The first decade of the third millennium should have be remembered for two important dates in the human history: the 11th September 2001 for the beginning of a conflict based on the religious fundamentalism and the 4th February 2004, not because it is my birthday, but  because it is the day in which the NASA received pieces of evidences of an extraterrestrial life. Unfortunately it seems that the first date excluded the second one.

In my previous reports I have shown Mars as a planet very different from the description given by many scientists; we have seen as the famous spherules of Meridiani Planum cannot be inorganic “concretions” or fossils, but organic forms (mushrooms, algae, poriphera or lichens as well); we have seen a great amount of water in surface (that should not have been there in a liquid state); now we see the life appear , not  an untouchable and quite theoretical life of bacterium and micro-organisms, but a chaotic and developed life, of impressive liveliness and frequency.

Since I do not want to believe that, due to a possible idea belonging to the current American government, they have willingly given to the   media a catastrophic amount of rubbish, I shall, presumptuously, consider the "scientists" of the NASA as poor big babies and be self confident in looking for the truth through the simple analysis of the facts.

To this purpose I remember that the days of the mission of Opportunity to Mars follow conventionally the Martian dating, therefore the code  Sol106 is equivalent to the 106th day from the landing of the probe.

SOL105-106

On the rock called "LION STONE" near the crater Endurance, the rover points out by the Microscopic Imager a possible fossil of mollusc (this definition is now certainly pure convention), that appears in the picture on the left in its front side and in the picture on the right  in its back side:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The animal, of few millimetres in length, seems to have a developed  fore cephalic print with several tentacles, coated of a very thin frame and two longer tentacles dotted by buds or suckers with a notable thickness at the ends, perhaps of bony or cartilage origin.

 

 

But it is in a picture taken on the other side of LION STONE that we find another piece of the mosaic:

From the hollow side of the rock a cephalic flat structure with an indefinite anthropomorphic seeming is on the left and something like the tentacle thickness we saw in the picture, as above, is on the right, of which a strange characteristics appears: it seems quite to get a mouth opening and two orbital hollows on the sides.

But is it possible? Is it ,may be, one of the usual optical effects that the variability of the nature provoke in the inexperienced people?

To have the first answer we have to go back to one month ago.

SOL69

Near the crater Eagle the rover takes some pictures of the rock called BOUNCE, probably originated by impact, as LION STONE. The pictures show parts  of one animal form in advanced state of decomposition , but that is not so unknown to us…:

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Many had explained this phenomenon by an odd shape of the rock, but in the picture there were some inexplicable details. For example, the two semi-transparent "visors" in the shape of a truncated cone taken in the side parts, that sort of variegated ring shaped tentacle that surrounds the profile and is visible in both the pictures, but above all the filaments, very clear in this detail, of possible organic origin:

 

 

To point out better this curious "formation", I have taken out the picture apart from the background in the following pictures:

 

 

 

 

In the following picture I have placed the pictures of SOL 105 next those of SOL 69, rotating them in the same position:

 

 

As convention I will define the frame part on the left as A and that on the right as B.

In SOL106 and SOL 25 there are the pictures of B, both in the form of frame and complete of epithelium, with the others, of origin organic as well.

 

 

Once ascertained that we are facing several forms of life with some indefinite points of contact with the decapods and the earth anellids, let’s see now as these animals are when they are alive. But to do it we have amazingly to do another step back to one month ago.

SOL27

On the right hand of the rock formation called EL CAPITAN, a sort of laminated plate bent by two little stones appeared from the panoramic pictures nearby. The rover takes photos of the site and this will be the only close picture spread.

 

In the middle of the picture we can see very clearly an animal with a thin frame laid down on the bigger stone of the two small ones. Several tentacles finely pearly and long may be clearly seen. The side picture in false colours shows as the spherules under the coat look light violet and not blue, however the whole is perfectly highlighted in the three-dimensional picture, for those who are so lucky to wear colour lens 3D glasses.

At this stage we are able to look for further confirmations, taking always in mind that this is only one of many lives forms showing in the pictures, and variety of species may be present as well.

But for the confirmations, we have, thanks to the NASA good joker people, go back a little.

SOL25

 In the course of SOL22, to the purpose of  checking the soil near the lander the rover is told to perform the rotations of the wheels after stopping, in order to drill in the mud at a depth of few centimetres. The picture of the drill obtained can be found in the previous report  "Salt or life?".

