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UFO Streaks Through Martian sky
lkatz writes "The BBC is reporting that the Spirit rover has observed an object streaking across the Martian sky. They believe it was either a meteor or possibly the Viking 2 probe which still orbits Mars."
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It's the Earthlings and they've come to give the Martians anal probes! (or whatever organ is worth probing on a martian)
Blogzine.net
This could be a flying cup from Earth!!!!
I knew it! I knew it! i knew it!@#@!#
I'd better charge up the batteries in my Subetha signalling device and hope the Dentressi are feeling like a bit of company for the voyage back!
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Um, UFO = Unidentified Flying Object?
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Obviously can't blame the martians for this one....
If it was Viking 2, let's hope those martian conspiracy theorists only got a blurry picture. We wouldn't want to let them know that there's extramartian intelligence just yet. First we have to set up the slave camps.
If they don't know what it is, then it is a UFO, by definition. Why should we avoid using the correct terminology, just because some people jump to conclusions?
UFO = Unidentified Flying Object
UFO does not just mean aliens. Any flying object that is unidentified is a UFO by definition.
I am Monkey, the Great Sage, equal of heaven!
this is proof that Al-Quaeda is using Mars as a base of operations in their development of WMD, requiring a 50-fold expansion of funding for the Mars liberation effort.
Or Steven Spielbergs special effects team working on his next SciFi movie
I predict the wackos at Enterprise Mission will have some far fetched explanation for it by the end of the day.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
AHEM! I, for one, welcome our new Martian overlords! Really I do!!
I always knew they were watching, waiting, ready for the final moment...
Headed for yet another undisclosed location.
Its those damn Earthlians trying to take over Mars! Run for your life!
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
The Infinium Phantom Gaming console. Finally a prototype is seen
if its shaped like a giant tux penguin dont be afraid.
keanmarine.com
Lane.exe should go find out what the fuck UFO stands for. Unidentified Flying Object. Since they haven't identified the object yet I'm pretty sure that's a proper name. What should they have called it, a flying saucer???
Go to the JPL site and see the pic for yourself. They have an explanation of it there.
It was only the Enterprise going back to the 23rd century with a whale from Earth. Anyone screaming "UFO!" tells me that some idiots will believe anything...
Trolling is a art,
How indecent, call the FCC.
Nah, its the little green men shooting at one another in an epic battle of water rights. You thought that water rights in the American West were a hot button topic, well on Mars.....
Seriously though, at the very least, the cool thing is that we have seen a "shooting star" from the surface of another planet for the first time. The timing of NASA and JPL on both Spirit and Opportunity so far has been impeccable. Let's hope their luck continues.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
It's the start of the INVASION! Get your tinfoil hats ready!
its 2004, and we're seeing UFO's ... on MARS!!
:P}
cool.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
[tinfoil hat] Perhaps it wasn't unidentified, and even further- Mars could be where Saddam has been hiding those weapons of mass destruction all this time. We're just witnessing it making its loop around before aiming straight for my house. [/tinfoil hat]
ok.. so heads you lose tails I win. right?
why? it's an object that's unidenfiable and that appears to be flying across the sky. UFO doesn't mean flying saucer.
but you're right about the trolls. and to think britains only ufo magazine shut down this week.
"If the UFO was not a shooting a star then it could have been one of seven out-of-commission spacecraft that still orbit Mars."
Ahah!! Hah!!! OMGOMG! I win!!!
Then the UFO on Mars was from earth?
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
I for one welcome our Mars-invading overlords.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
There has been an unexplainable surge in the price of Aluminum foil. Representative of the Aluminum manufactures of America are at a loss to explain the sudden demand.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Hmmm.. what took them so long? That picture was out a week ago.
I'd love to see the war of the worlds remake done from a martian perspective, since it's us invading mars this century- "lets go into the hills there jeb and get us some earthlinings! Damn interplanetary invaders!" - I can see the next scene of the movie, as Oportunity readies the deadly RAT to grind Jeb to bits....
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, now would it?' -Albert Einstein-
This isn't in my JPL rover simulator!
