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Mars Sundials - True Colors, Ambiguous Hours
An anonymous reader writes "NASA's Astrobiology Magazine today has an interview with Bill Nye, the Science Guy, who spearheaded the first interplanetary sundial, which will land on Mars in early January. The Cornell sundial inscription reads "Two Worlds, One Sun" in 17 languages [including ancient Sumerian and Mayan], and was selected over such historical mottos as one French sundial that reads: "Every hour injures; the last one kills". The sundials were an inspired transformation of a needed [mainly orange-pink] color wheel to calibrate the Mars' panoramic cameras to give true Martian colors, but so resembled the shadow-casting time pieces, that Nye took it over to become an internet-updated interplanetary dial." Read on for some more.
Our reader continues: "There are no conventional hour lines at all on these dials, because unlike regular sundials, they are on moving platforms. Nye says: 'Before people figured this out back in the first era of Mars probes (also the first Disco Era) the images from the Viking spacecraft were too pink or orange. Those "over-pink" images still show up in Mars science fiction movies and Mars-themed posters and restaurant walls. One of the charming challenges is roughly, "What is an hour on Mars?" Is it a "Mour?" Is it a "quadraduodeci-sol," a twenty fourth of a sol, a Mars day? ' The interview recounts the Apollo 12 controversy over whether one of the first lunar probes, Surveyor, returned viable contaminants to Earth."
And then it doesn't work. Or it blows up.
Sound familiar Bill?
At some future point, when human existence is long forgotten, some entity will find this plaque long since buried in the martian dust, and think to themselves "My god, what shitty artist they were".
Seriously, i'm not a big fan of UI design, what being a programmer and all, but come on, shell out five grand for something better than squiggly "see jane run" pictures of people. Or hell, at least use better stick figures. I'm sure the whole development team has access to MS products and can grab the annoying clip-art stick figures we see in every fookin slide at a conference. I swear if I see another image of a stick figure guy scratching his head on the slide entitiled "Any Questions?" I'm going to start shooting people...
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
What time is it on Mars?
No more Micro$oft bashing from me. Its like bashing at the special olympics.
And they could have used a colour chart from a paint store with a digital watch taped to the side for the same effect.
Occam's (spelling?) razor, people. Go for the simplest solution.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
While I'm all for extra-planetary studies, I don't believe it should be funded by taxpayer dollars. I know this won't make me popular with the Slashdot crowd, but I think most NASA missions are overpriced boondoggles. I would much rather see things like this done via the private market. This would free up money for more important things, like fighting terrorism and tax relief to a beleagured public.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Where do I sign up?
> The Cornell sundial inscription reads "Two Worlds, One Sun" in 17 languages [including ancient Sumerian and Mayan]
So when that Sumerian spaceship finally reaches Mars, they'll feel at home and know what time it is.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
...welcome our new MMT (mars mean time) overlords.
Then they changed his time slot so it was during school hours. I guess they thought unemployed people would enjoy the show more than gradeschoolers. For a latchkey kid like me, it was shows put on by people like Bill that got me interested in science, along with my science inclined uncle.
As for the sundial, I'm not exactly wetting myself, but it's not as stupid as other posters are making it out to be. If you're gonna do something trivial like color correction, you might as well spice it up and do it nerd style.
"Two Worlds, One Sun" in 17 languages [including ancient Sumerian and Mayan], and was selected over such historical mottos as one French sundial that reads: "Every hour injures; the last one kills".
I can't imagine why, I mean that second motto is just such an optemistic and inspirational message to send to another world! I mean just repeat it to yourself,"Every hour injures; the last one kills," don't you feel better already?!
I stole this Sig
At the beep it will be 25:62:87 on Smarch 47th GMT (General Mars Time) BEEEP!
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
BTW, the simpler design of the Kalashnikov AK-47 rifle was what enabled the Vietcong to prevail over American soldiers equipped with the Stone M-16, which was more advanced.
-- I hereby announce, on behalf of my great ancester Oog, a retroactive patent on THE WHEEL.
Actually, according to the article (there's even a picture where this is visible), the inscription "Two Worlds, One Sun" is in English only, and the word "Mars" is in 17 languages.
