

Iron ‘blueberries’ may be sign of microbial life on Mars - yogrish
http://www.lifescientist.com.au/article/436306/iron_blueberries_may_sign_microbial_life_mars/

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da02
There is also an alternate explanation that was replicated in the lab:
[http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050325blueberr...](http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050325blueberries.htm)

    
    
        He obtained a quantity of hematite and 
        blasted it with an electric arc. 
        The results are seen in the right 
        half of the image above. The embedded 
        spheres created by the arc appear to 
        replicate many of the features of the 
        blueberries on Mars. No other laboratory 
        process has achieved a similar result.

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ubernostrum
Well...

1) The article that started this thread links to an abstract of a paper which
claims to have pretty compelling evidence for a relationship between mico-
organisms and connections, and appears in a pretty respectable journal.

2) The site you link to... how to put it kindly... reads like a bunch of
cranks. Seriously, go poke around in there; they link the plasma-arc thing
because it supports their "Electric Universe" ideas, and they use it as a
vehicle to push that. And their link to the paper about it is 404, so I can't
actually verify it, but it's a "presented at", not a "published in", which is
a red flag.

~~~
da02
Thanks for pointing that out and putting it kindly.

In case anyone is interested in spotting any further red flags with the idea,
here is a similar paper by Ransom on craters and spherules:
[http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toaaj/articles/V004/SI016...](http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toaaj/articles/V004/SI0162TOAAJ/185TOAAJ.pdf)

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waterlesscloud
"(But geologists _have_ shown that the more a guess is repeated, the more it’s
apt to be called a fact.)"

Heh.

Anyway, the blueberries have come up again the last couple of weeks as
Opportunity has just run into new rocks with similar little round things in
abundance. Maybe not exactly the same things, but similar.

You can see some of the new ones on the rocks here:
<http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_p3062.html>

Microscopic Imager of some of them here:
<http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_m3064.html>

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ori_b
It seems like everything we see "could be proof of life on Mars". It's great
there's excitement, but it would be even better if the media didn't cry wolf
every time.

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se85
Could someone please explain to me how such conditions could be present on the
surface of mars or the deserts here on planet earth to trigger the same
results as the lab results?