5. Laryonov's Space Advertising
4. John Kerry on Campaigning on Mars
3. North Koreans Test-firing missiles
2. Superman coming back from vacation
1. Martians getting ready to invade earth
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
You just KNOW this is going to go down in the books as PROOF of
There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
come on, News for Nerds here. we know what a UFO is.
Was it unidentified? yes. Give me a "U"!
Was it flying? ok, maybe falling, but still.. Give me an "F"!
Was it an object? yes. Give me an "O"!
what's that spell? UFO!
UFOOPL: Unidentified Flying Object Oriented Programming Language?
This image is from March 11, same day as Slashdot article about the image of the earth as seen from Mars.
March 11
Perhaps he objects to "flying" and that, unless it is proven to be staying aloft, it should be an unidentified "falling" object.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
time to commit suicide so they will take me aboard
So it's unidentified, on a distant planet ...
We have trouble identifying everything flying our own skies but now we have to worry about aliens invading our "yet to be conquered" planet.
That should bolster the arguments for building that interplanetary cannon so shoot down asteroids and other mean things coming our way. Wait, it could be a terrorist plot to take over Mars, better establish a base there, pronto.
Fourty-two!
It's obviously Beagle 2, trying to phone home.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
URL, of cource, being a TLA for U niversal R etard L ocator...
I'm surprised nobody yet did a joke about this flying object being Beagle2 that is just still bouncing on the Mars surface...
Iraq: war to save the U
As detailed in the initial NASA article the streaking was actually the result of a 15 second exposure of the sensor. It is likely that the actual object appeared as a bright moving dot against a dark sky. The length of the streak and exposure time gives NASA an estimate of speed for various theories based on the angle covered across the sensor in that 15 seconds. The data doesn't rule out a Viking orbiter but does rule out all other orbiters.
Likely origin of the "UFO" - Earth. Cool, there's finally real evidence that the UFO sighted is actually from another planet. Unfortunately if it's true then it would really be an identified flying object, not an unidentified one.
Thank you.
"Honey, I feel a certain distance between us..." "Really? A 31ms ping ain't that bad..."
Slashdot has always had purposefully sensationalist titles. It's funny, laugh.
did it look like a giant vacuum cleaner?
It's all the UFO/Area 51 hype that has made the term UFO synonymous with alien space ships. It's kind of like RAID 0 - which is not a RAID per its own definition.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Isn't that the asteroid that's headed towards Earth?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
It was my Illudium Q-35 Explosive Space Modulator. I was wondering where it got to.
-Marvin
P.S. Where was the Kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
"The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government." - George Washington
... just another weather balloon.
But there are alien vessels on Mars. Well, ones that are alien to Mars.
I've had a 1989 Yugo in orbit around Mars for about 10 years now! I miss that car.
If you blow it up with Photoshop, you clearly see it's a Piper pulling a flying banner that reads "Welcome to Amity Island!"
that it's Halman.
I also reply below your current threshold.
I would see a dozen or so shooting stars over the course of a few hours on a clear night.
Why would it be any different on mars?
You should see a lot more, even, no light pollution or pesky patches of water vapor to block them out.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Apparently the BBC is very slow about getting news out. I saw this info several days ago already.
It was a misfire of Mars' Strategic Defense Initiative to intercept incoming ballistics. Still, you have to admit that they've been pretty darn accurate so far.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Future Mars rovers will come equipped with special space-age tinfoil hats.
Ok, if it was an alien vehicle, but we're aliens on that planet, is it alien? Or do we just call it a vehicle because we're actually the aliens? Then are we being called the aliens by the people in the vehicle? Do we call our vehicle up there the alien vehicle?
I'm so confused!...
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
fail it
Yeesh, just because our faith-based edumactional system ("we believe you've got a chance to graduate...") doesn't teach important critical reasoning skills, like reading comprehension, that doesn't mean that slashdot should play down to that level. Doing so makes life to easier for the trolls.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It's just SpaceShipOne in an X-Prize test flight gone horribly wrong.
Only outlaws will streak.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
To break my new Electric Thumb out of the package! Now, if I could only find my towel...
Karma: Terrible
make it Dejah Thoris.
as an Unidentified Failing Object goes whizzing by!!!
