Strange Polygons on Mars

Hexagon with Square in Center in Honeycomb Terrain, Cydonia Region, Mars

The new Mars, Cydonia photo from MSSS has several large areas honeycombed with polygonal forms, predominately hexagonal. This kind of texture is typical of basalt flows on Earth. On earth the polygons are thought to be caused by differential cooling between the interior of the polygon and the sides forming hexagonal convection cells. The cell edges fracture as the basalt cools. This "columnar jointing" is very common in basalts and often forms hexagonal columns meters wide and sometimes 30 meters high. Devil's tower in Wyoming and "Giant's Causeway" in Ireland are well known examples of this type of basalt formation. The polygons exhibited here are much, much bigger in scale, but it seems likely that a similar process must have been involved. The large hexagon with the square in the middle seems out of place here. All the other polygons appear dark and low in the center, whereas this one has a large nearly square column in the center. My feeling is this is a natural formation, although very unusual. What might have caused one convection cell to be so different than all the ones surrounding it? Could it be artificial? We will never know until someone walks there and studies it.

Flat-topped Hill on Mars (Enhanced Image)

I used Microsoft's automatic image enhancement to make the flat-topped hill more visible. When you zoom in on the rectangle at the top of the hill, there appears to be at least two other smaller rectangles inside. I think this is very difficult to explain, if it is natural. If it is artificial, it may be even harder to explain, but it certainly warrants more study with an open mind.

Flat-topped Hill on Mars?

This small hill in the Cydonia region of Mars appears to have a flat rectangular top. Maybe it is an illusion, but it looks that way to me.

New Mars Cydonia Picture

MSSS has posted a new photo of the Cydonia region on Mars. It does not include any of the most talked about anomalous features in this region, but there are some interesting things to see here. I will mention three of them:

(1) An apparently rectangular flat space topping one of the hills or mounds in the south part of the photo.
(2) Hexagonal honeycomb terrain- most likely caused by shinkage cracks in cooling basalt, but strange because of the scale. On Earth columns consisting of hexagonal (or other polygons) blocks of basalt are common, but these usually have a scale of inches to meters. The hexagonal polygons in this terrain are much, much larger.
(3) One of the large hexagons has a square inside it- this is very unusual.

Nearly as Good as Being There?

Candor Chasma, Part of the Vast Valles Marineris Trough System

This picture from MSS Mars Orbiter camera is quite astounding. They have achieved 1 meter per pixel resolution, using a new method called "the cPROTO technique". The quality is so good it almost seems as good as being there. We can only hope they will image some of the anomalous, possibly artificial structures on Mars with this technique. It might answer some questions, but most likely it will just raise more questions. MSS has been very reluctant to spend time imaging the areas with potentially artificial structures because they believe the whole idea is absurd. This has led to cries of conspiracy at JPL and MSS, something which seems unlikely to me. I think these people are just stubborn, short-sighted, and focused on other aspects of Mars that they find more interesting.