NASA Mars Images Reveals a "Doorway" Structure

There is a strange door-like structure at the base of the mountain formation from a NASA image of Mars that is causing a stir. The first person to notice it wasn’t a NASA scientist, however, but rather a Russian reader of the portal R&D.Cnews, Alexander Novgorodov. Taking a closer look at an image taken by the spacecraft Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, he noticed an unusual morphology, which looks strikingly like a manmade doorway.

Of course, the object’s intriguing form does not denote the presence of a real doorway, nor would it imply that the mountain formation is of artificial origin. That would make an incredible story indeed, but the likely cause it boring old weather erosion. However, the peculiarities are of interest due to their unique morphology.

The unusual teardrop mountain formation, which likely resulted from some sort of weathering, is located amid Mar’s frozen ocean region.

A planet of extremes, Mars is home to the largest mountain in the solar system, the largest canyon in the solar system and intensely severe dust storms. It is also home to the only other likely option for humans to live within our Solar System.

According to astrophysicist Charlie Lineweaver of Australian National University, “ever since the first telescope was invented and we learnt that there are other worlds out there, people have dreamed of going to them. Of course we now know that Mars is the only other planet in the solar system you’d want to set foot on.”

Physicist Rod Boswell says getting people there isn’t the real problem. “There is no doubt you could get people to Mars. Whether you get them back again is a debatable point.”

But some argue that Mars could someday be humankind’s second home. But if there is ever going to be a real doorway on mars, we’ve got to figure out how to make Mars more hospitable. Many believe terraforming is the answer, and introducing plants that would create more oxygen that we humans love, would be a start.

“They’ve done some experiments and have noticed that some types of plants can grow under the low pressure CO2 atmosphere on Mars,” Lineweaver noted.

Terraforming is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying another planet or moon’s atmosphere, temperature, and/or ecology to be similar to those of Earth in order to make it habitable by humans. Although it would be an enormous challenge—if possible at all—many experts believe it is possible. Mars is considered by most to be the most likely candidate for terraformation. Already, a significant amount of study and discussion has gone into the possibility of heating the planet and altering its atmosphere, including NASA hosted debates on the subject.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

Related posts:

The Great Silence & 1.8 Gigayear Interval
The "Hawking Solution": Will Saving Humanity Require Leaving Earth Behind?
Movie of NASA's Sites on Mars for Future Landings & Search for Ancient Life
Mars Exploration: Secrets of the Soil
Is There Life on Mars? NASA Goes Underground to Find Out
New Phoenix Mission Technology to Search for Mars Life
Is there an Interplanetary Mars-Earth Microbe Shuttle?
"The Overview Effect": Is Space Travel Next Step in Human Evolution?
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos Revisited -NASA's Phoenix Probe & the Search for Extraterrestrial Life


Links:

http://eng.cnews.ru/news/line/indexEn.shtml?2007/11/22/276238
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s2050727.htm

Comments

[Hot Rod]

If there is anything we earthlings are good at, it's warming up planets. Let's Invade Boys!

[starry-eyed]

When we move to Mars, I call dibs on this teardrop structure. With a doorway already carved out for me, that will mean less work. Of course, if everyone is wrong about there being no advanced life on Mars, and this is actually Bjorgi the Martian's summer home, then that will be even better! I'll shoot Bjorgi when he comes back, and enjoy his beautiful, fully furnished home to myself. (note to any advanced alien life form reading this blog to decide whether or not Earthlings are a threat--I was kidding about shooting Bjorgi! What I would actually do is seduce him/her/it and hopefully give birth to the first intersolar baby, which would lead into an era of intergalactic peace.)

[kevin]

If that truly is a doorway it must be several miles high. Absurdities to hide a deeper and greater truth just like the way all secret societies do. No Mystery her so move along people...move along.

PS Mars does have a blue sky

[Danny]

Thanks for pointing out the scale of that 'door'...I wanted to comment on how big it would be compared to the rest of the landscape.

Yes, we do seem to be proficient at heating up planets. Who is to say terraforming hasn't already begun on Mars? The rovers could drop thousands of seeds and whatever else on the sand and no one would be any the wiser...and who would object?

[Daniel Appleton]

could that be a cave entrance ? I've never heard much talk about caves or similar structures / geological formations on Mars or the moon. Such a sheltered place would be ideal for building a base if / hopefully when we arrive on Mars. Sheltered from the harsh climate & possible radiation, it would be an ideal locale ( CENTURY 21, Take note..... ) for a base / habitat or future colony there. So much speculation about life on Mars & the possibility of making it habitable, because it supposedly resembles a drier, more dessicated Earth. I still say that we should take closer looks at Europa & Titan.

[QuestionAuthority]

Probably just a shadow or something. Humans have been "seeing" things on Mars for a couple of hundred years. I'd like to see a few more pictures from passes in different lighting conditions.

[anoniumimus IX]

Why not first terraform Luna ("the moon")? I mean its so much more closser. And us humans have gone to the lunar surface and back.

