Whirlwinds on Mars, From the Ground

Neil Halelamien writes "Back in 1999, satellite images were photographed of 5-mile-high whirlwinds streaking across the surface of Mars. A couple of months ago the Spirit rover got a close up view of whirlwind tracks, and this past week photographed a whirlwind in action (animation). It's thought that these dust devils may be responsible for the mystery power boost to the rovers' solar cells. Last year the rovers also spotted clouds and frost."

Comments

Dear God!

[Pan T. Hose]

Have you followed the animation link? There is something at the bottom that looks like a tiny tinfoil hat that appears and disappears and reappears ad nauseam! Just thinking about it I have whirlwinds in my head... I need to get some sleep.

Noooo

[Anonymous Coward]

It's thought that these dust devils may be responsible for the mystery power boost to the rovers' solar cells.

It was Martians who powered them up!! This dust devil theory is just yet another government trick in fooling you that there are no Martians!! Next they'll reiterate there's no giant face sculpture on Mars. :(

Re:Noooo

[the_weasel]

No, we just replaced the batteries. I have to get back to the set now, one of the rovers needs to be prepped for the next shot. We are taping the discovery of a new form of sand ridge, and I need to load the film.

Re:Noooo

[NaCl]

there's no giant face sculpture on Mars. :(

It's more like :-|

Re:pre-emptive strike against all the teraformers.

[caluml]

What if the sun goes super nova?

I don't think that terraforming Mars would help here.

Re:Animation

[CrackedButter]

Looks more like a ghost to be honest. The ghost of Beagle WOOOOOOOO....

KnowwhatImeanVerne? Re:Windsock

[templest]

And what do you call those spinning things to measure airspeed? The ones with four arms with little hemispheric "cups" that catch the wind. KnowwhatImeanVerne?

A Science Vessel?

Who made the dust devils?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy TAS the devil is on holiday, got a ride with duck dodgers and presto, thats why they are called dust "devils"

Re:Windsock

[tverbeek]

Will the next batch of rovers be equipped with windsocks,

I'm just hoping they'll be equipped with a Winsock, so they can run nifty TCP/IP apps like Mosaic and WS-FTP, and maybe even a web server like ZBServer!

Re:pre-emptive strike against all the teraformers.

[tverbeek]

"What if the sun goes super nova?"

I don't think that terraforming Mars would help here.

Right. We'd be so preoccupied rewriting all the books about stellar physics to explain how it's possible for our star to go supernova, that we wouldn't have time to move everyone from the "atomize" zone (Earth's orbit) to the "atomize a few minutes later" zone (Mars' orbit).

Re:Animation

[Jesus_666]

The freaky thing is that this comes one day after "Mission to Mars" came on local TV. Hmmmm... Perhaps it's a sign that Germany has joined the Deep Space Lie program (you know, the one that tries to make uns believe that there are other planets beside Earth). I better go get my tin foil helmet.