In March 2012 a vast plume was observed
in the high upper atmosphere of Mars. A scientific paper on the
phenomenon was just published in the leading scientific journal
Nature. The Washington Post has an article on the plume entitled
“The massive plume on the surface of Mars no one can explain.”
The plume had a diameter of 600 miles,
and reached a height of 120 miles. It persisted for about 10 days.
Below is a photo from the Nature paper. The chart shows the height, in hundreds of kilometers.
There are three natural possibilities
scientists have considered to explain the amazing phenomenon, but
none of them are satisfactory. The possibilities are listed below:
An “ice cloud.” In the
Nature paper, scientists calculated whether the plume can be
explained as an ice cloud. They concluded that the temperature in the
Martian atmosphere would need to be more than 100 degrees colder than
expected for such a cloud to have formed. Also, ice crystals have
never been observed to rise more than 60 miles in the Martian
atmosphere, only half the height of the mysterious plume.
A dust cloud. Summarizing the
findings of the Nature paper, Time magazine says “the reflectivity
was all wrong” for a dust cloud explanation. Furthermore, in order
for such a huge plume to have arisen, there would have had to have
been a huge dust storm on the surface of Mars in March 2012, and no
such storm was observed. Previously observed dust clouds never rose
higher than 37 miles – less than a third of the height of the
gigantic Martian plume.
An aurora. An aurora is a cloud
of charged particles from the sun, one that interacts near a planet
because of the planet's magnetic field. But the magnetic field of
Mars is much less than Earth's, meaning auroras are smaller and less
frequent. To explain the dramatic plume as an aurora, there would
need to have been some huge surge in the solar wind that produces the
particles in an aurora. Such surges sometimes occur, but as the
Nature paper points out, no such surge in solar activity occurred in March
of 2012. The Nature paper also says an aurora model “falls short of
the reported plume brightness by orders of magnitude.” The phrase
“orders of magnitude” means a factor of at least 100. In short,
the Mars plume seems to have been way too bright to have been an
aurora.
In short, scientists have no suitable
explanation for the mysterious Mars plume. We can therefore call the
plume “preternatural,” which is a neutral term meaning
“resembling something paranormal or supernatural.” We may
therefore allow ourselves to consider some unusual possible
explanations entirely different from the ones previously listed. I do
not claim that any of these is likely to be true, but they are at
least interesting to consider.
Possibility 1: Evidence of
aliens tinkering around Mars. Whenever you raise the possibility
of intelligent extraterrestrial activity on Mars, skeptics say
something along the lines of: “Don't be ridiculous –conditions on
Mars are too harsh for intelligent life to have evolved there.”
But this argument is not convincing. Extraterrestrials may have come
to Mars from some other solar system. It could be that the Mars plume
is somehow the result of activity by visitors from some other solar
system. Perhaps they were building some underground base, and raised
a huge cloud of dust during construction. Or perhaps they are testing
out some huge cloud to be used in a gaseous attack on our planet –
similar to the gas attacks imagined by H.G. Wells in The War of
the Worlds.
Possibility 2: Vaporous
life-forms hanging around Mars. Whenever we think of
extraterrestrial life, we tend to think of either beings that are
flesh-and-blood like us, or beings that are robotic. But some
extraterrestrials might be neither of these. They might be cloud-like
entities that drift around like the gas clouds that drift through
deep space. To read more about such a possibility, read my previous
blog post Mind Mist: The Possibility of Gaseous Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It could be that
the strange plume on Mars was either a single huge gaseous
intelligence or perhaps a kind of gaseous intelligence that is a
“group mind” made of a swarm of smaller entities.
Possibility
3: A
sign from some mysterious superhuman intelligence, extraterrestrial,
spiritual, or “other dimensional.”
There is substantial evidence to suggest that some non-human
intelligence may be signaling its existence to mankind, through
manifestations that include a series of strange phenomena. Such
phenomena may include crop circles, strange objects on the surface of Mars, UFO's and orbs. (See this site
for some very dramatic newly released orb photographs that are
extremely difficult to explain away.) Perhaps the gigantic Mars plume
is just another sign of this type – a manifestation left by some
unknown superhuman intelligence that is trying to attract our
attention through various "signs and wonders."
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