Debunked: Nuclear cloud on Indian Mars Orbiter image

[neoteric]

When i first saw the article earlier today...I fell for it rather quickly,that is until i did some investigasting..

http://www.express.co.uk/news/natur...b-blast-conspiracy-theory-as-optical-illusion

UFO buffs claim this formation on the surface of Mars could be a nuclear bomb blast on camera.
...
Sub titles on the video say: "India's Mars orbiter captured something strange in the gigantic Valles Marineris Canyon of Mars. The image shows a huge mushroom cloud and we may wonder whether it is an enormous rare dust wind cloud , or caused due to a nuclear or methane explosion."
...
Dr Jonti Horner, astronomer at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, said: "Fun as it would be to imagine that this is evidence of nuclear weapons on Mars, or even the impact of a chunk of Comet Siding Spring smashing into the planet, that’s sadly just not the case.”

He said looking at high-resolution images of the same part of the canyon, showed the "cloud" was nothing more than an optical illusion at the junction of a crater with the trench.

Content from External Source

Now this story is spreading like fire all over the globe....
I've done some investigating, my opinion is that it is not a cloud but just a different colour make up on the image

below is the hi rise image i used

http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_011966_1700

then i also used google earths mars imagery for comparison

So, if anybody ellse can help me out with info,would be greatly appreciated

thx

 

[Pete Tar]

Hoping this is the correct way to do this,since it is my first time posting here..i apologize if done incorrectly

Almost, but you should include the evidence being examined and the claim. I've added them to your post for you, as well as the opinion of an astronomer which provides a plausible explanation.
I think the key point is the circular depression looks like the base of the 'bomb' when combined with the billowy dust effect, but it is shown it's an actual topographical feature in other photos, so it's an optical illusion of sorts. The dust may be real though.

 

[Hevach]

A mushroom cloud from space looks almost flat and barely above the ground, so all you see is a circular feature. Because the mushroom is vertical, you don't see the stalk unless it's very near the terminator, where it may not be visible at all.

This feature is mushroom shaped but sideways parallel to the ground - no explosion of any type can do that. It also follows ground features.

Also, I can't find much professional information about what a nuclear weapon would do on Mars, but it's really important to remember that mushroom clouds are an effect of Earth's thick atmosphere and gravity, both of which are much lower on Mars. High altitude tests (starting around 30 km, where the atmosphere is still thicker than Mars' "sea" level) do not normally form mushroom clouds, but spherical ones, like this one from Hardtack I Teak (altitude ~50 km, the closest test picture I can find to the atmospheric pressure at Mars ground level, which is around ~45 km):

I believe a nuclear explosion on Mars should more closely resemble a high altitude test such as this.



A bunch of other minor points in the video make no sense. A big one is the claim that, "NASA cut off the live feed" just before Sliding Spring's closest approach, however:

1. This video was not live
2. This video was not from NASA but the Indian Space Research Organization
3. The video was not even from Sliding Spring's encounter
4. The video was not cut off
5. For that matter, the video was not captured as a video, but was a series of still images assembled into a video for release to the media

The "cut off the live feed" claim accompanies every. ***. ****. One. Of these claims, and the only time it was even a theoretical possibility was this one in which they actually delayed cutting a live feed to get what they hoped would be a stunning moonrise (but turned out to be more of a blurry gray turd).



Edit: More on mushroom clouds from space.
While trying to find a picture of a nuclear test from space, it occurs to me there's a reason none exist: EMP. Above-ground tests tend to fry satellites within line of sight, so pictures are taken by mechanical film cameras, digital is out of the question as is electronically controlled film cameras like most early spy satellites. To produce a cloud matching the size of the feature in the video would require something much larger than the Tsar Bomba, which took out a large number of satellites. The Indian satellite would not have survived.