It would be different on Mars because there is hardly any atmosphere for the meteorites to burn in.
Mars has about 0.5% of Earths atmosphere. I suspect that means that virtually every rock that would burn in our atmosphere to become a "shooting star", ends up instead hitting the ground and becomes a "crater".
False imagery on the Rover? Probably not. It's possible that a few transistors on the CCD camera deliver a wrong signal, but a line is too odd to be a hardware problem. Otherwise, you would get such lines and other noise on lots of mars pictures.
And it's definetly not noise that was added to the picture on its way to earth. There are no mail sorting machines where the picture could get a scratch - I mean the picture is probably compressed before sent, and then error detection and correction codes are used.
Freeman Dyson (Freeman Dyson!) had no trouble believing in the Ringworld
believing in what sense? That one had been observed? I don't think so.
That it could be built? You'll need nearly Jupiter's mass of a substance with the same tensile strength as an atomic nucleus. In sort, not known to our physical theories (I'll stop just short of saying it's impossible). And then to spin the thing up to 1 gravity, you'll need the amount of energy that our sun puts out in 1000 years. In short, extremely difficult. Even then it's unstable.
His concept of the "Dyson Sphere" was very different from the SF concept of "a solid shell around the sun". He merely observed that the end-point of putting stuff in space to soak up the sunlight, is that all the sunlight is soaked up by millions upon millions of things, and all that gets out is the waste heat.
More info here
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
It's obviously the spaceship for the "bunny" they found earlier. I mean, even pieces of parachute need to get around.
I really hope none of the Martian life caught it on home video... Or they're gonna have an hour long mini-series based on the event with the title "We're Not Alone"...
**cue X-Files Theme**
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
It's an event similar to what we experience with the northern lights
Huh? I thought the Northern Lights were due to solar wind hitting out magnetosphere. Mars lacks a magnetosphere so I don't think it's the same event. Are you perhaps thinking of something different?
Blaze a trail to the New World
Or is that not in the handbook?
Sure it is, you are just using the redundant channels for performance.
---
"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets"
But UFO means unidentified flying object. If it's falling out of the sky, it's not really flying. Maybe we should call it an unidentified falling object. Now we just need to figure out the acronym for it.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
these WMD jokes were old months ago.
BC
Satellites in low and medium orbits around earth are slowed by the earth's thick atmosphere. The relatively thin atmosphere of Mars would allow a spacecraft to orbit for MUCH longer at lower orbits due to reduced drag.
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
That's kind of cool--it's almost the 21st century of a 'ghost ship' if it's actually Viking. I expect we'll see more of this type of stuff in the future. Furthermore, I think it may be prudent to initiate a self-destruct capability on future probes, because you certainly don't want some extant hunk of metal slamming into your manned Mars lander some day.
The thing about real ghost ships, and abandoned cars, etc., is that they either sink or rust or are towed away in the end. Interplanetary space probes generally do not.
It's a Bird! Nope
It's a Plane! Nope
It's the Viking 2 probe?
Um, UFO = Unidentified Flying *Object*?
.NET?
Oh no! The whole galaxy is filled with OOP fanatics? Damn! We need more Unidentfied Flying Functions: UFF and UFD: Unidentfied Flying Databases.
Next are you gonna tell me that aliens use UML and
Table-ized A.I.
... which achieved Mars orbit after reaching escape velocity during nuclear bomb tests in the 1950's.
since the Martians shot down the orbiters many years ago.
Let's hope George Bush & Dick Cheney are first down the sugar mines.
Score:-1, Insightful
Hahhahahahhahaha
UFO sees you!
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Mars' surface is littered with rocks! This PROVES that, erm, uh.... that uh... that it's a conspiracy!!!!
passerby: What? what's a conspiracy?
OMG! HE'S ONE OF THEM!!!
In what NASA officials stress was a completely unrelated story, the Spirit rover stopped functioning immediately after photographing the object. A NASA spokesman was quoted as saying "Nope, the events have no relation at all. A total coincidence. Really. Whoops! Gotta go..."
Interociter
-=What do I want? I'm an American. I want more.
