Slashdot Mirror
New Cave Entrances Seen on Mars
Riding with Robots writes "The Mars Odyssey orbiter has come across what look to be openings to cavernous spaces under the surface of Mars. NASA reports the find is fueling interest in potential underground habitats and sparking searches for caves elsewhere on the Red Planet. These latest images follow other recent discoveries of intriguing places to explore. From the article: 'The find has led some to wonder if these or other caves on the planet may provide shelter to life or former life on the Red Planet. "Somewhere on Mars, caves might provide a protected niche for past or current life, or shelter for humans in the future," said Tim Titus of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff. These caves, however, likely never hosted life due to the extreme altitude of their location. "Even if life has ever existed on Mars, it may not have migrated to this height," said Cushing.'"
Gee, maybe that is where Osama Bin Laden has been hiding. :-) After all, Bush had said "He could be hidin in a cave with the door open, he could be hidin in a cave with the door closed". It may also explain why Bush wants to go to Mars so bad...
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I was *sure* we'd camoflaged our front door better than that!
We prefer to say "Caves of Barsoom". kthx
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
That's why Bush wants to go to Mars. It will no longer be the war on Terra.
If we don't fight them there, we'll have to fight them here.
~ Lorena (too lazy to make an account today)
Should be a good idea to maybe take care of our lifespans being not much longer than a mosquito in cosmic terms first. Gotta fix all the broken shit here unless the aliens like you enough to take you away.
See Here
Blah
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Green Martian, antenae and a fur bikini. Need I say more?
we've all seen 'ghosts of mars', run away!
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Will they steer for the caves?
That was the first question on my mind.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
It's a worm hole....hmmm now where do we plant the thumper to lure them out.
Got Code?
Project Objectives:
The primary objective of this feasibility demonstration is to show that relatively simple, easily-deployable subsurface habitats are constructible in caves, lavatubes, and other subsurface voids. Further, we intend to demonstrate that they are suitable to sustain small animals, plants, and ultimately humans in an otherwise hostile environment.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
That is the wildest non sequitur speculation I have heard since I turned off Nancy Grace. Maybe we could send her to a Martian cave. Or me. One of us has to go.
(Did I just make accusations of a non sequitur fallacy while mentioning Nancy Grace in a topic about Martian caves?)
FAQs are evil.
from the caves... to the fields... to the huts... to the cities... to the castles... to the flatirons... to the railroads... to the cars... to the airplanes... to the space ships... to the moon... to mars...
to the caves?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So easy a Martian Cave Man could do it!
--
X's and O's for all my foes.
Zapp: "The great stone face of Mars. Hmm, the only known entrance to the marsian reservation."
Leela: "What about the great stone ass of Mars?"
Zapp: "Well, yeah. But it's way on the other side of the planet."
You can't take the sky from me...
Ah yes, cave provide shelter from the low atmospheric pressure on Mars. (Eyes roll.)
Maybe these spin-doctors should stop before all scientists lose credibility in the public's eye. I know that I have stopped listening to NASA press releases after hearing that evidence water has been discovered on Mars for the Nth time. Why? Because it's always the same old agency trying to grab headlines with the same old news and a lot of the evidence is dodgy anyway.
We're spying on them... They must only come out when we're not looking. Has anyone seen them outside the caves??
Take your mod and shove it!
is there a way we can explore the caves with robots? i doubt the signal would go through... or would it? it would be interesting to see what's inside.
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
The ever widening search for Bin Laden moves on.
They've also found a dialysis machine and beard dye.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Well, you could certainly do it with robots; just probably not the robots that we have here right now.
If you were putting together a mission specifically to explore the caves, you'd probably design something that could either trail an umbilical behind itself, leading to a base station near the cave entrance which would have an uplink transceiver and solar panels for power, or you'd drop radio relays inside the cave mouth (but then you'd have to worry about how to get power to drive the robot around inside the caves, which is hard unless you want to use an RTG).
