GAME: Mars or Earth?

[mlorrey]

Okay folks, we're gonna play a game here. Post an image, and challenge folks to decide whether it is an image of something on Mars, or on Earth. The only rule is the image has to be taken from a spacecraft in orbit.<br /><br />I go first:

 

[baktothemoon]

Earth.

 

[qso1]

Good thread, I was thinking of something along these lines because of the "1st MRO image analysis by TEM". thread. Gotta go with Earth on this image. If it were Mars, it would be even more convincing of artificial construct than the square.<br /><br />BTW, looks like the image has been reduced to 256 colors as evidenced by the banding in the gradients. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[mlorrey]

it is a jpg, at the utter limit of resolution. There may have been some color reductions in processing, but I didn't do it.<br /><br />Technically, I coulda found it before anybody else...<br /><br />That being said, given the numbers of folks who've viewed it and not commented... it is Earth, in south central Libya. Got the photo from the free version of Google Earth. I chose this image because I thought it demonstrated clearly that, even at the butt end of resolution, artificiality tends to poke right out at you. I'll admit the MRO square is right there at the edge, but that is the only image I've seen out of many that make me consider it even momentarily to be artificial.<br /><br />This particular site is a little east of something that screams out artificiality: circles of irrigated crops in the middle of desert. I would have to say, that if we were to assume some dying civilization or alien visit to Mars in a wetter era, they still would have dealt with a very dry climate compared to what we are used to. We should therefore expect to find on Mars, if there were any civilization ever there, neatly arranged rows of circular and/or square patches of soil with significantly different mineralogy than the surrounding desert that was indicative of prior irrigation and fertilization.

 

[qso1]

The square on Mars has my attention as well but these things take time to analyz when they are not as obvious as what you posted here. The initial reaction is always one that has to be tempered to get at the real work.<br /><br />I've looked at several areas in the mideast, Libya wasn't one of them but there is as you pointed out, a lot of obvious manmade artifacts. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>