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Whirlwinds on Mars, From the Ground

Posted by timothy on from the close-up dept.

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."

7 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Dear God! by Pan+T.+Hose · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

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    Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
    "Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
  2. Re:pre-emptive strike against all the teraformers. by caluml · · Score: 4, Funny
    What if the sun goes super nova?

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

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  3. Re:Animation by CrackedButter · · Score: 4, Funny

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

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    Jonathanjk.com
  4. KnowwhatImeanVerne? Re:Windsock by templest · · Score: 3, Funny
    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?
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  5. Who made the dust devils? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

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

  6. Re:Windsock by tverbeek · · Score: 4, Funny
    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!

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    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  7. Re:pre-emptive strike against all the teraformers. by tverbeek · · Score: 4, Funny
    "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).

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