At http://finance.yahoo.com/news/scientists-found-something-mars-could-1901… … Curiosity Rover has detected a mineral, tridymite, that can only be created in extremely hot temperatures. It seems Mars was once hotter than mainstream allows. What are the implications?
On the Earth tridymite forms at very high temperatures during explosive volcanic events. Mount St Helens was the kind of volcanic explosion capable of forming tridymite. It is described as a silicic volcano – does that mean it involves an outflow of silica and if so where is the origin of the silica – the Mantle?
So, how will mainstream get round this as Mars doesn't have plates that move and therefore plate boundaries to rub each other up the wrong way and cause seismic events. Neither does Mars have water – in a watery context. It is a pretty frigid place.
Over at http://phys.org/print384509950.html … the OISTER telescope in Japan has recorded information on supernova explosions, the brighter than normal variety. This new information will be used to re-measure the Earth's expansion. It seems extraordinary supernovae are contaminating samples used in cosmological records, thereby skewing the calibration (or that is the claim). Seems like they have decided what has caused the universe to expand faster than expected but the exercise in cleaning up their act will be interesting – will it iron out the anomalies?
To correctly measure the expansion of the universe and understand the role of dark energy during that expansion it is important to determine the origins of both typical supernovae and the super bright supernovae. They are hoping to exclude the latter from the calculations and get back to something acceptable for mainstream.