However, other things create mushroom clouds, so here's some examples:
This picture, you can see the stalk, but this is a *much* lower altitude picture taken with a *much* higher resolution camera:

You still can see the dimensions of ground features, let alone the plume. Because this was taken so close, it's not at all comparable to the Mars picture.

Here is a higher altitude picture of a volcanic plume:

This was still taken at much lower altitude and higher resolution than the Mars images, but its at least going in the right direction. The farther you get above a planet, the closer all of its features become to two dimensional. By the time you get a substantial part of its face in frame, it's visually indistinguishable from a flat disk except very close to the limb. This picture is close to that point, though still not quite as close as the Mars pictures in the OP.

 

[neoteric]

thx for the help Pete and Hevach

 

[Trailblazer]

It is quite an effective illusion. I wonder what accounts for the distinct impression of a "shadow"? There doesn't seem to be any obvious feature in this area on the other imagery.

 

[Trailblazer]

I've rotated and skewed the two views to match as closely as possible, and lightened the shadows. It's pretty clear that the "cloud" features" are there in the terrain.

[compare]


[/compare]

 

[Mick West]

I's suspect a geological source of the shadow, like darker rock being scattered down a slope. Look at the shape of these fans of darker material here:



The darkness matches the topography, which makes it look a bit like a shadow, but it varies across the image. Maybe something like Egypt's Black Desert, but with the very different erosion characteristics of Mars.


https://www.google.com/maps/@25.3536186,29.4739738,1727m/data=!3m1!1e3

 

[Mick West]

Here's another example on Earth that might be mistaken for a shadow:

 

[deirdre]

It is quite an effective illusion. I wonder what accounts for the distinct impression of a "shadow"? There doesn't seem to be any obvious feature in this area on the other imagery.

heres the full pic from ISRO site. note the other "shadows" in close up pic are different too.



and also from their site Arsia mons (can compare to high satellite pics)

 

[Sagittarius]

It's nothing other than the crater Oudemans, at the western end of the Valles Marineris, near Noctis Labyrinthum, under different lighting.

 

[Pete Tar]

When you realise we're looking at features from a 7 km deep canyon, lit by the sun at a lower angle, it becomes a bit clearer. Still trying to wrap my head around the idea that 'cloud' is purely ground feature and lighting though. Could there be some ice growth as well?

I've rotated and skewed the two views to match as closely as possible, and lightened the shadows. It's pretty clear that the "cloud" features" are there in the terrain.

[compare]


[/compare]

ETA
The trick is to see the clouds as concave rather than convex, then it falls into place.

The area is Noctis Labrynthus and does have ice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis_Labyrinthus

 

[Whitebeard]

Still trying to wrap my head around the idea that 'cloud' is purely ground feature and lighting though.

mars does have some impressive and at times localised dust storms
http://www.universetoday.com/14892/mars-dust-storms/

The dust storms were of great concern when probes were first sent to Mars. Early probes happened to arrive in orbit during large events. The Viking missions of 1976 easily withstood two big dust storms without being damaged. They were not the first missions to survive Martian dust storms. In 1971, Mariner 9 arrived at Mars during the biggest dust storm ever recorded. Mission controllers simply waited a few weeks for the storm to subside, then carried on with the mission. The biggest issue that rovers face during a dust storm is the lack of sunlight. Without the light, the rovers have trouble generating enough power to keep their electronic warm enough to function.

Mars dust storms are of great interest to scientists. Even though several spacecraft have observed the storms first hand, scientists are no closer to a definitive answer. For now, the storms on Mars are going to continue to present challenges to planning a human mission to the planet.

Content from External Source

Could it be one of those blowing past?

 

[Skaredstiff]

A mushroom cloud from space looks almost flat and barely above the ground, so all you see is a circular feature. Because the mushroom is vertical, you don't see the stalk unless it's very near the terminator, where it may not be visible at all.

This feature is mushroom shaped but sideways parallel to the ground - no explosion of any type can do that. It also follows ground features.

Also, I can't find much professional information about what a nuclear weapon would do on Mars, but it's really important to remember that mushroom clouds are an effect of Earth's thick atmosphere and gravity, both of which are much lower on Mars. High altitude tests (starting around 30 km, where the atmosphere is still thicker than Mars' "sea" level) do not normally form mushroom clouds, but spherical ones, like this one from Hardtack I Teak (altitude ~50 km, the closest test picture I can find to the atmospheric pressure at Mars ground level, which is around ~45 km):

I believe a nuclear explosion on Mars should more closely resemble a high altitude test such as this.



A bunch of other minor points in the video make no sense. A big one is the claim that, "NASA cut off the live feed" just before Sliding Spring's closest approach, however:

1. This video was not live
2. This video was not from NASA but the Indian Space Research Organization
3. The video was not even from Sliding Spring's encounter
4. The video was not cut off
5. For that matter, the video was not captured as a video, but was a series of still images assembled into a video for release to the media

The "cut off the live feed" claim accompanies every. ***. ****. One. Of these claims, and the only time it was even a theoretical possibility was this one in which they actually delayed cutting a live feed to get what they hoped would be a stunning moonrise (but turned out to be more of a blurry gray turd).



Edit: More on mushroom clouds from space.
While trying to find a picture of a nuclear test from space, it occurs to me there's a reason none exist: EMP. Above-ground tests tend to fry satellites within line of sight, so pictures are taken by mechanical film cameras, digital is out of the question as is electronically controlled film cameras like most early spy satellites. To produce a cloud matching the size of the feature in the video would require something much larger than the Tsar Bomba, which took out a large number of satellites. The Indian satellite would not have survived.

However, other things create mushroom clouds, so here's some examples:
This picture, you can see the stalk, but this is a *much* lower altitude picture taken with a *much* higher resolution camera:

You still can see the dimensions of ground features, let alone the plume. Because this was taken so close, it's not at all comparable to the Mars picture.

Here is a higher altitude picture of a volcanic plume:

This was still taken at much lower altitude and higher resolution than the Mars images, but its at least going in the right direction. The farther you get above a planet, the closer all of its features become to two dimensional. By the time you get a substantial part of its face in frame, it's visually indistinguishable from a flat disk except very close to the limb. This picture is close to that point, though still not quite as close as the Mars pictures in the OP.

Why is it that NASA, or whom ever photograph is used in these foolish extraterrestrial photo posts, always "cuts off the camera"? This statement is standard operating procedure for UFO freaks like Streeetcap1 who likely stares at the ISS Live Cam feed? It is the same old story every time there is some anomaly he takes a screen grab from the ISS that those in control quickly cut the camera when the ET's are around, yet most of these photos are of reflections from the windows of the ISS ? Yet the world is supposed to believe that there are so many different ET out there and NASA can keep it all a secret??

 

[deirdre]

The area is Noctis Labrynthus and does have ice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis_Labyrinthus

oh that (and @Whitebeard 's pic ) definitely helps to visualize it easier. nice




and i can see the "shadow" idea now.

 

[Graham2001]

Why is it that NASA, or whom ever photograph is used in these foolish extraterrestrial photo posts, always "cuts off the camera"? This statement is standard operating procedure for UFO freaks like Streeetcap1 who likely stares at the ISS Live Cam feed? It is the same old story every time there is some anomaly he takes a screen grab from the ISS that those in control quickly cut the camera when the ET's are around, yet most of these photos are of reflections from the windows of the ISS ? Yet the world is supposed to believe that there are so many different ET out there and NASA can keep it all a secret??

I think (and this is my own opinion.) that many Conspiracy Theorists, being American simply think that the world ends at the continental borders of the United States.

Slightly related to this, here are a couple of quotes from a 1978 'thriller' novel, which involves an Apollo crew disapparing in the Bermuda Triangle.

