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Mars Channels Discovered; Possible Aquatic Origin
Carey Frey writes " CNN reported today that 'NASA scientists have uncovered
evidence of wide, ancient channels that could have formed from the flow of enormous volumes of water.' The movie Mission to Mars opens tonight. I suppose this is all just a coincidence?"
Yeah, right. The production crew spent literally weeks planning the trip, getting to Mars and digging all those channels. "Coincidence," indeed!
Didn't the surveyor, which was running after the lander crashed, find these already?
I remember get Space News online and going to the NASA site when they thought they may have had a chance at communicating with the crashed lander. And there was some info on this back then.
Will in Seattle
There has been good evidence of water on Mars for years; and no I'm not just talking about the old "canals" on Mars (which were just optical illusions).
Ok everyone calm down.
There still remains the chance that these "water canals" could be nothing more than an underground subway system for a race of super-intelligent beings.
Let's not fly off the handle and start talking water before we're sure it's not just something simple.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
The NASA scientists use a laser-based system to detect fluctuations in the surface conditions that enable them to infer the existence of very large underground channels that could have been created by vast flows of water when Mars was much younger. As importantly, the information confirms that Mars used to be in a state of great geologic upheval, as demonstrated by the enormous latent volcanoes on the surface.
Very interesting article; this much water on a planet creates the prospect that life may have one day existed on Mars. Also, I think I might be pretty close to a first post. Oh well.
I thought it was a pretty much foregone conclusion that Mars once had a very different environment than it has now, maybe not exactly like Earth, but with a much more substantial atmosphere and water.   Witness the ice on the poles...   but also note the proximity to the asteroid belt...
I guess that will always be a hypothesis until proven though...
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
You know, CmdrTaco, Hemos, etc. spend many hours a day maintaining this site, and assholes like you come along and dump shit like this on it. I hope they turn off anonymous posting and start banning IPs.
How about setting up the code to kill anything with the phrase "first post" in it?
This is another good example of waiting for the right time to release information.
It is very obvious that this is no coincidence, but I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. Trying to manipulate people to get attention is a bad thing. Trying to advertise science is a good thing. I guess this is a little bit of both. All I hope is that this information is not "modified" to sound more interesting.
This fits into the same category as sending old Senators to space and finding rocks form Mars which supposedly contain microbes.
did anyone else see the commercial for 'mission to mars' where the guy says 'that DNA looks human!' after looking at a tiny snip of a DNA helix rotating in full 3-d glory(thats how real geneticists do it! .....right?)? heh, yea i can frequenty determine the species of origin of some random DNA by simply simply looking at a few base pairs on a monitor! puhlease.
I guess the people who made the movie (Touchstone I think, Disney owns them I know) are kinda in hot water because one of the trailers says "Twenty five years of conspiracy are about to be unveiled" and NASA consulted HEAVILY on the movie (as they have done for MANY Disney movies in the past)... NASA didn't know that trailer was going to run and from their reaction, it seems they're quite miffed about it. Apparently its all about the treatment of the face on mars in the movie..
From pre-reviews I've heard, there are points in the movie where the audiences actually shouted "GOOD! I'm glad you're dead!" and the reviews haven't been all that good but I think I'll see it anyways...
On the fact of life on Mars now or in the past, its way possible. Just yesterday I read on the AP Wire that in this metal mine in California they've found these microbes that thrive in 115F environments and eat iron and secrete sulphuric acid... never before seen and they have no idea how they got there and anyone previously would have guessed life would never have existed there. Similar to the things that live down at the vents at the ocean floor miles down (well, 2) every guess beforehand would have been that life could not exist in such a toxic environment. After hearin about all that, I don't see how anyone would be really stupefied if they found microbes and maybe bigger things on Mars, though Europa looks amazingly promising in comparison...
Esperandi
"They're definately from water all right," said Dr. Willie Makeit, Scientist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, "Well, either that or massive quantities of hot grits, but come on, that wouldn't be possible..."
30 years after finding the canals scientists concluded today that they could have been created from flowing water, to what do they attribute the lag time?
"Pong," says Makeit, "when the initial data came back in the 70's Pong had just came out and we were all playing it on the big screens here at the Center, we must have missed it and shelved the data."
Still, there is much controvercy, not all the scientists here at Goddard belive they were created by flowing water.
Jimmy de Loche, a newcommer at NASA thinks there was a more interesting explaination to the canals formation.
"If you look at the ridges, they're not smooth, kindof jagged, this suggests fragmantations, a blast of some sort, what I think happened is that a civilization not unlike our own nuked itself into extinction on Mars, poor bastards. No doubt a war over hot grits and Natilie Portman open sourced and Petrified statues."
When pressed on the issue of where he came to this conclusion, Mr. Makeit goes into convulsions, rants almost incoherently about slashdot, troll tuesday, and "Will Rob fucking impliment submit box moderation already!". This reporter was very taken aback with these words.
What do they mean? Who is Rob? Trolls in this day and age?
Tune in tomorrow for answers to these and other important questions, same Linux-Time, same Linux-Channel.
-- iCEBaLM
In addition to the discovery of channels on Mars, previously called 'canals,' the following headlines began to appear....
-- Scientists detect existance of 'eathre,' previously called 'aether;' now known to be the medium in which the Planck-sized subspace foam floats.
-- Observatory locates giant space dragon living in the Moon's trojan points that sporadically emerges to swallow the moon in an event called an 'eklypps.'
-- Biologists observe quantum-tunneling effect of organic particles that allows manure to generate flies spontaneously.
