A Crater on Mars That Isn't a Crater

 

Report: #0034

 Report:031.

A crater on Mars that doesn't originate from a meteor impact – nor does it seem volcanic.

For it to be a volcanic crater, it's missing more mass in the walls. The walls are very thin and regular in all directions. A volcanic eruption opens the crater, expels some material that plugs the vent, and the lava flows outward and cools, leaving the edges progressively higher. Always, some lava flow heads to the volcano's lower spots. An eruption can last hours, days, weeks, or even years.

We have images from other moons in our solar system where an eruption lasts years.  What I'm getting at is that a lava flow heads downward and doesn't consider – if it even has one – the symmetry often characteristic of the crater itself. A volcanic crater has a concave shape, with a much smaller diameter in the center than at the rim.  

Always, on one side, there's an avalanche of hardened lava, layer upon layer. Kilometers from the center, this hot mass flows and leaves a mark of its path for eternity.  In our image, it's the opposite.

The crater isn't the result of a meteor impact either – as I've shown in some cases and as seen in Moon images. An impact normally cleans the entire interior of a crater, hurling, vaporizing, or burning everything in its path

Normally, it doesn't have a rim above ground level; it's simply a pit, according to the meteor's volume.  This image shows a rim rising significantly above the Mars ground level. This means it's not an impact.

So, the wall must have formed from an eruption from inside. As I explained earlier, a volcanic crater is concave from inside out.  Here, we see something strange. The diameter at the top rim is smaller than inside, narrowing like an eye: round, slender, elegant, symmetrical. The outer wall is also highly symmetrical, round, and beautiful.  Looking from above toward the center of this crater – I have no other word to describe it, though it doesn't seem the product of an eruption – something or someone inside is visible.

It doesn't look like remnants of cooled lava to me. It looks like someone or something hidden there.  As in many images, I can't give definitive explanations. I believe in the future, we'll need in-situ geologists to determine so many geological forms and new elements. Possibly, in many cases, a biologist too for answers on the possibility of different life forms.

To me, this eye on Mars's ground is a hiding spot, a nest, a home for a form of life on Mars.  

 
 Josef Bauer

credit:Nasa/Mars Global Surveyor - Mars Orbiter Camera S1000780