Three days later, getting the Microscopic Imager down into the dig we obtain the following picture:

 

For the puzzle-solving lovers I can say that, after finding in the picture more than 25 animals as above described, I am very tired. May be we can award a prize for those who have so much patience to enlarge the picture and find all of them.

It will be enough for me to point out just one, although taking into consideration that many of them are thin and that the rover wheels have  crushed them one upon another, for this the borders are purely approximate.

I remember that previously I have already highlighted part of this picture concerning the typologies B.

The picture with the form of mollusc has been lightened for a better stress

By a short feedback and to clarify better the morphological aspects of one of these animals, I go back for a while to SOL106 to show a picture of one "mollusc" sectioned by the RAT (Rock Abrasion Tool):

 

 

  

In the middle of the picture we can note the section disc on the cephalic zone next to the tentacles, with a sort of medullar canal.

At this point some readers may ask why the NASA did not give any news of all this, but before that paranoid disquisitions about possible government plots may be raised, I would like to give a simpler explication: the big babies of the NASA cut the sections using the RAT at random.

But let’s try to solve a problem. If the "molluscs" are  not only fossils and they are a lot, distributed throughout the plain of Meridiani at few millimetres under the surface of the sea of mud, assuming that the soft parts decompose, where will go the skeletal pieces which we have seen?

The answer is very simple and the scientists of NASA have had it in front of them since the famous 4th of February 2004, that I mentioned at the beginning of this report.

SOL10-11

The microscope of the rover is lowered on a portion of soil where, besides the same spherules, other deposits of undefined origin alternate. The day after, the operation is repeated after a small "brush" of the RAT.

In the big picture in the middle we can see one typology A and one B, both of a living animal (at least before the action of the RAT), by 1,2,3 we have identified the presence of three skeletal pieces of type B, that seems that these creatures use in a way comparable to the periscopes and snorkel on the submarines. To this purpose I remember that the explication of our friends of the NASA was that they were probably  lapillus of volcanic origin for the presence of holes. What a pity that in one square centimetre there are three of them perfectly alike in shape and dimensions!

The white arrow on the right shows the mark of the RAT and the one on the left shows the print of one of the same molluscs. The other visible formations are skeletal parts as well, but I have not considered because little identifiable or because they belong to other species of animals of which I will tell another time.

The little half-moon on the right side of the picture shows two mini-spherules of a diameter smaller than one millimetre and with a central hole.  Perhaps it is something similar to the eggs found outside and inside the crater and that I have described in "Hot….ice".

Thanks to this reference table it will be much easy for the Mars lovers to discover the same "formations" in all the other pictures of the Microscope Imager, including those that were identified with imaginative names as Punaluu, Neopolitan CookiesNCream or Mudpie in the NASA report of 26/3/2004 (There you are! The big babies, they still did not understand, did they?).

It will be more difficult (at least for those people who are not divers) to find in the pictures the shapes of the "molluscs". However, as outline, I may advise to enlarge the pictures by video and look for those that seem little chains of light points (and that lots of people believed they were just micro organisms ): actually they often are tracks of tentacles or of the coat edges belonging to these creatures, this can be easily verified by a good practise.

Warning! It is required to be provided with a software allowing easy enlargement and with a pair of coloured 3D lens glasses (red/blue or red/green), to be used even checking the white and black pictures not three dimensional.

Generally I remember that the molluscs have been on the Earth since the Precambrian and they have shared ancestors with the Anellids. Therefore it follows that they were able to form a group benthonic based on mesopsammon or endopsammon, inside a muddy substratum  containing all characteristics of the sea bed exposed to the tide, suitable for the preservation from the ultraviolet rays. We will explain better this phenomenon next time.

By now we can remind that, at least on a terrestrial basis of parameters, the animals living in these environments have typical morphological features: ordinary long and flat body, poorly pigmented, small eyes, adhesive taste buds and glands secreting liquids that solidify in the water. Indeed, in the case of endopsammic fauna usually are in contact with the surface by tracts or canals, in particular this one that fits well to the Martian forms of life, that, as we see, they seem to have a body like the invertebrates with skeletal pieces in the surface.

Concerning the remote likeness that I mentioned for the terrestrial cuttlefish, this is easily traceable by the following table, although the differences are a lot as well, since we have to do with transitional formations with characteristics belonging to the Molluscs, Anellids and  Arthropods at the same time, and this will be surely fascinating competition for all the biologists in the world.

 

At the end of this “historical report” I can only apologise with the NASA scientists for my irreverent approach, because, as we have seen for the Iraqi tortures, it is always unpleasant to be caught red handed.

 

ALESSIO FELTRI