Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Geologist Input?

Well, I'm not actually a geologist, but...

... It looks like a pile of rocks to me.

(To be precise, I'm actually a geophysicist, but I did my degree via geology and I work in a geological environment and do geological jobs all the time, so I'm just splitting hairs there)

As for the rock:-

It's a single coherent mass of rock, but heavily fractured. All the rocks we see in Gusev are either intensely fractured or are fragments from a larger mass. This fracturing is the result of 2+ billion years of impact bombardment *without* the cementation processes that on the Moon form solid breccias from loose fragments.

It exhibits different degreesof dust covering. The colour image referred to (

http://www.lyle.org/~markoff/processed/2P143672357EFF7600P2548L234567M1.JPG
) is, as usual, grossly oversatturated. In reality the rock is shades of dark grey with a mere tinge of blue-grey and the dust is reddish-grey. The dust covers the lower portions of all rocks in the image and appears whitish-ochre. The upper parts of this rock and others are cleaner of dust and appear bluish.

There are signs of wind erosion - angular ventifacts and some local fluting (undulating inverse ripples)

There doesn't appear to be anything remarkable about this rock, other than it being on Mars! :-)

I'd bet a slab or beer that it's a basalt, in the broad sense of the word.

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