...and, of course:
-- Giant flaming objects expected to fall from sky soon because of the wrath of the great god Iridium.
--
NO CARRIER
Well... that is one theory.
The second more plausible theory put forth by a certain group of NASA engineers is suggesting that these canals are simply remnants of "lava" flows that occurred when the red planet was still "hot".
I think I'll go with the second theory myself. We see much the same phenomena on volcanic islands such as Hawaii. Underground lava flows creating rivers of molten rock.
Of course everyone likes to toss around the water theory, who wouldn't? But realistically, these channels are due more to the lithography and not a fictious hydrosphere.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
No complaints there, but they're hardly doing it for free.
If you enjoy pulp science fiction, try Ben Bova's _MARS_. It's an easy breezy read.
If you want a 3-book-long lovemaking session to the planet Mars, I highly suggest Kim Stanley Robinson's _RED MARS_, _GREEN MARS_, and _BLUE MARS_. They get progressively more boring and uninspired as the series progresses through more and more abstract characters, but they are still extremely decent reads that make a slight effort to represent Mars in all it's beauty. The franchise milker _THE MARTIANS_ is also out as of a few months ago. Haven't checked it out, but I expect it to be just as fatally flawed as the others. Oh well.
Yeah... And there's also Ray Bradbury's _THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES_.. Or was it CS Lewis? I forget and don't care, because I didn't like it.Oh yeah, and there is now an official Mars Flag or something. It's three vertical stripes going [RED] [GREEN] [BLUE}. Quite cool.
Mars is vastly more interesting than you might expect. Read up on it if you like.
http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/billa/t np/mars.html is an EXCELLENT start if you want to learn more about the planet at a glance.
http://www.marssociety.org links you to the Mars Society, a delusional group of Mars Freaks who want to settle the planet or something. But they're still cool.
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/ has a very supercool solar system simulator that can show you what the planets look like from almost anywhere at almost any time. It's quite accurate and cool. Not open source yet, but i'm sure with some coaxing and good project management, they might be willing to release it. It's written in C and shit, so it'd port pretty easy i'd imagine. The data sets might not be public domain though. Oh well. Go see it anyway.
Enjoy.
-troll taker
-- Everything I know about science I learned at the movies.
Coincidence. Maybe.
Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? Priceline?
Can your IM do this?
Have a look at this link Think Mars. Its a site advocating human exploration of Mars. There's a petition that you can sign to urge world leaders to commit themselves to the exploration of mars.
Even in Mars's (1/3 g?, I forget) gravity, I really doubt that a 200 km wide cavity could hold up. On Earth with good hard rock, 50 m is about all you get. What am I missing here?
If you want a 3-book-long lovemaking session to the planet Mars, I highly suggest Kim Stanley Robinson's _RED MARS_, _GREEN MARS_, and _BLUE MARS_. They get progressively more boring and uninspired...
Uh, gee, thanks. Do you recommend any other boring, uninspired books for me to read? I'm sensing some hostility here.
What exactly do you mean by a "lovemaking session" anyway? Oh right, that's where somebody can't keep track of how many books are in the series, so they should take all the books to Mars and screw a sand dune while reading each one, then just count the holes, conclusively proving that they're dumber than fucking dirt on Mars. (sorry, this is as bad as my posts get, I hope)
If anyone gave them a bad review, I agree with them. I'm sure many of you will disagree with me on this but (1) 2001: space odysee sucked... movie and book (2) Mission to Mars was just a reinterpretation of 2001. All events that happen in 2001 are symbolically in m2mars only they tried to make sense which just made the movie plain stupid, not to mention the inaccurate crap that was going on on mars. I went to the mars/moon breifing a year ago and they said that the temperature varies greatly between groundlevel and where your head would be, yet it did not bother them when they were in a tent on the martian surface. My recommendation is to not see the movie, if you have seen/read 2001 imagine it on mars.
Disney must be paying out the ass for the PR on the new movie Mission to Mars!
Welcome to the Entropy Bar, may I take your order?
Dude,
While there may have been intelligent life down below, think of the possibilities that the tubes present...
I heartily look forward to the day when the Underground Channels of Mars are opened as the solar system's largest skate park ever! It would, like, bring life back to the word "tubular", at least!
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
I'm going to get flamed for this, but I am sick and tired about hearing about news stories and movies that glorify the concept of "extraterrestrial life." Oooh, look! Some canals on Mars! That obviously means that there was intelligent life there once, right? And there probably still is! Hello? No! These days it seems you can't look anywhere without hearing about some sort of search for life. They say there's life on Jupiter's moons. My tax money is being criminally spent on a "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence."
.. that they are created beings and that they are loved by their Creator unless they are homosexual. We've already got great states in the country, like Kansas, who are taking the proper step of banning the theory of evolution from the classroom. We need to go one step further and ban movies and stories like this, because they advance the "idea" of life beyond Earth as being possible, and that destroys the value that human life has. James Cameron and his film crew may be a bunch of chemicals that rose out of a pit of primordial goo, but I am special, and God loves me.
How long have they been looking for life? A long time, that's how long. What do they have to show for it? Absolutely nothing. Yet they continue to perform this "search" with the same zeal that they started it with. Why not? They've got people giving them money hand over fist, apparently oblivious to the fact that it would be less wasteful to simply light the money on fire.
This country's liberal establishment is big on things like Europa, SETI, and Mission to Mars. This is the same establishment whose members personally slaughtered four million children in the womb last year. If they can show, or at least advance the idea that life on Earth is not unique, then they further their agenda. Their agenda is to reduce the value of human life. That is what they stand for. If they are allowed to portray life as some sort of cosmic accident, people will be more receptive to their crimes against humanity and against morality.
