Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Finally -- reason to take my Cydonian Imperative blog out of dry-ice storage. Only this time I have to wear my debunking hat.

Malin Space Science Systems has released a close-up of some of the Martian "tubes" (aka "glass tunnels"), showing them to be the natural -- if interesting -- features I thought they were.





Of course, the jury among Mars anomalists has yet to reach a verdict. My prediction is that it never will; unfortunately, the "tubes" have become a staple fixture among proponents of artificiality on the Red Planet, and "recalling" them at this point would do grave damage to the memetic ecology that's built up around them.

Lest I sound like a total wet blanket, I'm virtually convinced there really are ET artifacts on Mars or I never would have devoted a website and a book to the possibility.

For forthcoming commentary, see my Mars blog.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

I always thought the ancient Martians could do better than a kind of glorified (and evidently scenic!) maglev transport system anyway.
--WMB

JohnFen said...

Well, I never seriously thought they were glass or a transport system, but they did look suspiciously artificial to me. This pic changes my view on this quite a lot.

Don't rub it in too much, Mac! I'm delicate, like a flower.

Mac said...

The article is up on my Cydonia blog:

http://cydonianimperative.blogspot.com

The thing is, there really are some regularly spaced bright lines on Mars that seem genuinely weird, but they're not the "tubes."

Ken said...

I am still of the opinion that these are tubes (not glass, but tubes nonetheless). They look like gigantic "popoid" tubes situated in dried-out riverbeds, half-covered by sand. My guess is that they were for the purpose of harnessing and transporting water (hence their being placed in riverbeds which were not always dry). I think that their "popoid" structure possibly lent them elasticity - i.e., they would not bend, bust or break due to topological shifts that will most certainly happen over the course of time. That said, I am still far from convinced that these are natural.

Unknown said...

one more theory down the tubes, eh?

Anonymous said...

(Please dont liken me as Hoagland-esque for this comment) Looking at the pictures (especially the last picture you displayed on Cydonian Imperative in your most recent post), the 'tube' looks more like a fossil to me and in which case they are completely natural. Could it be that they are giant worm-like creature fossils, pseudo preserved?

Anonymous said...

Part of the problem has been the insistence by many Mars anomalists that the parallel markings are perfectly regular.

A casual glance may appear to show a deceptive regularity of the sort our own mass-produced industrial products exhibit. But if you examine them with more deliberation (even the older images) you'll see that the spacings and widths of the "arches" are almost random within the spaces available. If anomalists can't accurately describe what they are seeing, none of their conclusions that follow will be built on a stable base.

Homophone alert -- in your 2/8 entry there I think you wanted to type "addition" instead of "edition."

Mac said...

Calling me a "homo," Carol? That's pretty childish. I expected more from you. ;-)

Ken said...

I'm still pretty damn sure that those "tubes" are artificial. Time will tell who is right...

Anonymous said...

ken,
the way things are going right now and into the recent future, we may never know, unfortunately.

Anonymous said...

I was thinking about adding a "Hello, Mary?" (or as we greet in the religion biz, "Hail, Mary") when I typed that. ;)

And here I was trying to go to the trouble of translating for you young whippersnappers. When we geezers and geezerettes get together, we still tend to say "homonym." Don't know when they changed it on us, but we steadfastly maintain that it Just Ain't Right.

Why don't we pull the tubes, and see if Mars dies any further?

Anonymous said...

Carol -- But are "edition" and "addition" really homophobes -- whoops, I mean homoPHONES? (Ah, I too remember old-fashioned, politically incorrect homonyms.) And would the ancient Martians really have cared?! 8^)
--WMB

Ken said...

My theory is that these tubes only LOOK transparent because most of their length are covered in sand, leaving only their ridges visible. Occassionally, however, whole portions of the tubes can be seen.

Infotheorem, it did also cross my mind that these could in fact be fossilized "worms" (if they are fossils at all; could they be alive??)- but if this were the case, these "worms" are positively enormous...

Anonymous said...

I was going to throw in "assonance" somewhere so that I might look like an English major rather than an art major, but I figured someone would get all Beavis and Butthead about it. :)

Anonymous said...

"Edition" and "addition" actually come under the category of "brain fog passes spell check," don't they?

Anonymous said...

Actually, I prefer the "giant (sandworm?) fossil" notion over the "glass tube" theory. Frank Herbert's "Dune" is, of course, the paradigm here. The "worms" if they had fossilizable skeletons would actually be more like gigantic snakes, possible because Mars has only about 1/3 the gravity of Earth. The somewhat irregular (it strikes me as actually "semi-regular") spacing of the fossilized ribs could have come about through eons of geological processes. Fossils here tend not to be in perfect shape either!
--WMB