Following a few links from the mission site, I found the answer to a question I had about the communications capabilities of the rovers.
n s.html
They can communicate directly back to Earth at a slow speed ( 3,500 to 12,000 bits/sec ) or they can communicate via the Mars orbiting spacecraft (Odyssey or Mars Global Surveyor) at a rate of 128,000 bits/sec. The orbiters are only 250 miles from the planet surface.
Unfortunately, there was no information about protocols, encoding, or error correction schemes..
Some good info is here: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/mission/communicatio
I just looked up world in the dictionary and deffination #14 "A planet or other celestial body" sure Pluto has a bit of a struggle (unjust I may vote) but to siginify where we came from or even where we are at, I would think a decent representation of our solar system would be a good start. It is a nice touch but maybe the Europa(ian?) race of things that live under the ice are upset.
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
I'm more excited about the use of these dials for photocalibration. Mars may or may not have a blue sky, but at least we can know for sure with these things on their way.
It's cool to have seen him progress so far. Truly, the world needs more guys like Bill Nye, the science guy.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
When someone wants to be really geeky and someone asks them the time, they can say "For where? Here, or on mars? AHAHAH! MARS! HAHAH! BET YOU WEREN'T EXPECTING THAT!"
I am a filthy pirate.
So I guess we can use the Hubble telescope to look at the sundial on Mars (when it's visible) to tell the time! What'll they think of next??
Just throw humans on there. I mean, all these rovers and probes, they could turn to research to enable humans to travel to mars, i.e. supplies storage/possible cold(cryo) sleep/faster propulsion, etc; There are enabling technologies out there and with physics horizons being redefined every day, there's no reason to say "Look. We've got pictures, we've got soil tests, we've got maps, we have a whole lot of stuff, but let's get on with it and focus on putting humans on Mars." Apparently it has some sort of thin atmosphere, it just needs to be temerature regulated. Well, with some sort of habitat that can withstand the Martian weather and control internal climate, there's no limit to the utility of it. It could be the first base humanity establishes on another planet.
I am a sundial
and I make a botch
of what is done far
better by a watch!
For Carl Sagan.
one French sundial that reads: "Every hour injures; the last one kills"
"Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat", French ? that's latin...
Here in a secret place forgotten, I
Mark the tremendous process of the sky.
So may your inmost soul, forgotten mark
The dawn, the noon, the coming of the dark.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I for one welcome our new Martian overlords.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
s/Mars/Venus
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
I suppose you mean 'propulsion allowing a higher terminal speed'. Todays chemical rockets are basicly 'burn, then coast'. You accelerate a lot for a while, then glide towards the target. A ion-engine or a nucular rocket will let you accelerate less but for a much longer time, meaning you'll get a higher terminal velocity. The providial Holy Grail for interplanitary missions would be an engine which would let you accelerate forever. Just think about it; you blast off into orbit, then turns on the flightengine. That gently accelerates you to one G.. and keeps that accelatation all the time. Halfway to the target, you simply turns around and deacceleate with one G, leaving you with zero relative speed as you enter orbit around Mars (or wherever you want to go). The speeds you'll reach are way higher than any chemical rocket can provide, the flighttime shortens and we don't have to worry about the determinal effects of living in zero G for years on end. I havn't got my notes and calculator here right now, but maybe someone could punch up some numbers on this?
.5 * acceleration * time^2 .5 * 9.8 * time^2
This is an easy one.. Okay, Mars was at it's closest a few months ago, right? A quick google tells me that it was 55.76 million kilometers away at the time.
So, since we're accelerating to there and then slowing down halfway, basically we divide the problem into two parts. How long will it take to get halfway there? Then we simply double it to get the reverse, how long it'll take to slow down.
-Half of 55,760,000,000 meters is 27,880,000,000 meters.
-One G is 9.8 m/s^2
Distance traveled =
27,880,000,000 =
Solve for time, and you get 75430.73589... seconds. But that's only halfway to Mars, so double it to get the slowdown part too and you have 150861.4717... seconds. Divide by 60 for minutes, divide by 60 for hours, and you come up with roughly 41 hours, or about a 1 and 3/4 days total.
So yeah, if you had all the delta V you could handle, you could be there in under a couple days.
Too bad we don't have that.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Using mars-orbiting spacecraft (plural) for communication with earth is not a new thing: it's very efficient since the distance to the orbiter is small and the orbiter has big solar cells and can thus send a powerful signal back to earth.
