|
|
|
|
filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 01/27/2009 : 04:05:46
|
.....it's snowing up there never the less. It's snowing on Mars ...... or at least in the sky above it. This is just one extraordinary piece of information being sent back to us by the landers, probes and rovers scanning the planet. Home to the largest mountain in the solar system and a canyon as long as the US is wide, it is a world as fantastic as any imagined by JG BallardHigh in the sky above Mars, it is snowing right now. Very gently snowing. The snow does not settle on the rubble-strewn land below - not these days, anyway - but instead vaporises into the thin atmosphere long before it reaches the ground.
The first flakes of snow, on a planet that until fairly recently was believed to be waterless, were spotted just a few months ago. A Nasa lander near the planet's north pole was scanning the sky with a laser when it noticed the telltale signs of snowfall. The probe, called Phoenix, announced the news in a radio signal that was picked up by an overhead orbiter and beamed back to Earth. Nothing like it had ever been seen before.
The news of snow falling is just one piece of an extraordinary wealth of information that has recently been sent back from Mars by orbiters, landers and rovers. Together, they have mapped the surface in unprecedented detail, cracked open rocks, sniffed the atmosphere and dug down into the soil. What they have found points to an unimagined Martian history, one where life may have once gained a foothold and may even cling on still in the frigid soils of the permafrost.
|
|
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
|
|
|
HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 01/27/2009 : 04:11:11 [Permalink]
|
You realize that this news refutes the notion that he exhaust from the Mars rovers is causing machine-made global warming there, don't you?
|
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
 |
|
|
filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 01/27/2009 : 04:52:59 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by HalfMooner
You realize that this news refutes the notion that he exhaust from the Mars rovers is causing machine-made global warming there, don't you?
|
No, no I hadn't realized that; indeed, I hadn't realized that the question had ever come up. But then, I also hadn't realized that electric motors actually have a lot of exhaust. Aside fron a little heat, of course, and it's cold enough out there to freeze the balls off a brass yeti anyway, so it doesn't seem like it'd matter much, does it? But how very interesting....
Wow, you learn something every day, even when you're not paying attention!
|
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
|
|
|
|
The Rat
SFN Regular
Canada
1370 Posts |
Posted - 02/08/2009 : 20:16:40 [Permalink]
|
| Skiing is just what people use a hill for until they learn to hang-glide, after that you don't need to ski anymore. Of course, the aspect ratio of a Martian hang-glider would have to be about a shitload to one. |
Bailey's second law; There is no relationship between the three virtues of intelligence, education, and wisdom.
You fiend! Never have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church? - The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Blackadder II
Baculum's page: http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=3947338590 |
|
|
|
Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 02/09/2009 : 09:04:13 [Permalink]
|
Gravity is weaker there too, however, that'd compensate a bit.
Maybe, on Mars, the fall would be slow enough that a big air-bag might be enough to protect you... That'd be a great X-treme sport... Bungee jumping without the cord... |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Go sking on Mars? Well, no, but....
