Slashdot Mirror
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."
a sundial is many times less complex than a digital watch.
You think you're 20 dollar "water resistant" timex can survive a trip to the red planet?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The images aren't meant to be realistic, they're meant to be representational. The images mean that humans have a torso, a smaller head, and 4 limbs in upper and lower pairs. Remember that these plaques may be seen by entities with no concept of shading, muscles, or any other style of art that we either innately comprehend due to our brain's "greedy" pattern recognition or have learned to accept as part of our years of seeing images. Every single element of the drawing must have a precise and unique meaning.
Although, the plaques carried by Voyager and Pioneer used more realistic artwork.
I suggest that you file a patent application with the USPTO for the sundial.
They will undoubtably grant you said patent after a summary verification of your email address.
You will then be able to sue NASA for enough money to start your own private market space exploration program.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
"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
That's an urban legend, dude.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
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.
Yes, in theory, we could have done that in the seventies (by 'we', read NASA and the american taxpayers). The technology needed for a "there and back again" style of mission isn't substancially different from what you need to go to the moon, if you don't mind hanging around with a couple of buddies for, oh, around three years. In fact, NASA did play with the idea of a Mars flyby or landing using Appolo hardware.
We already have that technology. Once we managed to stagger up off earths gravitywell - and we did that by going to the moon - we had the tech needed to go anywhere. But again, not fast.
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?
With the right sort of propulsion (see above), there is no need to bother with things we probaly wont master for centuries anyway.
It could be the first base humanity establishes on another planet.
Maybe - but it probaly wont be the first base humans establish on another heavenly body.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Am I the only one that thinks having the same message(or same word) in 17 languages is going to keep those alien linguists scratching their heads a while? Like they are supposed to KNOW that those are all different languages, and not all different words from the SAME language. I, for one, would not like to decode something like that if I had no idea what it was in the frist place.
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.
I hate to break it to you, but if you leave it to businesses to fund space research, then the entire population of Mars is going to be Chinese. Not that I really mind that, but I figured that, being an American, you might.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain