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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."
from companIEes who cause/allow those annoying jump-you ads, etc...
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consult with/trust in yOUR creator.... that's the spirit.
Out of MOD points...
Pushing this up with my head!
*Nnngh*
*Nnngh*
*Nnngh*
Hey, at least I tried!
haha, you sir, definately need some funny mod points! ROTFL GG !!!11!!!! LOLLOL~!
"Micro$oft bashing and complex sarcasm yeilds "Karma: Bad"."
MS bashing always leads to bad karma here. If you want to get your karma back up just post a few "XP is really stable" and "MS is not really that bad" posts. If you want you can even lie and post a message that says "MS has never sued anybody for patent infringement".
You are guaranteed to be moddded up the wazoo!.
I am posting this anonymously because the astro turfers will mod me down for saying this.