The panic button was not a button at all, but a bright red knife switch positioned at the top right corner of the communications console. no one remembered who had originally installed the first panic button in those primitive days of the space program when all communications originated from the first missile control center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Although some gave the credit to Shorty Powers, he denied the honour, and there are no written records to prove or disprove the point.

...no one has ever uncovered the fact that as the world watched the U.S space shots, everything that happened on screen or over the radio had occurred seven seconds earlier in realtime...

Sargasso: Edwin Corley, Sphere Books, 1978 (Emphasis mine)

When Jakes pulled the red switch, he set several events into motion. First he disconnected all radio and video feeds from downrange. They could not be reconnected without a complicated rewiring procedure. Second he destroyed both the endless tape loop and the video disc inside the console, wiping out any information that might have been recorded on them before he hit the panic button.

Finally, he had activated monstrous jamming transmitters located on Merritt Island in Florida, which blanketed the microwave frequencies from downrange to prevent any unauthorized receivers from picking them up.

Sargasso: Edwin Corley, Sphere Books, 1978

 

[Hevach]

Something to remember when comparing those images above, they were taken by different probes using different instruments, and most probe pictures are not taken in true color. They're frequently monochrome taken with various filters and colorized to look good when they're released to the public, or a composite of multiple monochrome pictures taken with different color filters, or otherwise enhanced to compensate for the nature of the cameras used. The result is that the same feature taken by different probes can look entirely different. So the actual color difference may not be anywhere near as striking as it appears.

 

[David Coulter]

I's suspect a geological source of the shadow, like darker rock being scattered down a slope. Look at the shape of these fans of darker material here:

I agree with this assessment as a geologist that looks at a lot of satellite and airborne imagery. Normally, if you rotate an image, at some orientation visualization of topography will resolve itself correctly. I have spun the high res version of this image in Photoshop and I see the valleys as ridges at every angle. That tells me that some of the "shadows" are actually dark rocks/soil/dust that are confounding the normal topographic shading analytics in the human brain. Effectively the image is sending both correct solar shading clues and confused shading clues (due to dark material) simultaneously. Actually a cool image for the archive as an example of topographic inversion.

 

[Trigger Hippie]

So clearly the mushroom cloud is a trick of perspective, lighting and image resolution.

But isn't that a face on mars?

 

[deirdre]

But isn't that a face on mars?

he looks familiar.. is it santa?

 

[txt29]

Depending on the incoming light, often it is difficult to see craters as depressions. When the light comes from an unexpected direction, I often have to star on the photo a longer while to suppress the wrong illusion that the crater is a hill. Turning the photo 180° usually helps instantly. Also in this case, when the photo is turned 180°, the mushroom cloud disappears immediately, and I see the depressions instead. It will be likely the case for many people too, though if you want to see the cloud there, you will do so anyway.

 

[b4timeiam]

A mushroom cloud from space looks almost flat and barely above the ground, so all you see is a circular feature. Because the mushroom is vertical, you don't see the stalk unless it's very near the terminator, where it may not be visible at all.

This feature is mushroom shaped but sideways parallel to the ground - no explosion of any type can do that. It also follows ground features.

Also, I can't find much professional information about what a nuclear weapon would do on Mars, but it's really important to remember that mushroom clouds are an effect of Earth's thick atmosphere and gravity, both of which are much lower on Mars. High altitude tests (starting around 30 km, where the atmosphere is still thicker than Mars' "sea" level) do not normally form mushroom clouds, but spherical ones, like this one from Hardtack I Teak (altitude ~50 km, the closest test picture I can find to the atmospheric pressure at Mars ground level, which is around ~45 km):

I believe a nuclear explosion on Mars should more closely resemble a high altitude test such as this.