When you've got programs like SETI, moons like Europa, and movies like Mission to Mars, it's no wonder our kids are filling each other full of bullet holes. They need to be told that they are not some sort of cosmic accident
Mars is essentially in the same orbit... somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
This is one of the funniest trolls I've seen in weeks. Someone should rate it up.
I can't tell you how good it is to see a decent Christian witnessing on Slashdot.
You're absolutely right about how this is behind all those kids shooting each other. Obviously, if there's "life" on other planets, that means life on Earth is pretty worthless, doesn't it? Plentiful throughout the galaxy, cheap as dirt: The two concepts are inseparable. It's also a sly move by the media to condition people to accept the evolution hypothesis -- and with government funding, too! What else is the space program but a big supposed "demonstration" of the supposed fact that the Earth is nothing special! Well, if God went that far out of his way to create it, I guess he must have had some reason. But try telling them that. Some super expensive technology is all it is, just government money wasted on fake science for the fat cats in Boston to "prove" their little theories.
I'm telling you, I've had about enough of it.
------------------
By the way, I have to tell you about this, this is just not right: Just now, as I was telling you about all this, my computer just sat here for four minutes, literally, and my browser wouldn't do a thing, everything but the title on the window went white and the computer, you know, the CPU part, it went on with this grinding noise and a light went on and stayed on while it made the noise for four whole minutes! I don't think that's right, and I made sure to buy Windows 95 because I know it works and I can trust a big company like that. It's just not right! My boy said it was "swapping" but he don't know nothing, who's it swapping with? That's nonsense! What does he know, he just plays with some silly Slacker Slackwearer program every day after school! And something called Apache, I know what that's about -- the Indians were pagans, I wasn't born yesterday! Then he tells me he's learning a language to talk to the computer -- he calls it "See", well I told him "I can't 'See' it from here!" and I laughed. Well you know how boys can be, he got all hurt and all that, but he'll have to learn to take a joke if he's going to give people crazy talk about talking to a computer in a special language for it! I'll have to put a stop to that nonsense right now. He's getting old enough to be looking for a job, not playing silly games. Computers are a good hobby but he should be learning an honest trade.
What they want to do is prove that Life is the result of an incredibly unlikely, yet unintentional, accident. Because if Life had been created by God, then we could wipe it out entirely with no bigger consequence: He could simply create Life again.
The fact that we are the result of an extremely improbable accident is what makes us, living beings, truly precious, because when we are gone there is no chance of Life ever happening again.
I can't tell you how good it is to see a decent Christian witnessing on Slashdot.
.. you have to buy and install them all, in order, otherwise the forces of Satan can get at all of your data. At least, that's what the pastor said the Micro-Soft guy told him.
.. it had me howling something awful! My Nellie thought there was something wrong with me! It's almost as funny as that Family Circus comic in the newspaper .. that one never fails to get me slapping my knee.
Why, thank you! I'm Rusty, the bombadier from Charlie Company of the Eighth Division of Fightin' Baptists from Skunkwater, Oklahoma. Pleased to make your acquaintance!
Some super expensive technology is all it is, just government money wasted on fake science for the fat cats in Boston to "prove" their little theories.
I agree with all that you've said. Personally, I believe that People's Republic of Taxachussetts should be expelled from the Union immediately and declare war upon, but that is a different story.
By the way, I have to tell you about this, this is just not right: Just now, as I was telling you about all this, my computer just sat here for four minutes, literally, and my browser wouldn't do a thing, everything but the title on the window went white and the computer, you know, the CPU part, it went on with this grinding noise and a light went on and stayed on while it made the noise for four whole minutes! I don't think that's right, and I made sure to buy Windows 95 because I know it works and I can trust a big company like that.
I had this happen to me, too. Actually, we were discussing this in our Bible study group last week. Our pastor said that he contact Micro-Soft about the problem, and that they told him that he would have to buy Windows 98, install it, and then buy Windows 2000 and install it over the top of Windows 98. The pastor said that Micro-Soft warned him that he couldn't get away with skipping Windows 98
My boy said it was "swapping" but he don't know nothing, who's it swapping with? That's nonsense!
Land sakes, your boy sounds awfully precocious! My Nellie and I have a strapping eight-year old son ourselves (Jebadiah) and I am constantly amazed at how well he can operate the computer. Why, just the other day he was showing me how Satan can control the computer and make it so that when you "click" the History button in the Netscape window, it will show links to dirty, horrific pornographic sites! Needless to say, this shocked me, but my boy is smart and he says he knows what to do.
Well you know how boys can be, he got all hurt and all that, but he'll have to learn to take a joke if he's going to give people crazy talk about talking to a computer in a special language for it!
Thanks for sharing this anecdote
Anyway, it's time to run. Nice to have met you!
Yucky doo, what a lousy movie. I just came back from its opening at Silver City in Kitchener-Waterloo (Ontario, Canada :P) and it was not a good movie.
The movie starts off well, but slowly and steadily deteriorates until the final blow - the alien. Anyone who sees it will immediately understand what I mean.
Save yourself 122 minutes and watch something better.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
It's all part of the corporate machine that is "our" government. Marketing Propaganda for hire if you got the power.
I had the unfortunate pleasure of seeing this movie tonight. Although the special effects are Ok the story is conived and drags on and on (2 hours+)
If you want to see it I recommend waiting for the video
Kastor
Let's see:
Cripes. I think we all need to lay off the "X-Files".
Have you SEEN this movie? No? Good, don't.
