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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.'"
Direct links to the animated GIFs are here:
;-)
PIA07861.gif and PIA07863.gif.
To those of you that don't want to download 3MB of animated GIFs for a 2 second view of a whirlwind on Mars let me sum it up for you. Dust, a small hill, and what appears to be a UFO dancing around on the screen.
For those of you that are conspiracy theorists... This could be a UFO sighting! It also could have been made in any one of the deserts in the USA (or abroad!)
Clearly this effect is caused by the recoil of an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator
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)
Interesting to see what the weather looks like on Mars. What I'd like to know is if weather.com is going to start posting forecasts for other planetary bodies anytime soon.
Very nice to know that the dust devils are helping the rovers along. I wonder if we could get them to wash and wax the rovers as well.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
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
These movies are certainly better that Red Planet.
What if that mime really is trapped in a box?
...and in conclusion, this footage offers concrete proof that there are not martian dust devils, as my esteemed colleges suggest, but proof of Tasmain Martianius Spinnus maximus, or in laymas terms, Martian Tasmanian Devils.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The page will almost certainly get /.d since the animated GIFs are over 1.5 MB each.
Here's a mirror if that happens:
Video 1
Video 2
Have fun!
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."
The properties of fluids are the same on Earth and Mars.
Man, what if all of physics works the same there? Just think of the number of stories.
"Scientist discovers light on Mars!"
"Stuff falls down when you drop it on Mars!"
"On Mars, stuff stays where you put it!"
"On Mars, a rock keeps moving if you kick it!"
"Mars displays friction!"
"On Mars, energy tends to move from stuff with more to stuff with less!"
This didn't start out as a Troll, sorry. I'm just tired of Martian News of the obvious.
sigs, as if you care.
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."
This just in: Mars Blows
carbon based life forms copulating in connubial bliss.
How do we know that these "dust devils" aren't really martian orgies? Or those whirlwinds when the road runner and Wile E. Coyote fight? Or the cloud created when Pigpen walks anywhere in Peanuts cartoons?
(tongue firmly in cheek)
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."
Looks like dust kicked up by aerial machine gun fire. Maybe the martians are using the rover as a training target.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
No, the post has no business being on Slashdot because here, you're supposed to mindlessly jeer at the Space Shuttle and call NASA a complete cultural failure. You're supposed to complain about costs and technical problems on subjects that you've never worked and hardly even know the basics about, by picking a choice selection of quotes from a handful of individuals and ignoring what the majority of those who have actually worked on the projects have stated. And lastly, no matter how ridiculously small a feat a private company achieves in reference to space, you're supposed to treat it like it's as good as a Saturn V. Strangely, there is an exception: you're supposed to ignore the actual *relevant* accomplishments of private companies in space, such as the Pegasus rocket, and only cheer for those who make joyrides.
Are there any deer in the theater tonight? Get 'em up against the wall.
This guy applies modern image processing to old tapes of raw data from Russian "Venera" missions. Quite fascinating views, but still, too hot and acidic... I guess a spacecraft gets "eaten" by the atmosphere there in like an hour...
Paul B.
I guess I mean: does this really mean anything important to a scientist, or is it just eyecandy for the taxpayers?
Never underestimate the power of eyecandy for the taxpayers. They want to see what their millions of dollars buy and eyecandy appeals to even the least technically minded.
That's one great thing about these space missions. NASA, JPL, and the ESA let us see the interesting images (and the mundane ones - but no one talks about those much). Plus, the images are available to the whole world, not just U.S. taxpayers.
So everyone, seeing these images, may become inspired to learns more about and support the sciences, including schoolchildren, some of whom may continue on to be the next generation of leaders, scientists, and explorers. Seems like a win-win situation to me.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
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).