How to obtain karma on slashdot.
Do one or more of the following:
refference to War on terrorism in derogatory fashion
refference to Microsoft in derogatory fashion
refference to SCO in derogatory fashion
misspell simple English words whenever possible
NASA is lucky that the UFO's Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator wasn't charged up!
Maybe the chinese missed their target, slightly...
I can't believe it took fourteen minutes for an Uranus joke...
We should ask Cuato what to do about this!
"-1, Insightful"!? Almost as strange as that "4, Troll" (or was it 5?) I saw a while back....
this is really old news. i saw this on nasa's jpl site 2-3 weeks ago
Dont you Vulcans know your like 50 years too early to be making your check of earth to see if we have warpdrive!!!
god damn green blooded aliens!!!!
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Liberal. Bias. Liberal. Bias. Liberal. Bias.
ripped from Jokedump
When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training. One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks. The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people:
"What are these guys in the big suits doing?" One of the astronauts said
that they were practicing for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon.
Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, "Why certainly!" and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder's comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate.
So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder's message to the moon.
Finally, an official government translator was summoned. After he finally stopped laughing the translator relayed the message: "Watch out for these assholes - they have come to steal your land."
Some of us aren't so easily fooled by your obvious attempt at covering up the existence of extra terrestrial intelligence!
Maybe lint on the lens? You never know.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
to what is is happening when Opportunitites' back is turned, looking at the ground.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Unidentified Not On The Ground Object (UNOTGO)
Even has a pronounable acronym. You not go!
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
When I saw the picture I thought it looked a lot like an Iridium flare- a glint from the solar panels from the Iriduim communications satellites.
part of the ISS that broke off!
It's unrelated news, not related. If it was related, then the relationship would be presented in the story.
Regards,
Spock_NPA
It would be funny if the picture would show mars express, showing that the nasa had clue about other projects.
And don't be offput by the right-wing ACs. A few drams of wine and they'll be in their cups, I guarantee.
Hiesenberg UFO principle: You cannot know the identity without knowing the origin and vice-versa.
It is actually the beginnings of the Martian Invasion.
CNN Reports. Marvin Martian seen hovering over the Martian surface.
Upon closer inspection the rover took this snapshot which leading scientists believe to be Marvin's butt.
( | )
When asked about the incident NASA spokesman Seymor Butts said, "We have no comment on the matter whatsoever."
Act of war or Martian prank? Tune in to your local news affiliate tonight for the full story.
*Commercial*
On an all new racy video they show it all |CENSORED|.
Buy it now, through this television offer.
Aliens gone wild.
See wild out of control aliens flash the camera.
They bear it all.
A bevvy of green, blue, and orange women, who can't be tamed.
These aliens want to have some fun.
With special guest appearance by Captain James Tiberius Kirk.
Aliens gone wild.
GET IT TODAY!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Why are we on Mars again? To discover if there is water there? Doesn't Mars have ice caps or something? Gasp.....does that mean water is already there?
i agree with this post. although UFO is accurate, it is still misleading.
the parent poster has a very good point, and misleading titles are a big problem on slashdot.
AHAH! I knew it, they're slowly releasing the martian pics that they didn't want us to see! Like in the pepsi commercial, the little aliens stealing the wheels off the rover. I wonder what else they'll show us now...
Previous comment here...
Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.
Only occasionally does it raise its sights towards the sky to study the atmosphere of Mars. So if there are Martian birds, we're not going to notice them unless they actually poop on the rover? How about small flying insects? ;-)
C'mon, it's just a weather balloon.
When the Viking satellite took a picture of the famous "Face On Mars," scientists figured it was just a rock formation. But NASA revealed pictures of it to the public in an attempt to spark in interest in the space program. And the response was incredible. Books, conspiracy theories and other things were devoted to it. The people wanted the truth about the Face on Mars and NASA delivered it. The so-called Face On Mars was really just a Mesa. I'm sure that many people will think that the UFO really is extraterrestial in nature, even though it most likely is not. But if it gets the public more interested in Mars, it might be worth some publicity.