It's about the cheesiest thing since starship troopers. Tim robbins and gary sinise (sp?) can't save this movie from being a cheese-fest. It has almost every cliche from "no, i won't let you die" to "the mission should have been yours." Awful direction, a botched script. Not to mention obvious product placement! Dr. Pepper, SGI, etc..
The one good thing about the movie is that it is a realistic portrayal of what an actual mars mission could look like in thirty years. That was cool.
I don't agree about 2001, I think it was a movie with a useful message, unlike Mission to Mars, which I have to agree with you, was total crap. Not only is the story awful, but there constantly is publicity in almost every scene. For the scenes that didn't have any publicity, they compensated on the next scene.
/little/ interesting. (i.e. when they solve the DNA problem)
:)
As for the story, they take the risk to elaborate on a different theory about our origin (as Humans), ok, that was a
[warning, spoiler]
Of course, the movie finishes on a complete cliché, with a typical happy ending.
Sorry if I wasn't very objective, I just got home and I'm not yet over it
On a positive note, I'm in the mood to go and see 2001 : Space Odysee, a movie that definitly had an interesting impact on me.
This is not a troll, it is a memetic warfare agent from the enemy.
A global canal network to bring water down from the poles would make sense for a planet that was slowly losing its atmosphere and drying up.
Oh my god. This movie was such shit, I can't even begin to warn you.
- -
Don't EVEN get me started on that steaming turd. I saw it about a week or two ago, and... I was STUNNED. It was like being unexpectedly punched in the face. I was numb and flailing about afterwards.
My expectations were low, sure. But nothing could have prepared me...
The corner of the theatre I was sitting in turned into a ad-hoc "Mystery Science Theatre 2000" show, so I was at least entertained by my friends.
There hasn't been this much product placement since "Mac and Me."
Things about M2M that utterly suck (partial list)
-----------------------------------------------
* The trailer and posters literally gave away the "surprise" ending
* The one-shot "exposition picnic" ("Gee, wonder what'll happen to the guy
going to Mars who's reading his kid 'Robinson Crusoe'?")
* The futuristic Yugo (or whatever the hell it was...)
* The Gen-X astronauts (it's 2020 remember?!) reminiscing about...Flash Gordon?
* The astronauts looking apathetically at the giant sand tornado about
to kill them
* Easter Island obelisk apparently couldn't be seen from earth, even though
three tiny graves nearby could be
* The big MultiNational Space Station with five people on it
* The etch-a-sketch computers
* Don Cheadle's "Help me, Captain Kirk!" scene
* The horrible, indecipherable scene where they come up with a rescue plan.
* "There's only three graves!" "No, there was just no one to bury him."
* The outer space ballroom-dancing scene
* Gratuitous, pointless "walking up the wall" 2001-ripoff spin-the-set scene.
* The Dead-Wife-On-Video-At-The-Party speech
* "Let's explain what DNA is with M&Ms because it's going to come up later."
* The "Monkey Jumping on an Organ" soundtrack
* The Dr. Pepper that saves the mission
* The DA-DAH! music cue when the fishing line runs out
* The bizzaro "take off my helmet" scene
* Don Cheadle's Sanford-and-Son afro.
* The greenhouse
* The ridiculous story about Cheadle digging a grave for the two bodies he
couldn't find, cuz it "just felt right"
* The "Solve the DNA Puzzle" alien test
* Mrs. Butterworth, the weeping alien who wants to hold your hand.
* The "2001 meets Epcot center" CGI climax
* "We've waited billions of years for you to show up... Well, gotta go."
* The fact that this highly evolved species decided to evacuate the planet
AFTER, not before, it was bombarded by a meteor
* Sinese's "Close Encounters" decision to go with the Aliens. (I hope in
the Special Edition we get to see the inside of the ship)
* The exchange: "Where's Sinese?" "He caught another flight! Har har!"
* The flashback ("Remember all these shitty moments...")
* Alien Shmalian...is there or isn't there water on Mars?
See the reviews on aint-it-cool-news for more.
STAY AWAY
That the channels gouged into the desert in the northern hemisphere were caused by
NASA spacecraft attempting to land on the southern ice cap.
just wanted to throw in my 2 cents on the movie. Basically it was dull. It brought out no new ideas, interesting dialog, or special effects IMHO. Though I got several laughs from their use of computers. At one point the guy from sliders decides he has to reboot the computer because the fixed a whole in the ship. (must have been using windows 98)
By the way, one of my trolls was allegedly read out loud onstage at ApacheCon tonight. I can't vouch for the truth of that, but if so . . . Heh heh, cool, heh heh. Just had to share that, sorry.
Well, I am Ben Affleck, and I would like to formally invite you to eat my balls.
You had to have seen 2001:A Space Odyssey back in '69 when it first came out (before ABC stole the look of the ending for their TV network promo graphics, and Elvis and everybody's brother used the intro music)to properly appreciate it (and being a sci-fi reading teen helped too).
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It is unsurprising to hear that NASA is at it again, spinning questionable material in an effort to entice and entertain the masses. The masses, dazed and stupid (before and) after seeing that new mars movie, link these two events together, and clamor for congress to spend more money on the failing and irrelevant NASA program.
What a bunch of crap. I wouldn't be surprised if NASA underwrote the movie, and had their PR people specificly in sync with the movie folks at a very early phase.
NASA exists for one reason - and that is to do what's necessary to generate more funding for NASA. If hyping questionable data, leveraging off of pop culture, and sending elderly celebrities into space brings in the dough, they'll do it.
