I always love it when people write so definitively about that which so little is known of.

first off, let's start with size. The "berries" are pretty much the same size.

The atmospheric and gravitation conditions assure a certain uniformity in tectite size - I don't that either deposits within gas bubbles, ocean floor nodules, or any "biological" process can produce the same distribution in sizes.

Let's go to distribution by location.

You're assuming layering occurs separate from impact. I don't - as a matter of fact, impact on Mars always releases volatiles to a greater or lesser degree.

While gradual layering occurs to some degree in wind blown deposits, you still need to have a binding agent to seal these wind deposits into "layers"-

Let's continue with distribution.

What we see is wind erosion of exposed layers, with "berries" falling out. Note that the "berries" are much harder than the surrounding "matrix" -

we can also hypothesize that eronsion due to the volatiles released by impact also free "berries"

Now let's assume a quite dead Mars, where the lithosphere is churned up, gravitationally recompressed, churned up, gravitationally recompressed, for billions and billions of years - acutally, in the case of Mars, for sometime less than 3.8 billion years or so, the time of the Late Period Bombardment Event, and sometime after the core cooled -

In that time of churn, you have iron impactors hitting Mars, forming tectites, which are then incorporated into the lithosphere, de-interred from the lithosphere, re-interred in the lithosphere, and so on and so on and so on, with really significant churns occuring every 26 million years or so...

Finally, if I remember correctly, the "berries" were seen at both MER sites - I have not looked at it much since then. Nick's point about strewn fields is well taken.

Now I know some of you have a lot invested in this, and are quite prepared to argue this with intensities varying from passionate to nasty. I don't, and I don't know know why the hell I should feel like I have to thank you for at least not calling me anti-semetic.

My thinking is that data are going to provide definitive answers, that is if the scientists who NASA has hired bother to collect it.

For my part, what I'd like are more spectra and microscopic images of samples in situ, and not eroded. I'd also like some super-resolution shots made from the Viking lander images.

all that said, we'll see
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