In Search of
The
Cydonia Face
Page Four
Sinkholes on Mars



What do these structures look like to you?
Mountains?
Hills? Little volcanoes or cinder cones? Mesas? Burial mounds? Pyramids? Are those rippling sand dunes making their way around the hills? Are we looking at deposition at the base of these structures?



NO!


This is a portion of the original image from NASA.
(Oh, please, let it be so.)

Do
these look like craters? Is that what one would think if this were an image of some region on Earth? It looks like karst topography to me - a sinkhole plain, or cockpit karst, minus trees, shrubs and all the various flora (and fauna) found on Earth.
This
image, fha01538, is from one of NASA's cipher-like CDs, Latitude 8.33° Longitude 42.25°. It is in Shalbatana Vallis which is somewhere near, and north of, Valles Marineris. They say there are several outflow channels in this area. This image shows part of contact area of the main channel and smaller valleys.


These
structures could be sinkholes. They certainly resemble doline structures more than they do craters. Notice the center of these holes. They do not really look like the centers of typical impact craters.
Sinkholes
often have a characteristic funnel shape to them. They are often round at the top, but sometimes sinkholes have scalloped edges, especially if several sinks form adjacent to each other. If they grow large enough, they will eventually connect, forming one large sinkhole, or a solution valley. On Earth a sinkhole can cover acres and acres of space. A sinkhole can range from a few feet to several hundred feet in diameter. A square kilometer can hold hundreds of sinkholes. Karst topography is vast, and our planet has millions of square kilometers of soluble rock - potential karst - at or near the surface, as well as vast amounts of water stored in the sediment, rock and soil. More water is stored in Earth's crust than in lakes and rivers. There is a delicate balance at play here. One major catastrophe - a sudden extreme loss of water, for instance, or earthquakes, or a drastic change in the atmosphere - and much more of Earth will suffer subsidence and/or karstification. Perhaps this is what occured on Mars.
Slumping
and sliding happens on the walls of sink basins. Surface drainage into these depressions also occurs. Is that what is happening here? Perhaps those rippling dune shapes seen in the inverted image are some kind of drainage system. But then again, given the current conditions on Mars, they could be dune structures.
What
is at the center of these funnels? Entrances to cavities? What is in the cavities? Water? Empty spaces - cave systems? Caves with running water - or ice? We definately need a closer, deeper view of the structures in this image.
Caves,
by their very nature, tend to preserve climate and geological/environmental records - as well as archeological records. We need a flying submarine rover - with big eyes.


Some Ways
Sinkholes and Caves are Formed

SinksMap: diasink_1 diasink_2 diasink_3
Click in the middle of each picture to view a larger image.
Or
These
diagrams are fairly self-explanatory. Sinking can occur when the water table is low and the land becomes very dry. When water leaves a cavern there is no support for roofs and walls. Loose rock and debris fall to the cave floor. Many caves have rooms and tunnels, often one on top the other. Weak floors collapsing into another vacant space are real dangers for cavers.
If
it rains, surface runoff, and sinking streams enter dolines and other openings, where it drains downward and further erodes previously made passages. Carbon dioxide in this water continues to desolve soluable rock.
This
kind of desiccation and sinkage often happens when wells and aquifers are over-pumped. Or when great quantities of water are removed from the natural way of things, as they are at some Dead Sea mineral opperations.
With
the disappearance of liquid water, this process, or something like it, could have happened on Mars. This process could be still be happening on Mars.



Sink2Map: 2diasink_1 2diasink_2 2diasink_3
Click in the middle of each picture to view a larger image.
Or
In
this process, the surface responds as the roof of an empty cavern collapses. Acidic water continues to desolve soluable rock and enlarge caverns. Moving water carries suspended material through the cavern system. Not shown here, the water often reaches the surface via springs and streams.



Karst on Mars?
Where did all the lava go?