A bunch of other minor points in the video make no sense. A big one is the claim that, "NASA cut off the live feed" just before Sliding Spring's closest approach, however:

1. This video was not live
2. This video was not from NASA but the Indian Space Research Organization
3. The video was not even from Sliding Spring's encounter
4. The video was not cut off
5. For that matter, the video was not captured as a video, but was a series of still images assembled into a video for release to the media

The "cut off the live feed" claim accompanies every. ***. ****. One. Of these claims, and the only time it was even a theoretical possibility was this one in which they actually delayed cutting a live feed to get what they hoped would be a stunning moonrise (but turned out to be more of a blurry gray turd).



Edit: More on mushroom clouds from space.
While trying to find a picture of a nuclear test from space, it occurs to me there's a reason none exist: EMP. Above-ground tests tend to fry satellites within line of sight, so pictures are taken by mechanical film cameras, digital is out of the question as is electronically controlled film cameras like most early spy satellites. To produce a cloud matching the size of the feature in the video would require something much larger than the Tsar Bomba, which took out a large number of satellites. The Indian satellite would not have survived.

However, other things create mushroom clouds, so here's some examples:
This picture, you can see the stalk, but this is a *much* lower altitude picture taken with a *much* higher resolution camera:

You still can see the dimensions of ground features, let alone the plume. Because this was taken so close, it's not at all comparable to the Mars picture.

Here is a higher altitude picture of a volcanic plume:

This was still taken at much lower altitude and higher resolution than the Mars images, but its at least going in the right direction. The farther you get above a planet, the closer all of its features become to two dimensional. By the time you get a substantial part of its face in frame, it's visually indistinguishable from a flat disk except very close to the limb. This picture is close to that point, though still not quite as close as the Mars pictures in the OP.

This is my first time here. I want to thank you. Your post is very informative and gave me new insight as to how I let my mind perceive images as well as how, why and what people write about

 

[The Beat]

Just to be sure, no "explosion" on another planet, or moon, or whatever physical object, will ever be "photographed" from space. It takes seconds to occur and is lost forever afterwards. Hopefully, this was fully taken into account. Any picture of an explosion occurring elsewhere is completely and totally ridiculous, which should be obvious to all.

 

[Pete Tar]

Eruptions, however...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/16/mars-erupting-plumes/23497289/
http://geology.com/articles/active-volcanoes-solar-system.shtml

 

[Whitebeard]

Just to be sure, no "explosion" on another planet, or moon, or whatever physical object, will ever be "photographed" from space. It takes seconds to occur and is lost forever afterwards. Hopefully, this was fully taken into account. Any picture of an explosion occurring elsewhere is completely and totally ridiculous, which should be obvious to all.

Agreed, but in the world of the conspiracy theorist, a world of NWO grand schemes, alien lizard people, NASA cover-ups, secret space bases etc photographs of 'alien nuclear tests' turn up all the time.

 

[The Beat]

Eruptions, however...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/16/mars-erupting-plumes/23497289/
http://geology.com/articles/active-volcanoes-solar-system.shtml

These are well known phenomena. Volcanic eruptions and surfaced emitting plumes of smoke have been seen for decades. And they've been filmed. Nuclear explosions do no happen. This is the first line from this thread:

"When i first saw the article earlier today...I fell for it rather quickly,that is until i did some investigasting.."

For me, I knew it was a joke from the very beginning and I, quite frankly, find it hard that anyone could be fooled for a second, but that's just my opinion.

 

[Pete Tar]

I think the fooling comes via the optical illusion of an explosion and the juxtapostion with the headline - optical illusions happen regardless of intellectual training. So 'explosion on mars!' next to an optical illusion of an explosion - for at least a few seconds most people will go, 'wow that looks like an explosion, how weird an explosion on Mars', until they look into the actual circumstances.

 

[Hevach]

Just to be sure, no "explosion" on another planet, or moon, or whatever physical object, will ever be "photographed" from space. It takes seconds to occur and is lost forever afterwards. Hopefully, this was fully taken into account. Any picture of an explosion occurring elsewhere is completely and totally ridiculous, which should be obvious to all.

