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New Movies of Whirlwinds on Mars
FleaPlus writes "The Pasadena Star-News, APOD, and WPBF report on new movies of Martian whirlwinds, captured by Spirit rover inside Gusev Crater. These movies are the result of a new imaging technique developed after the initial spotting of whirlwinds by Spirit last month.
Here is the first and second video. According to a rover team member, 'This is the best look we've ever gotten of the wind effects on the martian surface as they are happening.'"
Could anyone care to explain how winds are started if there is no to little atmosphere? Does this for instance imply that there is water in the air on mars?
Until they get the next Mars Rover there that's going to be powered by a RTG (http://www.nuclearspace.com/a_2009_Rover.htm)!!
If it ends up working anywhere near as well as the current rovers, it might still be operational when astronauts land on Mars in 2020(Im trying as hard as possible to be involved in this project once I get out of college)
This supports a wind erosion theory for the bluberries. I'd heard people say that the atmosphere is too thin to really erode them much; clearly, if it's strong enough to suspend dust in densitites like this, it's got enough force to erode/polish the pebbles to roundness.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
I hope we get a research station on mars, even if it is unmanned. It will be a starting point for building more.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I'm curious to know how much effort/man hours is put into studying this kind of phenomena. Do NASA folks just say "That's cool, look at that." like I do, or do they assign a team to spend a month trying to extrapolate airspeed, volume, spin direction, lifespan, and other attributes that I can't even think of?
I guess I mean: does this really mean anything important to a scientist, or is it just eyecandy for the taxpayers?
xxx Earth xx Venus xx Mars
O2 xx 0.20 xx 0.001 xx 10^-7
CO2 xx 0.0003 xx 64 xx 0.009
H2O xx ~ 0.02 xx ~ 0.01 xx ~10-6
Am I reading this right, we have more of an atmosphere on Venus than mars? Why don't we go search that planet. If there a greater chance to find evidence of life there? Why deal with a "dead" planet when we have another planet with oxygen and carbon dioxide. Who knows, maybe we can give Venus CPR. We start with a small station with plants. We build a mini enclosed ecosystem. Then we build another, and another.
I know, we might as well try it in a desert first, but I bet it can be done.
The CO2 number really sticks out. Plants could convert that to oxygen.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I guess I mean: does this really mean anything important to a scientist, or is it just eyecandy for the taxpayers?
They have teams. Nothing is done because of individual interest. It is a huge beuracracy, you have managment like any business, that directs the scientists.
It is one of the knocks on the university system. When you start out, getting your BA or AB, you can study many different things, math, biology, literature, physics, sociology, chemisty. But once you start for a PhD, you then pick one small thing and spend the next 7 years studying it and researching it. For example, you could not pick Biology for a PhD, you would pick Genetics. And even then, you're research might be limited to a subset of Genetics, maybe how Gene X produces protien Y in albinos.
I think it would be cool if places like NASA let scientists pick thier projects. Or even let outsiders in, for example if you have a masters in geography and you're interested in helping map the surface of mars, that you can sign up for that work.
Come to think of it, why don't they run NASA like sourcefourge. There is alot of talent out there. And it would make people feel like they are contributing to discovery, rather than living a mundane dilbertesq life.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
This might tickle your brain a bit.
On earth, the day is blue and the sun sets red.
On mars, it's the other way around: The day is red and the sunsets are blue.
Weird huh?
I guess I mean: does this really mean anything important to a scientist, or is it just eyecandy for the taxpayers?
They have teams. Nothing is done because of individual interest. It is a huge beuracracy, you have managment like any business, that directs the scientists.
Well, yes and no. One of the scientists I work with at Cornell University is in the Atmospheric interest group of the MER project. The science team is broken up into interest groups such as Atmospheric, Geology, Soils, Long Term Planning, etc, which allows for parallel planning. Every day there is a Science Operations Working Group meeting, at which the agenda is decided - plans are merged and different courses of actions are argued. But don't think for a moment that there's never been anything done by MER simply because a single scientist thought it was important. Professor Squyres once called in on a day he wasn't even working to make sure panoramic cameras got some good images of the micrometeorite impact.
I think it would be cool if places like NASA let scientists pick thier projects.
I worked at JPL as an intern, and then as an operations staff worker for MER, and I can say that the people there are certainly not all working on projects that they did not choose. In fact, many were hired to work on a specific project, and while they usually move on afterwards, it's not like they are often stuck working on some project they hate. Indeed, many scientists/engineers work for NASA for such low pay precisely because they are working on something much more interesting to them than they would in industry for twice the money.
And it would make people feel like they are contributing to discovery, rather than living a mundane dilbertesq life.
Anyone working for NASA that feels that way is doing something wrong - when I was at JPL we had our share of management problems and budget issues, but it was anything *BUT* dilbert. Most of the coworkers are as crazy as you, the ideas that are being worked on even crazier... The pioneer feeling doesn't seem to really fade... even if what you are working on has been done before many times, it's still new, because it's innnnn spaaaaaaaaaaaaace!.
Come to think of it, why don't they run NASA like sourceforge.
Because most people aren't rocket scientists? Because spreading around responsibility too thinly is the surest way to see that nothing gets done (or no one is held accountable)?
Don't get me wrong - I'd love to see the NASA change to be more agile, more risk-taking and more "open ended" in some ways - but lets get real, this is the government. (insert typical slashdot statement about writing to senators or voting your opinion - doesn't change the fact that most people in the country simply do not CARE about this at all).