crater would obscure and/or distort the actual impact crater. Heat from such an impact would be "trapped" underneath the metal structure. That would lead to melt. Aluminum actually melts at 1,220 degrees F. In contrast, CaSO4 melts at 2,642 degrees F. So, the metal could melt at a lower temperature than typical rock. Molten metal has smooth texture and flows well because it has uniform composition. Rock typically does not melt with a uniform appearance and liquid like flow because the composition varies a great deal.

In regard the crack, aluminum is notorious for failing suddenly and at a great scale.

Gregg Wilson

Quote:

originally posted by Tom
The odds mildly disfavor even one impact, assuming the Face is millions and not billions of years old.
end

Then I would offer that the conclusion that a melt feature on the face is more unlikely than likely and another reason would apply for the differences in the two sides of the face.

Quote:
From the paper linked here: metaresearch.org/solar%20system/cydonia/...Face/Preliminary.asp

However, the shape fails to be a good match to the corresponding west side feature, and is a bit too narrow for a hominid eye, creating an “animal face” character to the east side. A single large, irregular, melt-like feature with well-delineated borders that dominates the east side of the Face extends up the Face just far enough to partially obscure the lower portion of this “eye-socket” feature. If it were not for the presence of this “melt” feature, the “eye socket” feature might also have had the horizontal oval shape expected for a hominid eye-socket portrayal.
end

You actually describe the east side as an "animal face" why does it have to be so as a result of an impact that has slim chances of having even occurred by your own statement?

Quote:

From the papers abstract

The analysis strongly confirms the earlier findings of artificiality, establishes some mirror-symmetry for the two sides of the face, and shows that certain visual asymmetries (irrelevant to artificiality tests) can be attributed to a large crater-forming event.
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I think the key here is "can be" but isn't suffciently proven within the context of the paper as definitive in any way, leaving the conclusion of mirror-symmetry open for discussion. It was a leap to give the crater forming event the credit for deftly carving around the features of the nose and eye leaving enough evidence of their existence without obliterating them.

The assuption of mirror-symmetry in looking at nose and mouth features east and west, also ignores the concept seen here on Earth in many statues of ornamentation, again bringing out the sphinx as an example whereby the beard is an added feature and the many nose ornaments, earrings etc. that would alter the natural features of a statue it is also known that egyptians exagerated features such as eyes to make a point about the story the paintings were telling. It cannot be a given that a face on Mars would not have ornamentation or be exagerated or even asymmetrical in some way.

While I am not trying to say the face is bifurcated I can't accept that a crater impact was able to create the features on the east side. It is just too much of a stretch. It is especially a stretch if you cannot provide anything similar as now you are saying a single one time event occurred in a single one time unique place to create the partially destroyed face we are looking at today.

The thing I have the biggest problem with regards to the melt feature is that it is a reverse L shape and that it conveniently leaves the eye, nose and moth alone, it even curls around the corner of the mouth. I have always said that nature is astounding but this is an instance where I think an artificial hand is more involved and that it has worked a dual wonder for us to ponder...

The premise of artificiality is correct.
The mechanism to alter that feature is not.
The conclusion then must be that what we see is what we get and that is where the study and analysis should be directed.





Jim Miller, You can find anything if you want to!

Originally posted by Tom <blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The odds mildly disfavor even one impact, assuming the Face is millions and not billions of years old.
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Of course odds are just odds, based on some model. They say little about what actually happened. I always like to look at the best evidence available when considering an issue. This cropping is from E1501347, which is the highest resolution image of the damaged side of the face. The possible crater Tom refers to in his cited paper is in the lower center of this image, just below the crack and to the left. This may or may not be a crater, I don't know. But it seems like there are clearly signs of damage here, and it caused a melt down. The border between the east and west side of the face has all the markings of a heat event on a metal surface. Every welder has seen this pattern a thousand times.

Another factor, the undamaged (or less damaged) side of the face is strewn with debris, bolders, or regolith, while the damaged side is quite smooth, this indicates to me that the damage event (whether by a meteor or not) occurred much more recently than the age of the sculpture itself.

Neil

Gregg

While the explanation of a meteor crashng through and creating heat underneath a metal structure is indeed plausable it has to assume that the face is indeed made of metal. Is there THEMIS data or other data that supports that premise? How do we know that we are looking at a metal clad structure? How do we know we are looking at a hollow structure?

Yes it is a bit funny to be arguing about the type of structure as was pointed out earlier in this thread, but we tread on thin ice by just saying it is a structure of a face. By trying to introduce unknowns such as a meteor deftly carving the east side up to make the face fit a preconceived set of criteria that really doesn't even fit earthly examples of a defined set of sculptures (i.e. sphinxs, mayan gods, sumerians, and many many more) then we are painting ourselves into a corner that is too easily defeated by the enemies of anomalists....

I believe in the face and all that implies, I also believe in a very cautious aproach in making claims understanding that we only have the pictures and the ancilary data to support the claims. So lacking anything that indicates there actually was a meteor hole punched into this structure anything that follows from that premise is just speculation.

There is nothing wrong with that speculation BTW as it does further the discussion what is wrong is the elimination of any other possibility due to the establishment of speculation as accepted fact. Very little about Mars can be accepted as fact with regards to structure, glyphs, statues etc. until we actually go there or get definitive proof via the photos.

As an aside I and others are coming out with a paper of a fairly defined object and it has already seen lots of derision on the net and in places like this. It actually has more definition than the face and has been recognized and acknolwedged by many people who have no idea that it exists on Mars... That it has been panned on anomaly sites is rather puzzling to me but it seems there is more importance to the protection of turf rather than the furthering of the cause of the community. RCH as an example makes some pretty outrageous claims but those claims shouldn't eliminate everything he comes up with, some of it is very viable. (BTW it is in peer review so I cannot publish anything regarding that object at this point in time.)On my own forum I allow a pretty wide path for people to express themselves and I have to shudder sometimes at what gets brought forward, but what I have found over the years is that the nonsense does fall by the wayside simply of its own inability to stand up to scrutiny. We have the surface of the face to examine anything beyond (or below) that is pure speculation.

Jim Miller, You can find anything if you want to!

<i>Originally posted by starjim </i><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I believe in the face and all that implies, I also believe in a very cautious aproach in making claims understanding that we only have the pictures and the ancilary data to support the claims. So lacking anything that indicates there actually was a meteor hole punched into this structure anything that follows from that premise is just speculation.
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Everyone knows we have very limited data, but we are not bereft of good data altogether. There are over 200,000 images in the MGS MOC gallery, and there are others. There is good reason to support the artificiality hypothesis for Mars. Even if there is a lot of speculation taking place here, I find that quite acceptable as long as the speculation is reasonable in light of the evidence.

It is important to keep the discussion alive even in the face of big egos and sometimes hurt feelings. The alternative would be tragic.

Neil