I'm a scientist in mind and heart, and space travel does fascinate me. But NASA is little more than a very expensive entertainment troupe, paid for with your and my tax dollars.
If Disney went to Congress to ask for money to build a new theme park, would you support it?
I just got back from watching the movie with my oldest son. Its not 2001 but to tell you the truth I'd rather see a movie with a real ending than the ending that 2001 had. If I had to rate it i'd say its worth seeing. If you are a sci-fi nut like me you'll see it whether it's reviewed well or not. But in this case I wasn't dissappointed.
While I'm at it I'll mention that Pitch Black was worth seeing also. I know it got dogged by the press, but Vince Diesel (sp?) really takes charge of the screen. In The Bioleroom he steals the show. The premise of Pitch Black is really quite novel.
If you had to choose one movie currently playing I'd pick The Insider. Watched it last week with my wife. We both enjoyed the movie and now I finally know why 60 Minutes has thoroughly sucked for the last two years. Pachino is a must see anyhow.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I wonder when /. is going to start announcing episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slyer.
Remeber fondly, along with ERB's Venus books. (Not to mention the actual Tarzan novels, before Hollywood dumbed them down)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Oh my fucking god! only on slashdot could a post be moderated up for containing references to republicanism and anti-abortion activism in a post about water on mars.
There's something about a really good rant, one that flows, you know? Something really special.
A rant has to take off and run. Momentum is absolutely crucial: There must be a sense of great forward motion and energy. It has to carry the reader along. This one does that. Furthermore, it builds well over the course of the post, it's funny, it's obscene, it's got stunned disbelief, it's got a beginning, middle'n'end, it's got everything. The feel is of somebody who just snapped and cut loose, but it stays on-track, it makes sense, and it's well-constructed.
Thank you. Most people who rant around here are either lily-livered complainers or just plain incoherent.
Jim was a CS major as an undergraduate (Brown) and got a MS in CS (Stanford). But he love space stuff so he decided to become a planetary geologist. Jim was (still is?) an ice hockey goalie. This should really tell you something about him. He once crashed the IBM mainframe (JCL, yuck) by screwing around with variables in APL program. He actually liked APL. He is the only person I know that was told by his thesis adviser to stop writing more chapters (papers) for his thesis. No Jim, you're done, stop writing!
Maria Zuber used to play women's basketball as an undergrad (Penn). She also played with us on our intramural basketball team. We sucked, but Maria did okay. The other teams would let her shoot as she was the only female in the entire league. And should could hit the outside shot.
In our small building, the floor that I had my office on only had one woman on it (our secretary). When Maria moved to our floor we had an office warming party to celebrate her introduction into what we called the last bastillion of male supremacy. This meant beer then more beer, then off to the bar.
When Maria got married, a bunch of us gave her a basketball, ears of corn (don't ask), and a car baby seat as her wedding present. She wasn't pregnant, but what the hell, she was Catholic and came from a large family. BTW, the priest thought it was a great gift.:-)
BTW, I got this nick (craw) when I was in grad school.
"Get your ass to Mars!"
So there must be something special about Mars.
Other quotes from Arnold:
"Get to the chopper!" - Predator
"There is no bathroom!" - Kindergarden Cop
And of course:
"I'll be back!" - Terminator
It's not your place to judge them, and God loves them no matter what. Homosexuality may be wrong, but Gods love is uncontitional.
It's clear enough who's side you're on, and what your agenda really is. I hope you don't think you've fooled anybody. You certainly haven't fooled God.
Posting this way to discredit Christianity will gain you no credit, believe me.
-RP
WHOA. You mean that someone a hundred years ago saw lines on Mars and thought they were built by intelligent beings? You must have gone to that new-fangled "high school" thing I've been hearing so much about.
Mark this as (Score:-1, Sarcastic).
1.Not quite as smart as us, so we can keep all those books that call us (or at least some of us, in some cases) the "superior race". Like a whole planet of folks who really dig "Wings".
2.Dead. So we don't have to worry about them killing us for being inferior.
I think we'd prefer to find the latter. Less hassle, even if the former could give us the excuse to ship the military off-planet
Build the mountain. Then climb it if you're bored.
A note: even though my pseudo-review may seem negative, I genuinely enjoyed the movie and I think it's interesting and important to see.
Just came back from it about 3 hours ago. I found it to be exceptionally short and anticlimatic. I also saw a Discovery channel show about the production of the movie, and I was surprised to learn the extent NASA's influence. The movie excapes pesky concepts like "physics" and "reality."
I was going to describe in depth the flaws in the movie's logic in referring to human (and Martian) DNA, as long as several errors relating to the physics in question. Realizing it was quite boring and I couldn't fit all the errors, I ditched it. Simply put, the movie creates a tremendous over-simplification of DNA and the human genome, and generally ignores the laws of high school physics. The thing they did the best was to copy 2001: A Space Oddessy and include rotating circular space stations to reduce cheesy zero-g filming. Dizzing camera movement, done by someone obviously vying for a photography nod, sort of kills that though.
One high point: Story Musgrave (a real astronaut) was in the film for a few minutes, albeit without lines. A couple low points: product placement is all over this movie. An Isuzu concept car sits on the screen for the first ten minutes of the film. Some Dr. Pepper saves the space shuttle. M&M's are used twice as to create (over-simplified) DNA models. An SGI display screen is used to relay video transmissions from earth to the space shuttle. Kawasaki and Pennzoil cover the Mars Rover as if it was featured on Nascar.
Mission to Mars: The feature film
1) absolutely the most utterly stupid sci-fi movies I've ever seen in my entire movie-going career.