Sorry for the double post Was really just a mesa
Although orbital mechanics is not my specialty, I think NASA should be able to calculate an approximate orbit and take more images to see if it might be Viking 2.
The height of the streak in the image, the distance away and the orientation of camera will give the position. Put this with velocity to get the orbit. So, we just need to know distance away and velocity. The length of the streak plus the exposure time can give them a equation of velocity vs. distance away. Orbital mechanics gives another equation for velocity vs. height. Use these 2 equations to solve for the orbit, assuming the object is in orbit and not just passing by. NASA knows the orbital elements of Viking 2 when it was in use and can use these to see if the calculated orbit is reasonable.
Then using the orbit, calculate times the object would be visible to either rover and make some long exposures at the predicted times to look for it again. The only problem I can see is that the measurement error might be too much to make accurate predictions about future approaches.
This assumes NASA cares whether it's Viking 2.
You insensitive clod...that was my ass being flamed on another board.
Now, I not only have to think of a way to defend myself, I have to worry about people on two planets knowing about it.
Maybe it's just another hot alien on her way to crash into Tenchi's house.
It'll begin with a rotating star in the sky and a little 'bing' sound and end with the new alien and Sasami spending the night in Tenchi's room much to the dismay of Ayeka and Ryoko who will no doubt exchange lightning bolt glares in the hall while Noboyuki peeps at them from his slightly open door and masturbates furiously.
(Must...stop...onslaught...of...Tenchi...DVDs.)
Have we found one of the lost landers still looking for a place to park, close to the entrance?
[scottish accent] "Alien wessels!!!? On Mars?"
misspell simple English words whenever possible
Let's stick to simple karma building to begin with. Mispeling wurds iz advansed editer levul coarse.
Sales of Aluminium were up.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I doubt a UFO would fly right in front of one of our cameras that they would defineately know was there if they were around. I am a very open minded person, but I would say it is more likely to have something like this happen on earth, with just one witness so they could spray him/her with rum so nobody would believe their story.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
Does anyone else find this bizzarre? What are the odds that the rover happened taking a picture of that part of the sky at that exact instant? Isn't it even more mind boggling that the streak is roughly dead-center in the picture Has anyone ever attempted to snap a picture of a meteor, even when you're expecting a meteor shower that night? It's damned hard... the only way to really do it is to use a long exposure and just wait.
The odds against this kind of coincidence must be staggering. Any math geniuses want to take a stab at it? We could estimate how often the half-dozen (?) satellites around mars would pass through that particular section of the sky, and we know roughly how many photos the rovers take in a given day... The odds must be something like one in a billion, or worse. I can't help but think of the slashdot sig I see once in a while... something like "The face of the moon is covered with the results of astronomical odds."
Maybe it's Superman!
Well, we've seen:
Superman fly in counter-orbit, the evil trio fly from the Phantom Zone disk to Earth, and I think there's mention somewhere of Superman flying to Krypton.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I think it's just awesome that this thing might be our own damn space litter and we can't tell for sure. Money well spent.
We eat the pig and then together we BURN!!!
..when played back, it went "Oh no, not again!"
The hypocrisy, the closeminded stupidity, the corruption, the violation of basic standards of governance, and the hubris of the right pushes me further and further to the left every day.
Enjoy your stay at the font of evil.
i could make up some crap like this. mod down!
The litle pup must have been out thier chasing his tail.
thank god we have you to point out such errors! you're my super hero! Hopefully slashdot editors will get your point.
Splitting hairs but actually no it's not. Disk striping (commonly called RAID0) is not redundant, therefore it's not technically a form of "__Redundant__ Array of Independent Disks".
Be happy. Nothing else matters.
And that purpose is to challenge the basic assumptions we've made about the universe and how it behaves.
I'm not saying that anyone should junk the work that we've been building on since the Greeks through Galileo, Kepler and the like up till today.
But when someone comes along like him I think that instead of outright dismissal, it's helpful and healthy to re-examine and re-articulate those assumptions.
When speculative and sensational shows like the Fox "alien autopsy" and "faked moon landing" appear, it's a perfect time to re-explain that there hasn't been a single verifiable piece of evidence that UFOs are actually alien spacecraft, and that we DID go to the moon, and went there after creating an amazing space launch infrastructure in a very short time.
