Shedding a little light on the subject.

September 28, 2007 5:04 AM

Shedding a little light on the subject The HiRise camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provides a less mysterious look at pretty spooky place on the surface of Mars. Previously discussed in a May 25 post.
posted by cyclopz (24 comments total)

This May 25 post.
posted by brownpau at 5:09 AM on September 28, 2007

Don't go tryin' to drop science on me, I'm a bottomless pit.
posted by From Bklyn at 5:25 AM on September 28, 2007

I heard the news today, oh boy...
posted by Jimbob at 5:32 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Jimbob: "I heard the news today, oh boy..."

These holes are the opposite of "rather small".
posted by potch at 5:35 AM on September 28, 2007

Thanks brownpau...Metafilter is blocked by my work firewall and I access it through a trap door that the thought police haven't discovered. Unfortunately the trap door uses a very limited browser that doesn't allow me to cut and paste from blocked sites. I appreciate the assist.
posted by cyclopz at 5:37 AM on September 28, 2007

Needs more rovers! Even if there's nothing in the pits, that's flaming awesome.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 5:41 AM on September 28, 2007

Looks like a good place to set up shop when the time comes.
posted by billysumday at 5:43 AM on September 28, 2007

There's a hole in Mars's crust
Where all the money goes. . . .
posted by rdone at 5:50 AM on September 28, 2007

There's a hole in Mars, dear Liza, dear Liza...
posted by smackfu at 5:59 AM on September 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

THat's no less creepy.
posted by Lord_Pall at 6:00 AM on September 28, 2007

That's a creepy spelunking thing.
posted by tellurian at 6:01 AM on September 28, 2007

"what are you doing? you're not actually going into an asteroid field?"
posted by sergeant sandwich at 6:15 AM on September 28, 2007

I bet it's filled with spiders.
posted by LordSludge at 6:36 AM on September 28, 2007

"infrared thermal signatures indicated that the openings penetrated deep under the martian surface and perhaps were skylights to underground caverns"

"Shedding a little light?" Are you crazy? We discovered the skylight to some underground, otherworldly Xanadu and you nonchalantly post it here like that? I, for one, welcome our submartian pleasure-dome-dwelling overlords.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 6:39 AM on September 28, 2007

Hole? It has the appearance of a lake of some liquid or black ice. If it was a hole the right side of the wall would be visible to a greater depth. It would blend away into darkness instead of abruptly turning dark. OMG, look at this bottomless hole on Earth!!
posted by JJ86 at 6:48 AM on September 28, 2007

Giant sand worms?
posted by stbalbach at 6:48 AM on September 28, 2007

Mars is hollow.
posted by rocket88 at 7:06 AM on September 28, 2007

If it was a hole the right side of the wall would be visible to a greater depth. It would blend away into darkness instead of abruptly turning dark.

Not if the wall terminated in the larger ceiling of a cavern underneath.
posted by brownpau at 8:00 AM on September 28, 2007

there's a hole in my arsia too.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 8:31 AM on September 28, 2007

I thought that was Mars' sphincter.

It's a planetary thing.
posted by papercake at 8:49 AM on September 28, 2007

I'm sorry, but we need to drop some kind of probe down there. Soon.

...otherwise I may go insane from the tension. I have to know what's down there!
posted by aramaic at 9:40 AM on September 28, 2007

Subterranean Subarenean [previously] canali ventilation holes.

Or, the muzzle of the Martians' great gun:

Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little grey, fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.

Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and popular notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the volcanoes upon Mars. The seriocomic periodical Punch, I remember, made a happy use of it in the political cartoon. And, all unsuspected, those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew earthward, rushing now at a pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. It seems to me now almost incredibly wonderful that, with that swift fate hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns as they did.

So when is the IMG tag going to be reinstated?
posted by cenoxo at 11:26 AM on September 28, 2007

I bet it's one of the thrusters.
posted by quin at 11:48 AM on September 28, 2007

The Hole Man [science]
posted by dhartung at 12:58 PM on September 28, 2007