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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."
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
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!!
> 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
This leads to a lot of other problems,
Mars! Brought to you by Microsoft
Hailey's Comet! Sponsored for the next 76 years by AOL Time Warner
All viable space science! Funded by SCO
Alright, maybe not that last one, but you get the point
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Hey, c'mon now, look who it's from - this was the best choice. The French only submitted two for consideration. The other one said "We surrender..."
I for one welcome our new Martian overlords.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
I would think that for the first humans visiting Mars, the more appropriate inscription on the sundial would be:
"If this is your only method of telling time on Mars, you're fucked."
"Unfortunately, there was no information about protocols, encoding, or error correction schemes.."
They're going to use 802.11g with the Hubble Scope in place of the Pringles can.
"Derp de derp."
Can anyone even say Bill Nye, without feeling a compulsion to add "The Science Guy"?