Somewhat tangenitally, I sincerely believe we need heretics in any field to shake up orthodoxies and make people think a bit, even about how the basic assumptions came to be.
It's just Dick Cheney heading home.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
now can we move on...
I for one welcome our new Earthling Overlords
War was beginning...
Martian Captain: What Happened?
Martian Soldier: Somebody set us up the bomb!
Martian Soldier: We get signal!
Martian Captain: Main Screen Turn On!
Martian Captain: It's you!
Viking: How are you gentlemen!!
Viking: All your rover are belong to us
Viking: You are on the way to destruction
Martian Captain:What you say!!
Viking: You have no chance to survive make your time
Viking: HA HA HA HA...
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Of course its a damned UFO... They do not know what it is and its 'flying'. SO of couse its a U nidentified F lying O bject! :)
Slow news day?
There is a (far-fetched) point to that link though. Several reports of "alien" abductions turn out to be nothing more than traumatizing experiences of regular abductions (by humans) during either childhood, teenage years, or under the influence of some drug or alcohol.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Probably just a weather balloon... :-)
It's Homer Simpson.
LOL. I was trying to make that same joke earlier. I mean, I knew there was a joke in there somewhere about it not being flying, but I overlooked falling. I couldn't find the punchline and I knew someone else would, so I gave up and cancelled my post. I've got no mod points to give you, but hey, aren't compliments nicer anyway?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No one has proven that UFO's doesn't come from earth itself. So maybe they left earth and hovering over Mars now.
Ok, so first they're here, but we're not suppose to know or that they come from mars, right. Then when we do find out, they're suddenly seen on mars, which we were not supposed to find out. AND THEN YOU TELL ME THEY FRIGGIN COME FROM EARTH?
With great power comes great electricity bills.
no shit fuckface, what is this then: www.tubgirl.com
flying "what??" or flying UFO's????
Its not all that unlikely. Simply think about it like this. Things with odds that are millions to one happen on a day to day basis. We simply don't notice them because they don't seem out of the ordinary. (to quote Dead Poet's Society).
So yes - while the chances of Spirit taking that photo are millions to one, the chances of something odd happening like this are probably pretty darn good.
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
It's not falling out of the sky. The picture was taken with a 15-second exposure, causing the streak.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
You see, you have this mat, with different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO!
dmanore@students.depaul.edu
I Want To Believe
Whats even funnier is the post right above yours said the same thing and got modded as Funny, while you got modded as Troll!
If it's in orbit it's still not flying. It's falling...
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
The object is my fault. Its the Windows PC that I launched into space a few months ago.
Windows is as solid as quicksand.
Was this really a shooting star, or just a streak caused by a too long exposure time? Normal orbiting satelites don't appear as shooting stars, but as bright dots moving straight across the sky (and even that only when they're in direct sunlight). Shooting stars are objects burning up in the upper athmosphere. How likely would it be that Spirit just accidentally witnessed the burn-up of a man-made object that had been orbiting Mars for the past 25 years?
oh wait..
Well, you never know...
how cool is it that we got to look up with our robot on Mars in just the nick of time to see one of our own probes disintegrate... or even better yet maybe there's a whole lot more goin' on Mars that we think.
kudos and cheers to humanity on that one. good job everybody!
scientists are the coolest sexiest motherfuckers on the planet
This is clearly an artificial satellite. Look very closely at the line. You can see very faintly a random brightening and dimming. This is a tell-tale characteristic of an old satellite that is rotating on a few of it's axes. The sun glints off the solar panels to different degrees as it rotates and moves, thus the brightening-dimming effect. Quite frankly, I'm surprised NASA missed this.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Rather than linearly extrapolating a boring anthropomorphic future where biological creatures are physically living on the surface(s) of such a sphere (StarTrek-style), it's much more likely that the sphere would actually be the processing substrate of a post-biological existence (i.e. a big, optimal "Matrix").
Some have gone so far as to attribute the "missing mass" problem to the idea that there might in fact already be millions of advanced civilizations' stars which are visibly hidden by these shells.
