Explanation:
Is this a picture of Mars or Earth?
Oddly enough, it is a picture of
Mars.
What may appear to some as a
terrestrial coastline
is in fact a formation of
ancient layered hills and wind-blown sand on
Mars.
The above-pictured region spans about three kilometers in
Schiaparelli Crater.
What created the layers of
sediment
is still a topic of research.
Viable hypotheses include
ancient epochs of
deposit either from running water or wind-blown sand.
Winds and
sandstorms have smoothed and
eroded the structures more recently.
The "water" that appears near the bottom is
actually dark colored sand.
The image was taken with the
Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft that
operated
around Mars from 1996-2006 and returned over
200,000 images.
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