That is a fascinating feature, and is not a RAT artifact...

contrary to the lunatics claims I have never had a problem with the idea of life on mars past or present- I just have a problem with morons that 'see' fossils and Ford transmissions in every damn picture. Personally I think there is a good possibility that Mars had life in the past, and I also think that if Mars had life then it almost certainly still has life clinging on deep under the surface.

The thing I dont believe is that Mars has life on the surface... If I am proved wrong I will be the first to pop open the champagne. The picture above does seem liken to lichen (pun intended)... but I have seen products of weathering and geology that look very organic here on earth...

Right now all that matters is it is a picture from Mars and we will learn from it... and 100 years ago our grandparents got around riding horses...

We now have probes driving around, and orbiting on mars, landing on Titan and orbiting Saturn... we have walked on the moon.

My grandfather saw the first car drive into his town, he lived to see men on the moon and the space shuttle, and voyager.... what will we see?

We have already seen cloning go from silly fiction to fact (I say 'we' assuming most of us are more than 10 years old)... I have seen home computers go from an Atari 400 to the out dated piece of shit I am typing this on... Did any of us understand that we would have the internet as it is now 20 years ago? Hell, 15 years ago I thought it was so cool that I could dial up a BBS with my kick ass 1200 baud modem and talk to a few DOZEN people!!!

Interesting times, arent they? The only thing you can be sure of is that the world 10 years from now will be far different than it is today... I like that change, but I can understand how it may worry many people... THE FACT IS after 30 years of life even the most adaptible of us are in some ways alien to our culture....

This isnt really a bad thing, but think how many millennia we went with our children living in the same world as their fathers... We once lived in a world where people never ventured more than a few dozen miles from their birth place... now, that is a very odd thing...

I was born in oklahoma, I lived in california and texas as a kid then back to oklahoma, then went to UT Austin and then long island New York... I spent a couple of months working in France... then back to long island and then went to work in northern California... and finally I wound up working here in Hawaii... (and I didnt list the places I visited for fun)- This kind of nomadic living is the rule- not the exception.. I find it amazing that a bunch of monkies have so quickly adapted to this alien life...

Its just going to get more wild and fantastic, and we couldnt stop it if we wanted to... so just sit back and enjoy the ride... maybe try to add some exciting loops to the ride if you can.... but you cant stop the ride... I honestly believe humanity has a future greater than we can imagine....