2) had special effects done by Disney animation artists - example: in the final scene a holodeck with one of the Aliens who "seeded" earth points to Mars while a tear drop forms on his cute little eye as his planet is hit by an asteroid... so sad... I could barely control my emotions too.
3) is based around total non-science, even the basic principal that the "Face on Mars" was artificially created was shown to be totally nothing on a second photo.
4) acting - I'm going to leave the flaming of the acting to other ac's
5) do not go see this film - it's a total over-hyped Apollo13 knockoff with so many obvious spot advertisements it makes you sick to your stomach
The movie sucked. It's nothing more than a chick-flick disguised as sci-fi.
I give it a two-thumbs down.
You must be from Engineering :P
:)
down with thornborough!!
OFTC: By the community, for the community
You're not mixing your medications again, are you?
go back under your bridge now. :-)
My date and I just sat there and picked apart all the screwy crap in the movie (at least I got to see it as a complimentary screening).
* Computer generated voices do not asphixicate (sp) from the lack of oxygen (in the scene with the "micrometeorite" )
* Repeat after me: KE = 1/2 mv^2. You know how fast the micrometerite have to travel to punch thru the spaceship's hull *and* armor? (Even the older apollo modules have a "bumper" for micrometeriorites".
* Even at 50% atmosphere, your eyeballs will be popping. Atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi, 50% atm will mean a difference of 7 lbs per sq inch.
* Why would you want to transmit "DNA" as 3D coordinates? Woudn't transmitting it as "AGTC" be a LOT more efficient? And even if you *did* transmit it in 3D coords, you would still need a forth character to denote the DNA nucleoside bases. And, man, do you have any idea how big the Human DNA Genome is?
* Death by decompression is a lot worse than what they showed...
* Signal Latency from Mars is NOT 20 minutes, it's a lot lower than that.
Well, aside from that, I thought that the Kawasaki rover and the SGI panels were a cute touch 8-)
-=- SiKnight
Why is this post marked interesting? Someone moderate the above down as a flame. This parody of religious intolerance is so poorly done it shouldn't qualify for the low standards of "funny".
Yeah, they found channels with their nifty billion dollar systems paid for by your tax dollars.
They may even be formed by water millions of years ago, look at your wonderful tax dollars at work!
While I don't discount the possibility of water ever existing on mars, I see this as all highly circumstantial evidence. The article was written only to show the successful projects nasa has created to collect information about mars. The article lacked any convincing evidence that the channels were formed by water. If no good scientific data was sighted, why should we beleive nasa may have proven the previous existince of water on mars?
What a timely press release of this data collected in 1997. A little late? Public begining to doubt the need for a space program?
Anyhow, tirade aside, I believe the space program is a great investment, mars is a great investment and we should continue to appropriate large amounts of funds for larger furture projects (terraforming 2099 baby!). But this article just seems to be a lot of sensationalism and numbers, abbreviations and dazzling technology specs to dupe joe public from brooklyn. Like my arch nemesis signal11 seemd to point out, those channels could have been created by magma.
It is pretty neat that we can look at caves under mars' surface though. I sure am proud.
Now all they need to do is work out weather is may have been a difffereent type of water than our stuff, that would be interesting
You're talking like a liberal arts major....be careful. When the mods on slashdot smell that you don't have a B.S. you'll get modded down.
I don't know what scares me more...the original post or the fact that people thought i was serious.
-FluX
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Your Ad Here!
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"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
YES, the creators of this movie are in cahoots with NASA!!! The paranioa never stops. COOL NEWS ANYHOO!
Ok people hold on your horses. If NASA is claiming that it has discovered any channels and is giving an "aquatic origin" to them then they are just playing pure BS. Because for the last 20 years a lot of people has been talking about this and getting pissed off for talking too much. Do you think this is fantasy? Absolutely not. People were even kicked out of Yahoo.com's lists in 1996 for these ideas. In fact it was the first time I noted a clear use of censorship on the net.
Note that this has nothing to do with Hoagland and his cohortes. Yes, a lot of people around this trend has a pro-Hoagland view but also there are a lot who can't see this bastard 10 kilometers in shoot range. And also a lot of them talked about these channels in views completely far from any aliens, ET's or Shadow Govs.
What ruled people inside and around NASA to hunt for the dissidence is still not fully clear. But the fact his that there is a big lobby around NASA that tries to establish the idea that Mars is "old, dry and quiet". Not at all. Mars was highly wet for quite a long time. Somewhere in time. maybe 1-2 billions , maybe a few millions years ago (people don't agree quite on this) something happened on Mars. It could be one impact. I and other people consider they were several big impacts. Mars turned into a cauldron. Due to impact, Mars waterways ran wild. In some places water managed to dig channels with a few kilometers deep (I, personally, analysed such photos in 1996). It even flew and fell back in some places. And probably Mars went so hot that it started to evaporate. Due to the low gravitation, most of it was lost into Space.
Btw. Cydonia is mostly the result of such event. Specially if one analyses the South-Eastern/North eastern region of the plateau, then one can see a large evidence of a powerful washout among landscape formations. But it is not the most spectacular. The most spectacular I have seen was a weird erosion that suggested that water acted there as a fountain falling on rock. And made a hole 1 kilometer wide.
Click here
#mars :You'd be fat and lazy too if you lived with six times gravity :AstroNut Bugger @JoveZzzz quasar Elvis @DrkMatter M0rpheus_ @Y LadyRed gryhppl ElScorcho @[Phobos] Backson God @[Deimos] :End of /NAMES list. :)
#mars Jove 999784631526
= #mars
#mars
#mars 998602183744
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<LilGrnMan> like hell I will!!
