Alien studs on dwarf's erection baffle boffins NASA has released images of a smooth-sided dome three miles (five kilometres) high, studded with bright reflective spots, on the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres. The pictures of the feature – dubbed Ahuna Mons – were sent back by NASA's Dawn probe, which has just completed its first year in orbit around Ceres – a strange …
Not exactly proof of intelligent life, but a clear indication that Ceres Regional Council exists and it has a Department of Public Works that behaves very like it's counterpart here on Earth - transforming temporary excavations into geological features. Lower lifeforms similar to Terrestrial Healf'n'safety drones account for the reflective spots.
First Nasa agree to its own renderings .. here the pic which alreg received has post processing and possibly bump mapping algorithm rendering shiny blob as hill while rough blob as crater.
Now the following govt link has the data rendered as opposite,.. rendering shiny blob as crater while rough blob as hill. Is some Nasa internee sitting on computer !?!.. Ooo lemme send a new cool rendering.. this one has my personal pinch of filters added.
https://www.sciencenews.org/sites/default/files/sn-2015/ticker_ceres_mountain_free.jpg
This is all really cool science. Just once though, I would like us to find some evidence of alien civilisation.
It would be a game changer for the entire world.
The government would probably suppress it though.
Don't want everyone going mad and killing each other do we?
I did watch Stargate SG-1 after all...
This is all really cool science. Just once though, I would like us to find some evidence of alien civilisation. ... The government would probably suppress it though.
I know "the government will suppress it" is the popular Hollywood lesson, but suppressing the evidence of alien life runs counter to most goals of a government, which is a bureaucracy seeking an expansion of funds and authority.
Consider the NASA scenario where it observes an unambiguously artificial structure perched on top of this Ceresian (sp?) mountain. NASA scientists who see this will have all sorts of nerdgasms; good for them. NASA administrators who see this will have their eyeballs rolling like slot machines until the eyes stop with $ symbols displayed and "ka-ching!" noises made. Why? Because aliens are good for NASA's business. Aliens on Ceres means a budget expansion for follow-up probes and deep space manned missions.
If there's a Hollywood element to the story where the aliens want nothing more than to steal Earth's water, or human brains, or real estate, well, you're a) not going to cover up the sheer number of military and security personnel involved in addressing The Alien Menace, and b) the Pentagon will need an emergency cleaning after the generals realize what sort of expansion of budget they're going to get to defend Earth. If the ISS is any indication, space battleships (or other, more suitable responses to The Alien Menace) are expensive.
Looks to me like something hit hard enough to end up under the surface right next to the crater. Ceres has gravity... a whole 0.3% of Earth's, so you can expect the surface to be... porous... Although the right word would be more like fluffy, I guess..
If that was indeed something containing a lot of water, there's a decent chance whatever minerals the surface is made up of got hydrated, and expanded pushing up the dust from below into the mound we see.
With a surface gravity where a decent sneeze would have you attain escape velocity, pushing up some dust wouldn't take that much force.
Hmm.. interesting concept. The crater seems round indicating a direct hit where I'd think an angled hit would leave an oblong crater. Unless it hit and displaced something under the surface upwards.
Maybe it was a "trough and through"? Hit the other side and started to come out this side but left a mountain?
Just a jump off-topic -- IIRC, meteorites and other things that strike with interplanetary-scale velocities make round craters no matter the angle of attack. Reason: what makes the crater is the explosive expansion of vaporized material, and that explosion expands as a circle. (Sphere, really, but it's a circle on the surface of a planet.) (Simplified version of the physics, though.)
I'm betting on some sort of internal deformation -- analogous to a frost heave, perhaps, or some kind of uplift due to a Ceresquake. It will be interesting to see what the experts come up with.
"Just a jump off-topic -- IIRC, meteorites and other things that strike with interplanetary-scale velocities make round craters no matter the angle of attack. "
Agreed. On the other hand, even though the asteroid belt is mainly empty space, the majority of them are in roughly similar orbits so gentle nudges etc over the millennia might also be likely.
I think I first came across the concept of all craters being round in a Niven and Pornelle book.
<short delay for a quick Google search on "hot fudge sundae falls on a Tuesday" as the memorable quote>
Ah, here we go, Lucifers Hammer
There's a scene with Harvey Randell sitting on the kitchen floor throwing marbles at various speeds and angles into a tray of flour.
I agree. Extra material has been added and compressed underground by the impact. It then slowly and steadily headed upwards to relieve the pressure. For example Mount Kinabalu on Earth was caused by a big ball of molten rock cooling then rising to the surface, and still rising at 5mm pa. The low gravity would help a lot.
«"No one expected a mountain on Ceres, especially one like Ahuna Mons," said Chris Russell, Dawn's principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles.» Sounds odd to me ; it is precisely on planetary bodies with low surface gravity (that of Ceres measures 0,27 m/s² at the equator, as compared to Earth's 9.81 m/s²) that one would expect to find tall mountains, just as Olympus Mons on Mars (gravity at the equator : 3,69 m/s²) dwarfs any mountain found here on Earth (or elsewhere in the Solar System). Why wouldn't investigators have expected to find a tall mountain on Ceres ?...
Henri
I'm clearly no expert, but wouldn't one expect to see ejecta from an impact crater? Streaks, rays, distant rocks with surface gouges pointing back to it? If the hill existed before the "crater" it should be positively peppered with impacts on the near side. It doesn't so it came later or is being steadily eroded, slumping or something to reshape the sloped walls.
Bah, ignore my ignorance... it's beautiful and a fascinating puzzle to ponder!
I am surprised that none of the comments so far point to the coincidental size match between the volume of the crater and the mound.
Also, the mound sits neatly separated from the crater, one would expect natural processes (impact, vulcanism, etc) to smear the ejecta.
If these object were on the outskirts of a city on Earth, people would consider them unlikely to be natural features and more likely (man / alien?) made.
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