Talk:Martian spherules

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2019 and 13 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Andrew.Ferrell.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:29, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Merge?

The spherules were discovered through the agencies of the rovers, but their existence and their science are entirely independent of that fact. Therefore they warrant their own article. This article needs to be expanded, not merged. --Kbh3^rdtalk 20:00, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

It might make more sense to merge this with Concretion, which is, I believe the name of the actual geological phenomena. Quadpus 09:05, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Perhaps we should move most of the information based on the martian spherules from the Opportunity rover page and leave a "Main article:" link to the Concretion, with possibly a redirect from "Martian spherules". Radagast83 19:19, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I understand that NASA is looking for ideas on how the spherules are formed. I have seen such spherules form in the laboratory in which I work. We use a cold plate to cool wax blocks. Cooling from below forms just such water spherules.

As Mars cooled, is it possible that the atmosphere was warmer than the surface of the planet for a period of time? Dust grains coalesce on droplets of water/ice that form on the surface. The water eventually evaporates, leaving the solid matter in the shape of a ball. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.95.147.249 (talk) 15:20, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I decided to be bold and do the initial merge myself, but if anyone wants to modify it further, like merge this with Concretion, as I'm not a scientist nor really aspire to be one I'll leave that in the hands of people more familiar with the details on that. Radagast83 20:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

At this time, I don't think it's 100% "known" how the Martian spherules form. So, I would vote against merging the spherules with a specific method of creation (Concretion) until such time as a definitive mechanism for creation is established... My 2c. I would however, support merging Blueberry rock into 'Martian spherules' since they address the same feature. I think Martian spherules is more accurate description, as "blueberries" was simple a nickname based upon the false-colorization of the image, which made them appear blue, despite being composed of hematite (more likely gray or reddish, rust-colored). Mgmirkin 18:22, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Since there hasn't been any dissenting discussion over the last month, and the move should be fairly uncontroversial, I've decided to take the initiative and merge Blueberry rock into Martian spherules. Though, since there really weren't any new or even sourced statements (the other article was only a few short, relatively uninformative lines in length), it was more of replacing the article with a REDIRECT to here. Hopefully this benefits the community in some way, by making sure that all paths lead to the right article. Previosly also added redirects from other common phrasings Martian blueberry, Martian blueberries, etc. So, hopefully we won't get any more duplicate copies cropping up and can focus on improving this article. Mgmirkin 15:57, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Also took out the MergeTo and MergeFrom tags from both pages as a house-keeping task. Cheers. Mgmirkin 15:59, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

See Also

Have added 'Moqi Marbles' and 'Stone spheres of Costa Rica' to the 'See Also' section, sice these appear to be analogues to Martian Blueberries. IE, relatively perfect spheres of all sizes found all over the place. There have been similar spheres found in Southern Africa as well, I think, though no article is yet written up on them. If it were, I'd think it would be wise to add to the 'See Also' section as well. Mgmirkin 16:15, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Minor issue (clarification?)

"Not only are there spherules on the surface but they are also found deeper in the Martian soil. The difference between these and ones which were found at the surface was that they had a very shiny surface, that created strong glints and glares which made them appear shiny or polished."

I'm wondering, does the shiny surface remark refer to the spherules on the surface or under the ground? Perhaps we could address these two separately: The above-ground items being more dull, whereas the below-ground items being more shiny, or vice versa. That should help to clarify this statement. Yeah? Mgmirkin 23:22, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Added several articles.

Added several articles on spherule generation via electric fields. Published papers, I assume peer reviewed, found on http://adsabs.harvard.edu. I assume this is sufficient notability for inclusion as references. Articles include: "Creating Quasi-Spherules from Molecular Material Using Electric Fields (Inverse EGD Effect)," "Attention: FULGURITE!" and "Plasma Generated Spherules." Mgmirkin 17:15, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

In order to

• A) maintain neutrality
• B) generally improve the article/references

I've added several additional referenced articles relating more generally to "spherules" and a comparison of formative processes and analogues. These articles include: "Morphological Investigations of Martian Spherules, Comparisons to Collected Terrestrial Counterparts," "Sedimentary Concretions vs. Impact Condensates: Origin of the Hematitic Spherules of Meridiani Planum, Mars" and "Ironstone Concretions - Analogs to Martian Hematite Spherules." Hopefully these references will help to improve the overall discussion of these interesting items, while not slanting discussion toward any one pet theory or another. I personally lean strongly toward the experiments done by CJ ransom in actually REPRODUCING spherules via electrical arc experiments. However, I won't slant the article toward that interpretation without published results. Though he did co-author one of the abstracts, and I ASSUME presented the findings at the conference to which the abstract was submitted. Though I haven't yet located a freely available copy of any additional materials yet. IF anyone is interested, www.thunderbolts.info did a write-up of his work here: Domed Craters on Mars (however, this being currently considered a "fringe" site, take it as you will with a grain of salt). Still, interesting results (with photos). I won't directly include that in the article though, since the corpus of their materials are not currently considered "academic." Mgmirkin 17:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

deleted irrelevant links

I deleted two articles on lunar spherules from the links page, since they don't have any obvious relevance to Martian spherules in size, composition, or method of formation. Geoffrey.landis 22:01, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Dates without year make no sense

I just wanted to point out that statements like "he said on a February 9 press conference." are meaningless, unless a year is added. And even with a year, I can't really see the relevance of the exact time of the statement. Another problem is that the article has no stated source for its content, no citations at all! Perhaps, when I have time, I will hunt sources and rework this thing. TheMaster17 (talk) 12:06, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Much of it appears to be copy/pasted from here. That's a NASA news release, which accounts for the unencyclopedic style. As a US federal government agency NASA is a free source (everything it publishes is constitutionally in the public domain), but it's still not suitable for Wikipedia as is and needs rewriting into a suitable style. Hairy Dude (talk) 01:32, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

contradiction

two explainations are represented: 1) volcanic/impact origin 2) aqueous accredition

Impact/volcanic origin can be ruled out because the spherules ar not layerd (as it would be expected from isolated events.

Pore structure rules out aqueous accredition (see "Sedimentary Concretions vs. Impact Condensates: Origin of the Hematitic Spherules of Meridiani Planum, Mars" abstract).

Ni-enrichment is being considered as a biomarker for methanogens (see "A biomarker based on the stable isotopes of nickel", http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2708719/)

This strongly favours a biogenic explaination. The relation to cyanobacteria and terrestrial stromatolites, seems very strong, as indicated by the source material, wich is unfortunately poorly represented in the text.

I think the Ni-enrichment, as well as the pores from the "Sedimentary Concretions vs. Impact Condensates: Origin of the Hematitic Spherules of Meridiani Planum, Mars" should be mentioned to point out this contraqdiction of reasoning, plus the biogenic explaination should be included, for it is the most likely, according to our current aviable data.

217.89.117.154 (talk) 12:30, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Fungus

Does this section even belong in the article? It's a crank theory published in a predatory journal, and mentioned by more reliable sources only to debunk it. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 00:17, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

I have removed it, if there is some utility in debunking the claim in the article then it should be buried in another section rather than placed as the last section of the article that people read. PtolemyTheLate (talk) 13:42, 12 October 2024 (UTC)