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Domain: galleries.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to galleries.com.
Stories · 3
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The Dirt On Mars, In Words And Pictures
An anonymous reader writes "The Spirit rover's first soil analysis reveals some puzzling features about Gusev crater. The region seems to contain the greenish silicate mineral, olivine, which usually is considered water-reactive and thus volcanic in origin. For olivine to be found in the soil may point to rock formation during a drier period in martian history, even with strong evidence for sampling in an ancient lakebed. A second puzzle is why the soil seems so crusty. After the rover arm pressed soil down, the top layer of dust hardly moved, a finding that suggests something may be binding the dust like some type of salt or thin cement." For even more and better Mars pictures, read on below.mlyle writes "I've spent a few hours hacking together some software to deal with the Mars Exploration Rover imagery at JPL. The software puts together a webpage and RDF feed of new raw imagery as it is posted to the JPL site, along with technical information decoded about how the picture was taken. It also produces stereo anaglyphs and color images that NASA has not seen fit to convert and make publically available. Be sure to also check out the ultra high resolution image of the lander as viewed from Spirit."
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Perv-y Material Heralds Move From Silicon
RalphTWaP writes "The Register has posted this report about the successful use of perovskite oxides as a replacement for silicon oxide in chip manufacture. As the Reg reports, the journal Science contains the original article. Best of luck getting at it though. Perhaps that kind of thing is what this other article was talking about." -
Wet Venus?
Porfiry writes "Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, studying hydrous mineral decomposition rates at extreme temperatures, have concluded that hot and dry Venus may have been a wet planet in the past, like Earth and ancient Mars. The new evidence suggesting a wetter Venusian history comes from a series of experiments documenting the chemical stability of tremolite, a mineral that forms in the presence of water." This is a little bit similar to the Venus article we just posted, but still interesting.