*** Signoff: Elvis (theking@graceland.xyzzy.orb) has left IRC [Thank you. Thank you very much.]
<quasar> Hi Astro!
<DrkMatter> yeah, right Grn... we all know you guys have been hoarding it for eons
<M0rpheus_> i saw a pic of it... hold on, lemme find that site again
<AstroNut> Lost: One polar lander. Last seen plummeting to the surface of Mars
* LilGrnMan slaps DrkMatter with a pickle
<AstroNut> heh-heh
<LilGrnMan> do you ever quit, dark?
<LadyRed> hey Astro
<LadyRed> sorry, still no sign of your probes... You'll be the first to know if we find anything, though
<LilGrnMan> hey Earth boy.. how's life on the sponge?
<AstroNut> Red, Green... Harold.
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<AstroNut> Boss's are on my ass again. Budget time is getting closer and they're looking for something sensational to feed the media
<DrkMatter> astro: you got me Gillian Anderson's autograph yet?
<quasar> sponge?
* gryhppl is away: messages are logged
<AstroNut> DrkMatter: you freak
<LadyRed> That 'special' time of the year again
<LadyRed> so any ideas for the big science breakthrough
<DrkMatter> quas: the Earth, you know... that big, soggy, putrid sponge of a planet?
<M0rpheus_> still looking for that page...
<AstroNut> idunno.... We just had another asteroid thing and that didn't get any press
<AstroNut> What have you guys been up to?
<DrkMatter> (as if we care, morph)
<quasar> me waves hi to the earthman
<quasar> oops
<LadyRed> Well, I got back from a weekend at the beach this morning
*quasar waves hi tothe earthman
<DrkMatter> Red: That was this weekend?
<AstroNut> Oh, yeah. I've been meaning to ask you about how you deal with water there.
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<LadyRed> Well this was one of our constructed beaches, of course
<LadyRed> There's hardly any naturally flowing water on Mars anymore
<DrkMatter> yeah, we build our beaches underground
<AstroNut> So where do you get the water from?
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<DrkMatter> we drill for it, and create artificial "rivers" to distribute the water throughout the planet
<DrkMatter> that way we can also maintain a certain amount of cycling, too
<AstroNut> And this is all underground?
<LadyRed> oh, of course. Otherwise it would all just be mud
<DrkMatter> the dust storms pretty much demand it
<AstroNut> duh... stupid me
<DrkMatter> (we don't expect much less from an earther)
<AstroNut> hah-hah... so you've built an underground network of aquaducts then
<DrkMatter> yup, a few of them have caved in and formed the canyons you can see from your telescopes
<DrkMatter> but our engineering is advanced enough there's virtually no chance of that anymore
<AstroNut> Great! I think I can make a story out of this
<LadyRed> cool. And I got a killer tan from the fission radiators
<LadyRed> When are you gonna get off that rock of yours and come see us?
<AstroNut> Someday, red... someday
<AstroNut> I'm gonna go type up this "research" (heh)
<DrkMatter> by Jim, glad to help
<AstroNut> later guys
<LadyRed> *smooch* see-ya, luv
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I'd be in favour if it encouraged human space flight, encouraged basic scientific research and encouraged kids the way the 1939 World's Fair encouraged the young Carl Sagan.
However, I have to admit I'd also be in favour if it included hot lesbian action and nude starlets. But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
I was running Netscape 4.7 under Red Hat Linux 6.0 and realized this link would blue screen any Windows users who clicked on it. I rebooted under Windows 98 running Internet Explorer to confirm this and did indeed get the famous "blue screen of death". This is as funny as putting firecrackers in the beaks of newborn chicks and lighting them, you stupid inhospitable asshole. We want to welcome the Windows zombies so we can deprogram them, not kick the blind kids. Get a life. Better yet, if I thought you were likely to reproduce, I'd urge a vasectomy.
Mars is an interesting place, yes. It most likely once was similar to Earth, yes. But shouldn't we go permanently to the Moon already, dammit!?
I say a trip to Mars will fail unless we practice it by going to the Moon.
It was Baaaadd - sooo Baaaadd....
v iews
When the lights came up the 1/2 the audience just stared at the screen with glazed eyes and the other half snickered - out loud - for a minute (7:25 showing at the Paramount - I swear.) Plainly put the movie screams for a midnight showing and an irreverent audience:
"Luke..." I am your Father
Danger! Danger! Danger Will Robinson "Oxygen is at 60 percent"
"Meatloaf! Don't pick your friends! Pick your nose!"
"We are Them - They are Us" I am the Walrus - kukkakoobajoo...
Do it for The Gipper!
This turkey will be out on video inside of a month - even then just fast-forward to the really great inside-the-spaceship scene (a complete rip from 2001 but at least it was a rip from a classic and not from a B movie like "The Mummy" like so many other parts of the film) and turn off the audio. Afterwards return the film unwound - you'll be doing someone a kindness.
-- Michael
Salon had a great synopsis of the reviews:
http://www.salon.com/ent/log/2000/03/10/mars_re
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Hmmmm... an anonymous post that wants anonymous posting turned off? That's beside the point. I personally keep my comments set to -1 Flat so i can read all the trolling... some of them are very funny. If you are offended by it or you don't want to read it, set up an account, set your comment threshhold to 1 and *poof* all trolls and 90% of the Anonymous Cowards are gone... no reason to ban IP addresses when people like myself enjoy the troll posts....- ---------------
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Actually your eyes wouldn't pop even in a zero atmospehere. Our body's structual integrity is strong enough to handle even zero pressure without much more damage than a few bruises. Consider putting a vacuum cleaner hose on your arm, the pressure at the end will at least be 7 psi but you won't get more than a small bruise. Also, divers working at 300ft down work in pressures from 20-30 atm (20-30x normal pressure) without problems.