NASA has extensive plans to develop this scheme much further, the eventual goal being the Mars Network that, through a number of orbiters, will/should enable a "downlink" speed Mars->Earth of about 3 Tbit/Sol in 2015 (which is slightly less than 100 Mbps).
This network is then of course shared by all Mars surface and orbital missions.
(And yes, I've commented on this before)
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My girlfriend thinks Nasa's going to arrive there and find the origins of my gender.
"Derp de derp."
I thought that should be
"Take Me TO Your Leader!!!"
The lunatic is in my head
a friend of mine saw him at the king county library and she said "he was an ass"
and this last summer another friend of mine worked for a company that does business with bill nye's internet stuff, and he said "he was an ass"
sorry, thats how i heard it
Give me Beakman any day of the week. And Josie. Gotta have Josie.
See, I told you flat-rate ISDN is always the best solution when you can't get broadband! :-)
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Can you imagine our new alien overlords greeting us in Latin? What would they think if the first they read of us was a long-time extinct language. No thanks.
I would much rather see things like this done via the private market.
You know, I think you got something there... I'm sure we'd all find it very endearing to see a glorius coke bottle shaped rocket blasting off into space.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
can you please explain to me how the surface temperature is relevant to a device that uses no moving mechanical, nor electronic parts.
Machine9dotNet
If I recall, Bill Nye was a character on a Seattle-based comedy show called "Almost Live". He's actually educated, but the whole "Science Guy" character came from a comedy show. (And the kid's show started there.) And now he's heading up projects like this???
That was about 15 years ago, so maybe people who remember will remember more clearly and call me an idiot. Other Slashdot readers will probably call me an idiot regardless...
Can anyone even say Bill Nye, without feeling a compulsion to add "The Science Guy"?
"When deep space exploration ramps up, it will be the corporations that name everything; the IBM stellar- sphere, the Microsoft galaxy, the planet Starbucks."
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
You know, with all these languages they have printed on this thing, you'd think they'd put it in Martian! ... what do you mean they don't know Martian?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
he thought we were sending this to venus.
2 worlds 1 sun? How does this have any meaning at all? Our solar system has alot more than 2 planets, and we have sent off observational probes to many more than just "2 worlds", so what exactly is this phrase supposed to mean?
Also I have a theory that the stupid drawings actually WERE done by kids. They probably had some contest or something. Remember, Nye is into educating kids and thus probably wanted to involve them at some level.
Also included in the dial is another clever inscription written in Black speech that translates to:
One Dial to rule them all, One Dial to find them,
One Dial to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
Omnes Blessant Ultima Necat if I am not mistaken. it was ingraved on all roman sundial.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Obviously it's 3,600 seconds, same as everywhere else in the Universe. That is, the amount of time it takes for light to travel (300,000 - epsilon)km, 3600 times. Silly humans.
:-)
A more useful question would be, "what is a useful way to divide up the Martian day?" The obvious answer is 10 decads, each composed of 100 centads.
Atleast they didn't put "All your base are belong to us" on the sun dial, although I have to admit that would be kind of cool.
Where's the fire button?
/clueless
Please tell me that they did not send these things to Mars with the following incorrect use of an apostrophe:
"We sent this craft in peace to learn about Mars' past and about our future."
It's called the coefficient of thermal expansion, and given the difference between the daytime temp on Mars vs. Mercury or Venus, it'd have a measurable effect on the sundial reading (depending on what the dial was made of, 'course)
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
That's roman. Am I the only one who read "each hour hurts, the last one kills" and thought... hey, that's just a bad translation of "vulnerant omnia, ultima necat"?
The original is better because it only says "each one hurts, the last one kills", adding "hours" makes it too obvious, and lessens the effect.
If anyone said this already, sorry, I am not reading the comments if that prevents me from writing a pedantic nitpick.
What if it gets dirty?
>Mars has such a thick layer of clouds that the surface temperature is over 800 degrees due to the greenhouse effect.
No it doesn't. Check out those white bits at the poles of Mars. Solid CO2, sublimation temperature -80 degrees C. Mars is COLD.
I believe it's Venus you are thinking of. Greenhouse effect AND sulfuric acid rain, very welcoming.
If you can't tell the difference between Mars and Venus (insert obvious lame joke here)...
- PW
I am a sundial, turned the wrong way round.
I cost my foolish mistress fifty pound.