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New Movies of Whirlwinds on Mars

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the this-don't-look-like-kansas-no-more dept.

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.'"

4 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Can't Wait by TheKidWho · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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)

  2. Blueberries by The+Fun+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  3. Re:What kind of analysis will scientists do with t by John+Seminal · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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?

    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."

  4. Re:Gosh, what next? by icejai · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?