Recently
NASA, and Malin Space Science Systems, have come out with a photographic "discovery" of the possibility of liquid water somewhere just below the surface of the red planet. And now, in December 2000, as I am about to put this on the internet, the spin on the latest Mars images is all about layered stratigraphy, deposited by water. Ha! It has always been there -- for the looking. For quite a long time now, many people (working with poorer images) have been theorizing about that possibility, along with the logical prediction of some form of life, however small or strange, existing in that water. In various ways, they have been ridiculed for such thinking - or simply forgotten.
What
ever happened to the 1980 photographic discovery (Viking images only seconds apart!) by Dr. Leonard Martin (Lowell Observatory) of a possibly active WATER SPOUT on the surface of Mars? Can, or will, that particular piece of Martian real estate be reimaged? I can't think of better evidence for geological activity than this. Perhaps a volcanic eruption would be better evidence -- something that really hits them over the head.
What
about the Viking Label Release experiments? Time to have another look at this.
Hopefully
the water spout will be revisited. Or perhaps it went the way of the Viking label Release experiments, Cydonia, The Face, and who knows what else was missed - DISmissed. For, sadly, this seems to be a reoccuring theme in the history of science and academia - a power game, a control game of information, and the dispensing of and search for information -- where it seems only some establishment organizations (and a select group of their affiliates) can investigate and present such theories and evidence without suffering rejection and ridicule.
Understandably,
the scientific method requires that after possible evidence there must be proof. Surely, the latest images are incredible. And I certainly do not offer this work as final proof of anything. We need to walk on, and dig into the Martian geology for that. However, I do believe this small study deals with a piece of the puzzle, and shows possible evidence of karst topography - if not in Cydonia, then elsewhere on Mars.
Perhaps
the "new" images recently presented on CNN News, and subsequently various other sources such as Space.com, show a recent event on Mars - water escaping to the surface and eroding the soft materials there before boiling away. Perhaps they were just missed before.
OK,
fine. Missing is ok - if followed by acknowledgement. Doubting is fine - even necessary. But then, speculating is also fine, even necessary. Waiting for better evidence -- of course! Of course, the more images, the better understanding. In my mind, the latest images are not exposing the stratified layers all that clearly. They really are just clearer, sharper images of the same old topography. OK -- nothing wrong with clearer, sharper images. Hopefully these images will provide plenty of incentive to design and build something that can give us a closer (more clear) view of the layers, and peer into holes as well. For instance, something that can fly and hover.
That
old water spout and the recently "discovered" gullies and layered rock are important to a discussion of karst topography on Mars. For where there is (were) water, soluble rock, and carbonic dioxide, there will be (were) karst processes in action. Although sinkholes are formed on the surface, most of erosion and deposition from karst processes happens underground. And what happens below absolutely effects the topography above. Springs, geysers, vents, and streams from solution caves, or volcanic sources, start below ground and influence all surface structures above. In order for sinkholes to form, certain underground mechanisms have to be in place. Erosion and deposition in a cavern system occurs in much the same way as it does on the surface - flowing into streams, cutting new paths, and depositing materials elsewhere. Such is the dynamics - the very nature - of a geologically active, rocky (and watery) planet.
Whatever
the case, one thing is for certain. We - humankind - must have many many more images of the red planet, and do many more experiments, before passing judgement on anyone's theory - about ANY part of Mars. We need to kick up the dirt, climb into holes and down "craters". These new NASA "discoveries" give - at last - albeit silently - some credibility to all previous theories, about fluid, life giving, water on Mars. And now, the question is: Will anyone stand up and acknowledge the debunked and forgotten efforts of the past?


Consider this.

This
is a picture of farmland in southwestern Illinois. This is karst terrain. These are not regular ponds and lakes. They are sinkholes. The sinkholes lead to a network of underground streams and caves.


Ponding after Intense Rainfall

Sinkhole
flooding and ponding happens when storm runoff exceeds the drainage capacities of sinkholes. If water can no longer be transported by a karst system, it is temporarily stored in sinkholes. Flooding can also occur if the underground streams and caves become clogged (by nature or man - often man) with debris or silt.
If
a sinkhole's bottom is lower than the level of surface streams, there can be a backwater effect on groundwater flow. The water is trapped as if by a dam because streams and underground channels are filled to capacity and movement is slow. Think of karst geology as nature's plumbing system. Everyone knows what happpens when the plumbing backs up.
In
the two paragraphs above I am paraphrasing the information for this image from Crawford and Associates, Inc. Their web site has a wealth of informatiion on sinkholes and karst terrain.