~anoniumimus IX

[QuestionAuthority]

It would be easier (in a relative sense) to terraform Mars because it has an atmosphere - thin, but it does have one. It also has enough gravity to hold an atmosphere, where Luna does not.

[QuestionAuthority]

It would be easier (in a relative sense) to terraform Mars because it has an atmosphere - thin, but it does have one. It also has enough gravity to hold an atmosphere, where Luna does not.

[QuestionAuthority]

It would be easier (in a relative sense) to terraform Mars because it has an atmosphere - thin, but it does have one. It also has enough gravity to hold an atmosphere, where Luna does not.

[Nosreme]

well I just gota say that I used to have thoughts that I'd make about what human kinds past would have been like supposing evolution is false. (I used to think this way when I was very young) I used to think it were possible that humans originally came from mars as "greater beings" and after so long of trashing our last planet like we are doing to earth, we moved to our closest and best option, Earth. After a while without the powersources of our last home, AKA Mars, we slowly lost our intellegence of our last home an began to adapt to this planet and "its" resources.

[Nathan]

I wish to fill the whole with dogfood, and then throw dead birds at it. A splish or red, a splash of pearlescent pink, and a fire-cracker. The whole incent would be filmed widescrren technocolour, then I would wipe my dirty crack with the film, while my photograph was taken by a cosmonaut in a donkey suit. I have a fairly certain idea that I would be the first in the solar system to do this, and I would then bow to your cheers.

[Daniel Appleton]

Humans have an innate ability for seeing shapes where there aren't any as such. Patterns in clouds, faces & profiles in rock formations, clouds as UFO's, patterns in the stars. It's a reason why we're so creative.

Personally, if someone could prove, unquestionably, that Richard Hoagland's " Face " & " City " on Cydonia, Mars were real ( He wrote about it, but he didn't discover it ), I'd be thrilled because I don't think we're alone in the Cosmos. But my money is on formations like that being illusions created by light & shadow.

[Earl]

It is true that mars has an atmosphere but it doesn't have a magnetic field, so it would be very dangerous to try and live there.

[Mickey Mouse]

>>If that truly is a doorway it must be several miles high.

Umm, how do you figure that? Look at the scale. About 4.5 meters wide, somewhere between 9 and 15 meters high, depending on the angle.

[Manuel Gonzalez]

First it was Google maps, then Microsoft, and now even NASA.
Please stop shooting my mars chalet!

[laughing-cat]

It's not a door. Look at the rest of the photo. The tip of the arrow in the first pic, there is a rock formation, a tower. What is being called a door is the shadow of said rock.

[Gustavo]

It's NOT a door. Please, compare the shadows. It's a rock.

[BatchDrake]

As laughing-cat said, that doesn't seem to be a door. It's more like a set of shadows and strange-shaped rocks.

[DAWK]

ALL THIS "IMAGINATION-GONE-WILD"....IS MORE WISHFUL(WE CAN LIVE THERE!) THINKING AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MARS EARTH SCIENCES.YOU NEED WATER!PLANTS DO NOT 'GROW' WITHOUT LOST OF WATER!
ANY ONE WHOM EVER STUDIED EARTH SCIENCES -GEOLOGY-MINERALOLOGY-GEMOLOGY-ETC,KNOW THAT EARTH HAS MANY LARGE (DOORWAY) RECTANGULAR-LARGE-FLAT STONES,LAYING AROUND EARTH.
ALL THIS HUM-DRUM FANTASY ABOUT STONES 'WITH WRITING' ON THEM,MEANS YOU KNOW...ZIP, ABOUT AN 'EARTH'... GEMSTONE CALLED 'CHINESE WRITING'STONE,FOUND NEAR PAYSON ARIZONA.IT'S NATURAL!
FOLKS WHO HUNT ROCKS FOR A HOBBY KNOW OF MANY STONES THAT ARE NATURAL FORMED,BUT DEMONSTRATE UNBELIEVIABLE CHARACTERISTICS,SO WHEN STONES LIKE THESE ARE SEEN ON MARS,EVERYONE FREAKS-OUT AND PROCLAIMES 'LIFE-CIIVILIASION' WITHOUT EVER-EVER HAD-HAVE GONE 'ROCK HUNTING ON EARTH.'
DO YOUR HOMEWORK,OR VISIT MY SITE,IF YOU WANT TO SEE (ALLEGORICAL) MARS CHARACTERS,WHO(ARE SILICA BASED)AND LIVE ON "MARZ',AND ARE READY TO BE ANIMATED / PITCHED TO BIG HOLLYWOOD PRODUCERS.
CHEERZ FROM DAWK

[Useless Eater]

With such high resolution pics like this one showing up from Mars, why can't they get a good shot of the face and Cydonia region? All of the pics I have seen from that area are "conveniently" blurred to a degree.

[Ruth]

:O

[b°b]

@Useless Eater: you should really pay more attention, the 'face' has been pictured several times in the last years, revealing nothing but a hill: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_003234_2210

Ontopic: It would be nice to have a link to the original pictures from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, though.

