WHY IS NASA HIDING SEISMIC ACTIVITY ON MARS?

The activity shown on Figure 1 was captured by the European Space Agency (ESA) with its Mars Webcam. While the ESA raw data shows it from September 19 to 25 and starting again on October 10 to at least October 22, 2018, NASA says it doesn't see it (or they have made the decision to paint over images that show it) and yet very similar clouds or plumes coming from the same place on Arsia Mons were also seen in 2009 and 2012. See Figure 2 to compare the eruptions over nine years at the point location on the mountain. It was our Italian partners, Marco de Marco and Mateo Fagone, who first brought our attention to the new events at Arsia Mons. You will find our translation of Marco's article here first and then our comments on them.

MARCO DE MARCO WROTE:

Arsia Mons: the eruption of discord

For the umpteenth time the Mars WebCam, the filming device mounted on board the European Mars Express probe, has provided us with a sequence of images that show a transient phenomenon clearly visible on the Martian surface. Unlike other past events, it was relatively easy to identify the source of the phenomenon in question, which was found to coincide with the volcano Arsia Mons. The phenomenon was observable in all the photos obtained between September 19 and 25, 2018, but it was completely absent in a previous photo taken on September 16, 2018. Further images appeared again on October 10 and October 16, 2018. For all these we observe the characteristic plume of unidentified nature that escapes from the west side of Arsia Mons, at a distance of about 120 km from the center of the main caldera. Another clearly visible feature consists of the intrinsic extension of the aforementioned plume, which protrudes to the west probably following the prevailing direction of the winds (the direction was identical in 2009 and 2018). In the photo of September 24, the plume seems to reach an extension of over 2000 km, clearly showing its shadow cast in the ground below; moreover it appears relatively thin (compared to its overall length) with a maximum width of about 140 km. In all four shots taken between September 19th and 25th, and again on October 10 and 16 the plume clearly shows the same point of origin and formation, which should reasonably lead us to exclude the possibility that it may be a simple atmospheric passage formation.

At this point, the question is more than legitimate: "What could have produced this kind of phenomenon?"

Well, first of all it would be appropriate to accept that the correlation between Arsia Mons and the plume is real and not the result of a trivial coincidence due to something like a scratch on the lens. The event must be related to the volcano itself. Otherwise, those with a traditional NASA mindset could simply liquidate it all as "accidentally occurring atmospheric event near the Arsia Mons caldera". A little bit like saying "if I punch you in the face and you find yourself with a black eye it could just be a trivial coincidence that you have the black eye, because maybe you had a bad irritation going on ..."

It is essential to treat this finding without taking into account the preconceptions often espoused by some "bullies of the web" who may have prestigious degrees and professional participation. Over the past week some of these self-styled "experts" have delighted us with marvelous "sorghum beads", thundering like the wrath of the gods of Olympus, in the pathetic attempt to squelch the volcanic hypothesis, proposing in return their dogmatic explanation. They were quite emotional in their insistance that the hypothesis of a possible volcanic emission in Arsia Mons "had" to be rejected. Among the best explanations provided during the lively debate was that relating to the orographic cloud. Let us immediately point out that all four main volcanoes of the Tharsis region are regularly affected by the formation of thick orographic clouds, but it seems that this fact was sufficient for the aforementioned "experts" to close the matter without offering any ideas for further study.

What is an orographic cloud?

"When a damp and generally cold wind goes up a mountain range cools and the humidity of the air condenses: it therefore produces general conditions of cloudy weather, (on Earth often with rain and/or snow in the windward slope). This" rising wind "takes its name of Stau, in German "stagnatio." Beyond the mountain range, that is in the lee side we generally find a dry wind, with warm air descending. Said favonio or Föhn that works against condensation by adiabatic compression of the air, increases its temperature according to the dry adiabatic gradient greater than pseudo-adiabatic thermal gradient of ascent. This leads to the dissolving of the clouds and to scarce or nil rains on Earth. That is to say we find general conditions of mild weather, stable and an extremely limpid sky. The phenomenon is all the more evident where the rising air current is more humid and the mountain range is higher. The cloud face that forms along the ridge, i.e. in the transition zone, is called the Föhn wall. It is often made up of stratified lenticular clouds. "

If the plume originated from the west of Arsia Mons and the wind blew from east to west we would get that the east slope would find itself windward while the west side would be downwind (in the lee). Consequently, any kind of orographic cloud formation would have to be formed on the east side and not on the west side of Arsia Mons, which being leeward would be subject to the adiabatic air compression. Therefore it should have been completely clear of clouds. But it is the western side of Arsia Mons where we find these clouds, so they can't be orographic in origin. See  Figure 3 for a general view of orographic clouds on Mars and for a picture of some on Earth. Compare the Orographic clouds on Mars below with the plumes seen above at Arsia Mons on Figure 2.

MARCO expressed his dissatisfaction with photos available from the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Probe as follows:

ARSIA MONS PROVIDES TWO MORE REASONS TO DOUBT NASA'S CLAIM OF EXTREMELY LOW AIR PRESSURE ON MARS:

1. Dust Devils at the Top. Dust devils are also seen in abundance on Arsia Mons.  But the base altitude of some dust devils there has been about 17,000 meters. Such an altitude on Mars supposedly would have about 1.2 mbar pressure.  Reis et al. (2009) state that 28 active dust devils were reported in their study region for Arsia Mons, with 11 of them at altitudes greater than 16 km, and most inside the caldera (see Figure 5A).  They don't fully understand how particles that are a few microns in size can be lifted there, and state that 1 mbar “requires wind speeds 2-3 times higher than at the Mars mean elevation for particle entanglement.”