Also death by decompression is painful, but that's more due to gas bubbles forming in your capillaries giving you microstrokes all over your body NOT from your body exploding.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
My favorite techie quote: "Yah I read literature. I like Asimov, Tolken, and I've read all of the DeathGate cycle."
God, that is so painfully accurate.
I think there's somebody somewhere in this discussion who thought The Martian Chronicles was boring . . . and then went on to list some rancid potboilers that he likes. Ugh. Sometimes it's tough being an effete pointy-headed intellectual
Thank you, Anonymous Coward, for your insightful suggestion. I will have to keep this in mind for my later posts.
And I'm running the most unstable POS windows box ever. Why would this link crash my computer? All I got was a 404.
Freedom: "I won't!"
All of your suggestions are great. The problem is that they will never be implemented. When you're choosing a presidential candidate and all you've got to pick from are liberals like George Bush, Gary Bauer, and Alan Keyes, what hope is there for Christianity in America? None of the above candidates have committed themselves to core conservative positions, such as the death penalty for gays and the criminalization of Catholicism. Who are decent people supposed to vote for!
All I know is that if you ever plan to run for President on the platform you've outlined, you've got my vote for sure! Let me know, maybe I can chair your state campaign headquarters here in my home state (Arkansas.)
just because life appeared on earth based on carbon does not mean that it must everywhere else. just food for thought.
things started going all to hell, so the Martians packed up and came to earth. 'Course, they're not called Martians any more...
The one good thing about the movie is that it is a realistic portrayal of what an actual mars mission could look like in thirty years.
Umm, an actual mission to Mars 30 years from now will look like the Mars Climate Orbitor 18 crashing into the same spot(and for the same reason) as all the other ones have, unless Congress takes its fingers of NASA's neck.
The 'canals' on Mars are a bunch of crap. Europa on the otherhand probably has liquid water and geothermic activity. Mars is dead.
SETI is a big joke, promoted by the government conspirator Carl Sagan to deny the existance of extraterrestrial life.
The fact is, any life "out there" capable of interstellar travel would not use simple elctro-magnetic energy to communicate!! Nor could we even RECEIVE such a signal, unless it were incredibly powerful. Hell, the lag just bouncing around satellites here on Earth already degrades communications.
Chances are, withint 50 or 100 years, we'll communicate using a zero-realspace-distance means, eliminating the lag introduced travelling over space, and eliminating the possibility of interception by third parties. Of course this would have the effect of eliminating US from "hearing" those signals. If in the thousands of years of our civilization and MILLIONS of years of life here, we only used radio for 200 years, what are the chances we'd intercept another civilization out there using radio????
SETI is meant to distract us from the reality of life in the universe, to keep us slaving away at our meaningless lives while government beauracrats in high places get E-ticket rides to interstellar destinations, laughing at the problems they leave behind them.
WOW!!!, I didn't know John Rocker posted on slashdot!
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
I saw the movie last night, and yes there were quite a few glaring technical errors, but when you think about it, do you honestly think this movie was made to make every nerd in the audience (myself included) happy? Nope...this movie is serving the same purpose Armageddon did last year (if you'll remember, NASA had a large part in that movie as well).
NASA is having support issues after the two lost probes, when Armageddon came out, NASA wanted more money to track near earth objects. NASA wants more money to explore mars, but Joe and Jill Average don't wanna give them any money (they don't see space exploration as useful). They needed a movie for Joe and Jill Average (not Teddy Nerd (myself)), so that's what this was. This movie is trying to interest normal people, trying to convince them that going to Mars is a good idea.
Of course I could be wrong, but it's my best answer.
Laters...
I saw this reported as a newly discovered bug in Win 98 reported elsewhere. Any reference to a device followed by another device causes the crash when the string is interpreted by Win 98 ie c:\con\con or c:\aux\con or c:\prn\nul etc.
Not clear. What is clear is that humanity (at least US society) is largely willing to overlook the sanctity of life, vis-a-vis abortion (visited upon the only form of human life that is defined as 100% innocent of any crime of thought or deed).
But while theoretically God could create Life again, the Judeo-Christian God is widely represented as having made Himself quite clear that we're a "one-shot deal".
Though, other religions view creation as ever-occurring, or at least repeating, and some of those "other religions" include Christ-based (and perhaps Judaism-based) ones.
Personally, what I believe is that it is our valuing of human life that strengthens both our willingness and our ability to preserve all life, throughout the universe, regardless of size or "intelligence", in the long run, if that is indeed an aspect of our "destiny". If we don't value each human life as unique and special, the slope from there to not valuing any form of life at all is steep, short, and slippery.
Indeed, if that ever becomes widely accepted as "fact", we should then become a better species.
But that isn't quite what is being promoted by much of today's scientific/educational system, which generally depicts life as nearly inevitable given a (comparatively) small amount of the right elements, input energy (solar or geothermal), and a modest amount of time (a billion or so years).
Note that I agree strongly with the sentiments you express, just not so much with your belief that "they" wish to prove them as true! So thanks for your beautiful post!
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
Blah, moderators suck - they really aren't doing it for free
How do I know I wouldn't suffer poor Roblimo's fate if I sucked your cock?
I posted this article yesterday also and it was declined :(.