[munky]

Way to get to Mars?
There's oil there!
And Muslims!
Go git some...

[Lihai]

I'm just trying to figure out if this is an innie or an outie.

[Bababooey]

Fuck the Muslims!!!

[bigsleep]

The straight line/sunken area to the left of the 200 meter long formation is also anomalous and curious.

I say 12 foot tall, four-armed Green Martians once had a temple in this structure, and that this doorway was the entrance.

But, when the planet cooled, because its core was too small to remain 'fluid' and keep that world volcanically active, the chilling of the Red Planet resulted in the atmosphere becoming too thin for higher life forms, and the Martians eventually died out.

Explorers will probably find the remains of their religion's artifacts within this small 'mountain'.

And the initials ERB carved on one wall.

Meanwhile, terraforming is a must.

Probes packed with fungal spores and cold-loving bacteria should be continuously 'seeded' onto Mars in order to begin the process of re-habitability.

We mustn't put all our genotype in one basket (world).

The 5 Great Extinctions Earth has already gone through are lesson enough for anyone with a functioning cortex.

(P.S. Watch for the meteor approaching Mars next month.)

[Bob]

Well aren't there a lot of skeptics out there. We just never know what might come and bite us, so we have to squelch any possible thing that may in time prove other beings may live differently than us on other worlds. We don;t want our little minds crushed, from the possiblity of us not being the only great omnipotent beings alive. That would crush our ego's. Maybe, jsut maybe, Martians, are beings living inside their planet, and not on the outside, and that is a door way to the outside, that they once used, to get inside. Wow, what a concept, maybe they could be smart to. They might have prepared ahead of time for such a disaster, not like their stupid human conterparts on earth, that just wait for an asteroid to hit, or natural disasters, and blame God for them, and believe they are victims, when they should be ready for any disaster to strike at any time, hell maybe instead us humans will just have a nuclear war, and blow all our dumb asses up, since they can;t get along with each other. I remember when I was young, and my mother made me and my brothers get along and play together nicely, or we would get oru butts spanked, maybe tha tis what we need. We also may need to do our homework, and research, and then we would find that releigions and science and governments have been lying to us all along, and that our civilizations is but one of many that have lived upon this earth for tens of thousands, and maybe longer, and that each one was destroyed, some by their own doing, and that we have just now been finding out, that we were brain dead for a long time, and coming out of the fog, of our past, and that if you destroy all civilizations on the earth, and only a few people are left to populate it, with very little skills, that when they start over, they make huts, and live in caves, and have to be hunter gatherers to survive, and then become farmers again, and then start to build civilization back, until one day, they blow it all up again, because, they all want to be king, and control everybody else.

[Mike]

Wow Bob, I actually think I got dumber just from reading that.

[Shadow]

Batch: There is lots of water on Mars. Its just hidden from view. Frozen. Quite possibly frozen oceans under several feet of insulating sand. A whole lot more water than once thought.

[André]

Hey, I've a little bit zoomed in the weird almost white thing, on the left. It's looking like a machine. :-o This thing is symetric. :-o

[pawel czesak]

Hello,

Yes in did it sem to be too regular rectangle to be made by nature. As wee know most natur forms are round in shape through water and wind erossion. And even stone collision could probably not create such regular shape and at that position.

Kind regards
Pawel Czesak

[Bosco]

If the doorway is a shadow from the rock at the tip of the arrow, then where did the arrow come from ? Huh Huh ??? AND where did it go ???

Nosreme ... it's good to have a dream eh? Good luck with it.

[euroradiotv]

I drunk so much... or that thing are everything else a door? For me, that thing seems like a shadow.

But... if there's a door, looks like a pub. Should it be possible find a Budweiser??? :-)

[Whitfield]

Have you read any of Z. Sitchen's books? As an archeologist his information comes from clay tablets found in what was ancient Sumer. The tablets mention beings, the Anunnaki based on Mars, coming and going to and from the Earth. Read the books before you make a comment.

[Whitfield]

Have you read any of Z. Sitchen's books? As an archeologist his information comes from clay tablets found in what was ancient Sumer. The tablets mention beings, the Anunnaki based on Mars, coming and going to and from the Earth. Read the books before you make a comment.

[shayn]

If it was a shadow, then NASA wouldn't have to make up an excuse as ludicrous as geometric, selective weather erosion. It probably houses one of those spacecrafts that doesn't exist on other planets and turns into swamp gas and missing persons when it enters our atmosphere.

And of course, governments cover up these things because they're against aliens and fighting them in secret... not because they work together for exchange of technology. Because everyone knows that humanity is the most advanced civilization in the universe, so why would we associate with those intergalactic barbarians? I remember that from my history textbook.

[dr_bernie]

Where do you see a doorway?

[knoxvilledaniel]

The so - called " door " is at the bottom of the " teardrop " structure. The structure looks like a natural mesa like one commonly finds in the U.S. Southwestern states. Mars has had millenia of natural weathering from wind, sand & maybe liquid water. All kinds of formations can crop up after that. The " door " might be a large mineral deposit in the rock.