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Power to the Peaceful
You know, those things that can't possibly be regular contrails, because this guy I know said that they don't look right. It's obviously a government plot to spray us all with secret chemicals.
I saw a web site about it so it must be true.
Until she gets back, I can leave the basement sans regret!
Who gives a fuck if you posted it a few days ago? How does this contribute anything at all to the discussion?
Shit like this is just as bad as FP posts.
Hopefully someone will get the chance to metamoderate the mods who did this.
This is NOT informative, seriously.
Assuming that Venusians exist then I think you are being insensitive to them.
Promote Sensitivity on Slashdot, make me your friend.
Plenty flying... It's falling with style.
they got me on camera...
"poop" i just have to say that again "poop"
Keep your wast of space off the slashdot please.
was Michael Shanks post-Stargate SG-1 acting career.
Yeah, except these days most people take UFO to mean a flying saucer.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If we encountered anthropoidal aliens whos custom was to not cover their breasts and schlongs, would we be allowed to see the encounter on public TV?
that Mr. Ashcroft and the FCC doesn't have jurisdiction over inner planetary space just yet. The UFO could get in trouble for showing it's WMD in public.
Maybe it was a cloaking malfunction. {/juvenile}
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more. This is a complete record of its thought from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.
Ah...! What's happening? it thought.
Er, excuse me, who am I?
Hello?
Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now...oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It's a sort of...yawning, tingling sensation in my...my...well, I suppose I'd better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let's call it my stomach.
Good. Ooooh, it's getting quite strong. And hey, what about this whistling roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that...wind! Is that a good name? It'll do...perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I've found out what it's for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What's this thing? This...let's call it a tail--yeah, tail. Hey! I can really thrash it about pretty good, can't I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn't seem to achieve very much but I'll probably find out what it's for later on. Now, have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?
No.
Never mind, hey this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation...
Or is it the wind?
There really is a lot of that now, isn't there?
And wow! Hey! What this thing suddenly coming toward me very fast? Very, very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide-sounding name like...ow...ound...round...ground! That's it! That's a good name--ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?
And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.
(Douglas Adams)
One in a million!
Thats the worst idea I've ever heard!
Hey, Maybe Beagle II has finally turned up. :-)
Steve
Kodos: Looks Kang, Mars has a new SUV Kang: That doesn't mean we have to trade up! Kodos: But I'm tried of flying around the universe looking like Rigellian Grey Trash! Kang: Why don't you pick up the space phone and call someone who gives a frakinin' snit?
Unidentified Flying Object?
If the object is a redundant orbiter, then it's not within Mar's atmosphere, and is therefore not, by definition, flying. Which would mean that the original parent poster has a good point.
Let a Beagle off the leash and it goes tearing off after a scent...
Or maybe not, but its remains must certainly be somewhere.
you mod this redundant when it is the only overlords reference in the discussion? Fucking retarded moderators.
The answer is 42.
So not only do we litter Earth orbit, now we're littering Mars orbit too! I wonder if the NASA rednecks ever put their old satellites up on cinder-blocks?
(The article says there are seven non-working craft orbiting Mars now).
Be careful what you wish for...
Where your treasure is there is your heart also...
I prefer U.D.I. - after a heavy night you may wake up with one. ie an Unidentified Drinking Injury
wakeup `whoami`
It's neo surfing around
That's all [insert name here] bullship. Don't know who to blame but I searched for more data and found several pictures like that.
Like this (don't know exposition time) and this (five minute exposition, march 11).
All have similar streaks, the only difference is the streak on the "UFO" picture seens to be alone and probably move faster (since it's a 15 seconds exposition) or that's just zoom effect. And probably was the first to be photographed, so that's might be the reason it created so much hype between NASA people.
This is what I belive to be the original image, taken from this page.
There is some discussion here but I didn't read it all.
She had to diisappear to somewhere!
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
Apparently it was trailing a banner which read "YANKEES GO HOME!!!"
Ha ha! I did it. And it's redundant because it is in EVERY OTHER DISCUSSION ON SLASHDOT. It is a massively overlived joke that isn't even funny.