       Reis et al. (2009) suggest a greenhouse-thermophoretic (GT) effect that they believe explains ~1 mbar dust lifting at Arsia Mons. Their article states that “Laboratory and microgravity experiments show that the light flux needed for lift to occur is in the same range as that of solar insolation available on Mars.” They concede that high altitude dust devils do not follow the season of maximum insolation, but indicate that the GT-effect would be strongest around pressures of 1 mbar. However, if anything we would expect such dust lifted at high altitude to just drift away.  The GT effect does not explain the structure of these events at high altitude, or why the dust rotates in columns that match dust devils produced at lower altitudes.  Further, Figure 5A shows that dust devils form at successively lower levels (i.e., higher pressures) as altitudes decline from 17 km to about 7 km, so there is nothing unique about reaching the theorized ~1 mbar-level at the top of Arsia Mons. 

2. Sprial Clouds over the Mountain With What Looks Like an Eye Wall 10 km Wide.

       Dust devils are not the only feature spiraling up from Arsia Mons.  As seen on Figure 5B, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory states that:

Just before southern winter begins (NOTE: This is in error, JPL should have indicated just before southern spring begins), sunlight warms the air on the slopes of the volcano. This air rises, bringing small amounts of dust with it. Eventually, the rising air converges over the volcano's caldera, the large, circular depression at its summit. The fine sediment blown up from the volcano's slopes coalesces into a spiraling cloud of dust that is thick enough to actually observe from orbit. The spiral dust cloud over Arsia Mons repeats each year, but observations and computer calculations indicate it can only form during a short period of time each year. Similar spiral clouds have not been seen over the other large Tharsis volcanoes, but other types of clouds have been seen... The spiral dust cloud over Arsia Mons can tower 15 to 30 kilometers (9 to 19 miles) above the volcano.

       While we were producing an updated version of my Basic Report, we checked our link to Figure 5B and found that JPL had added an image of a similar storm on Olympus Mons at an altitude of over 21 km above areoid.

       Arsia Mons is at 9° South. With respect to the season, southern spring begins at Ls 180. It extends to Ls 270.  Ls 90 to 179.9 is southern winter. Figure 5B shows these storms between Ls 150.4 and 180. They are therefore between the late winter and the first day of spring, but the storm over Olympus Mons in the northern hemisphere at Ls 152.6 is in late summer. Figure 5B shows structures analogous to the eye walls of small hurricanes associated with the spiral clouds. They are about 10 km across and appear quite vigorous on Arsia Mons and about 7 km across at Olympus Mons. These pictures were taken just before when planetary pressures should be near minimums. At such high altitude, there shouldn’t be enough pressure differentials to drive such storms if NASA is right, but they are plainly wrong.

       So, what we see at Arsia Mons are:

       (1) Repetitive plumes in 2009, 2012 and 2018 on the southwest flank that look like the products of a volcano even though we are asked to believe that Arsia Mons is an extinct volcano,

       (2) Dust devils forming at altitudes so high that according to NASA we should find air pressure near 1 mbar, a thousandth of air pressure on Earth, and

       (3) Organized spiral storms that rise to 30 km above the volcano.

       How can any of this be explained high up on and over an extinct volcano in an area that has nearly no air pressure? The answer is simple. NASA is feeding us disinformation. Arsia Mons is not extinct and the air pressure is about two orders of magnitude higher than NASA claims. Belief in that  fraudulent claim led to the crash of the ExoMars 2016 ESA Schiaparelli spacecraft which detected so much extra, unpredicted air pressure on its landing attempt that it turned off its retrorockets and fell 3.7 km to its death. It's why ESA had to raise the orbit of the ExoMars 2016 orbiter (they blamed this directly on excessive air pressure on Mars).

Why is NASA almost certainly lying to us about Mars?  I speculate ArkCode.com about who's behind the disinformation and why it's been going on for a long time, but my beliefs are beyond the scope of this site. So for now let me just state that it's clear that Mars is quite different from what our Government wants us to believe. The air pressure is likely almost a hundred times higher than they let us know about. Recently we have been told by NASA that there are areas where there is likely running water (at recurring slope lineae). Is there life on Mars now? Almost certainly. Is there intelligent life on Mars now? Possibly - but we don't have the critical evidence to prove it yet. With all the weird stuff going on at Arsia Mons if anyone (human or alien) wants to terraform the planet, getting Mars to belch out copious amounts of gas and/or water at volcanoes would be a good place to start, but we don't have any evidence to conclude that this is the cause of all the weather anomalies that we see there - although the overlap of plumes, dust devils and large spiral storms at Arsia Mons suggests that it is a top candidate. There are, of course, apparent caves seen on Arsia Mons (and Pavonis Mons) that could shield a colony from radiation and meteorite strikes. The ESA should be encouraged to explore Arsia Mons in much greater detail. Where we pointed out darkened surface materials on Figure 1 we need a spectral/chemical analysis to help settle the volcanic eruption issue.