We have seen explosions on other planets (sort of, the Shoemaker Levy 9 impacts were just around the Edit: limb (I keep mixing up limb and terminator lately, even when they're not almost the same thing as in this case), so we're seeing secondary effects here), and with multiple eyes on Mars right now there's a tiny but real chance we might get to see one there - we've had near misses - several few fresh new craters have been identified during the current uninterrupted span of missions, but the moment of impact wasn't observed for any of them.

Impacts are a lot different than nuclear bombs, but it's not like that mistaken hasn't been made before.
http://sputniknews.com/russia/20130215/179489080.html
http://rt.com/news/meteorite-crash-urals-chelyabinsk-283/

 

[The Beat]

We have seen explosions on other planets (sort of, the Shoemaker Levy 9 impacts were just around the Edit: limb (I keep mixing up limb and terminator lately, even when they're not almost the same thing as in this case), so we're seeing secondary effects here), and with multiple eyes on Mars right now there's a tiny but real chance we might get to see one there - we've had near misses - several few fresh new craters have been identified during the current uninterrupted span of missions, but the moment of impact wasn't observed for any of them.

Impacts are a lot different than nuclear bombs, but it's not like that mistaken hasn't been made before.
http://sputniknews.com/russia/20130215/179489080.html
http://rt.com/news/meteorite-crash-urals-chelyabinsk-283/

We've seen impacts, but no nuclear explosions. That would more than likely require extranatural efforts.

 

[Mick West]

Any picture of an explosion occurring elsewhere is completely and totally ridiculous, which should be obvious to all.

What should or should not be obvious is irrelevant here. Everyone gets things wrong from time to time, and many people have no problem in giving credence to implausible claims. These things are know. Metabunk is not a forum for marveling at the gullibility of humankind, or for criticizing or poking fun at them. It's forum for politely doing something about it.

I'd appreciate it if you would read the politeness policy, should you wish to participate.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/politeness-policy.1224/

 

[huwp]

There is another argument why the image can't show the aftermath of a nuclear explosion based on pure scale.

Oudemans crater is roughly 90km wide, and is believed to have been created by a 4.5km meteorite:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oudemans_(crater)
A 4.5km meteorite impact sufficient to create a 90km wide crater would unleash something in the order of 42,700,000 MegaTons TNT equivalent
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/cgi-bin/...t=0&vel=50&theta=45&tdens=2500&tdens_select=0

(There are a whole bunch of assumptions and approximations in this, but this is all just to get a handle on the rough neighbourhood we are talking about here.)

For comparison, the largest nuclear weapon ever tested on earth, the Tzar Bomba, was 50 megatons TNT equivalent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
...so creating a crater 90km wide would require a nuclear bomb nearly a million times more powerful than the most powerful ever tested on earth - somehow that bomb would have to be transported to Mars, without any testing of intermediate designs, before being detonated.

The Tsar Bomba weighed 27 metric tons. I don't have any clue how a bomb a million times more powerful would be designed (and, nor does anyone else, even in the wildest extremes of theoretical design), but let's make our new bomb out of a million Tsar Bombas. Lifting one single Tsar Bomba into orbit would exceed the lift capacity of the largest heavy lift vehicles, before including any means for actually transporting that bomb to Mars:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-lift_launch_vehicle

So our million-times more powerful bomb made out of a million Tsar Bombas would require more than a million launches of the largest launch vehicles in existence, or more than 50 launches every single day for 55 years starting immediately after the actual test of the Tsar Bomba, plus all the launches for a transport vehicle, launches for assembly staff to assemble a million separate payloads into a single bomb etc etc. I think this might have been noticed...

For further comparison, the Castle Bravo test at Bikini Atoll - the most powerful weapon ever tested by the US, with a yield of 15 megatons TNT, created a crater roughly 2km across that can be seen today on Google Earth at:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/11°41'50.0"N+165°16'19.0"E/@11.697222,165.271944,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0?hl=en