Dyetracing.com

The Karst Pages



Is this an image of a Martian sinkhole plain?



Consider this.

A bright but cloudy day on a watery planet?

Taking
only a very few bytes of artistic liberty, I have colorized and painted the original image to depict what it might look like if these holes were filled with water - perhaps after a heavy rain. If at one time these holes were filled with water, as we know it, then it follows that the atmosphere would have been as we know it, and the landscape green.


Is this what Mars once looked like?


Then


Now



This image of created by Steve Wingate
of the context area
". . . a 3d rendering from 1/16 degree data I made in Bryce 4 using a combination of a b&w map and a color map for texture. (I got the offset down between Viking and MGS, about 3/16 degree west for Viking.)"
With no surface water or sufficient groundwater does this image show karst landscape? Perhaps, now that water is really entering the NASA picture, these "craters" will be re-evaluated.


Why are there no holes at bottom of the sinks?

I
tried tried to find entrances to the subsurface using the inverted image. But the inverts really don't add much information - just changes in light and shadow. Remember, when inverting the dark places become light, up is down, etc., etc...
The full fha01538 JPG "browse" image offered to the public is fairly light, and some of the depressions do look like the could have unblocked entrances to the underground. I do not know how enhanced this image is. The image is broken up into 4 smaller browse images, and these are darker. On the PDS Planetary Atlas web site (link in credits below) they recomend that the browse images not be used for scientific study. However, after working a little with them, for these purposes, I didn't see a lot of difference between the PDS and smaller browse images.
I
tried to bring up parts of the "original" with the dodge/burn tool in my graphics program. This was somewhat effective, but it really did not solve the problem. It may be possible for the dodge tool to expose holes at the bottom of some of the sinks. But, one can only work with what the camera captured. No light, no image so to speak. It could be just another trick of light and shadow.
The
link below has an example of these images.

Trying to Find Holes



No Holes?

Over
time geological happenings such as slumping, sliding and collapse send loose material downward, plugging entrances to underground cavities with sediment and debris. It has been a long time since these sinkholes, and their surroundings, have existed in the bouyancy of groundwater. And the powerful transporting ability of surface water no longer exists on Mars. Drying of the regolith will cause sinking, cracking and collapse. Marsquakes may result in shifting of the land, which may dislodge material from the walls of a sinkhole. Also, perhaps over much time, and being kind of protected in those depths, a steady dusting of windblown particles falling out of suspension eventually covers and smooths over everything. There may be ice down there - covered with a layer of dust and sand. Frost and ice are powerful earth moving mechanisms. Most likely, they function the same on Mars.



Karst Connection

Looking
at these images one can see how the karst geology is so connected to everything around it. Karst responds to everything that impacts it - rain, pollution, deposition, etc., etc. When a karst system is impacted, for better or worse, everything in the environment that depends on the hydrology and ecology of that system is impacted. Earth's fresh water supply, from wells and springs, depends on karst systems. Somewhere around 10% - 20% of Earth's surface consists of karst, or potentially karst, geology. Karst is one of the driving ecological forces of the planet. You could say Earth is, at the very least, 10% percent plumbing.

The same would apply to karst geology on Mars.
This Martian sinkhole plain is most likely connected, or related to other places on the planet.
And what luck!
I think we may have part of that connection.


Page Five

In Search of the Cydonia Face
The Karst Connection
-- Image Credits --

Steve Wingate of Anomalous Images and UFO Files

Illinois State Geological Survey - ISGS Publications Unit GeoNews Online
Dyetracing.com - Working with Karst The Home of Karst on the Web
Also from Dyetracing.com - Tons of Great Information The Karst Pages
Crawford and Associates, Inc. - Sponsoring Dyetracing.com Educational Website Karst Groundwater Environmental