I don't know if anyone's done much work with rovers that trail umbilicals, so there might be a lot of testing required to get it right (how do you make sure that it can roll the umbilical up, not get it tangled around stuff, maybe even cut and reattach it in an emergency if a rock falls on it or something), but it's fundamentally an engineering problem, certainly not outside our capabilities.
I think the biggest trick would be getting a fairly large 'base station' with a lot of solar panels close enough to the cave mouth so that the rover wouldn't waste a lot of umbilical distance getting to the cave, but without collapsing or damaging the cave in any way.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
These were mentioned here in April, and also in June, as mentioned on slashdot in this article.
So a bloke comes up to me and says,"Hey, how much is auto insurance? Only to find out he doesn't have a car. He has a robotic rover."
God spoke to me.
Don't go in there! That's where the giant spiders live!
If you make them mad it's game over for all of us!
Look! Wasn't that a green jet of gas coming form the surface of mars?
I guess the chances of anyting living on mars are maybe...a million to one.
Looks like a mine shaft to me. Gold? Naquata? Latinum? Coal? Oil?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Not being a rocket scientist there is something I don't understand:
Why aren't the Martian caves filled with dust accumulated from the seasonal storms?
Are gases or vapors from within clearing the cave entries of dust?
( We would expect to see trails of ejecta. )
Are the caves so new or geologically young that they have not yet drifted full?
Are the caves at elevations above most of the Martian dust storms?
Layman's questions looking for non-tinfoil-hat expert answers.
I didn't desert Windows; Windows deserted me: BSOD
To your right is a torch...
To your left is another passage....
In front of you is a Martian Cave Troll...
What do you do?
Use Mineral Sampling Device.
On what?
troll
Unknown command: troll
The troll hits you for 12 damage, you are dead.
Dude, Uranus wasn't denied. It has a HUGE cavern!
I saw it just the other day, and I think I'm going to be scarred for life because of it...
This is no cave.
Is this some kind of joke? They vaguely say it could be a good underground habitat? FOR WHAT?! Martian cave rats? Everyone agrees nothing large enough to see with the naked eye lives on Mars, let alone a living "habitat" of bacteria, which I also don't think is the correct use of the word. Or maybe they mean for us to live in? Yeah we'll get to Mars using super advanced technology and then live in a cave? More like a metal tent thing, I mean come on, watch some movies lol. I suppose you could build the tent in the cave though but still they say "habitat" like astronauts will just be sitting on logs around a campfire and fishing inside the cave. This is complete made up speculation by people who don't know what they're talking about. As if we'd go all the way there and rely on having to find a cave to withstand the wind storms otherwise they all die and the mission fails. That's like 100000x the risk Nasa would ever take. Not to mention the apparent risk of martian cave rats of course.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
"Noseward Hoe!"
Damn, and after all the time invading Afghanistan and searching Tora Borra for signs of Bin Laden he's headed off to Mars.
;)
How long until the USAF are tasked with coming up with a way of bombing the crap out of those caves on the off-chance Osma is hiding out there
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
He can start the nuclear reactor.
"You heard the man, Tubbs.. get undressed."
This is beside an old volcano. It is possible that there is enough heat from that to run geo-thermal generators. If so, then cheap and easy power becomes available which makes colonization quit a bit cheaper. For all those that want nukes, keep in mind that you might have 30 years worth. With this approach, it becomes very possible to create a self-sufficient colony. And as to the 100% solar proponents, well, hopefully, we have dispelled that idea in light of the recent storm.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Stop sending your trash to our planet!
You can't handle the truth.
Did anybody remember to put headlights on that thing?
You'd think we tasty humans would know better than poking our noses into caves on alien planets...
Informative Link (viewer discretion advised)
Is this a rhetorical question?
Maybe I'm misremembering, but wasn't part of the point that the martain air was thin and cold enough here that we didn't have to worry about evaporation effects?
Then again, maybe this whole thing is some kind of plant intended breathe new life into The Mars Underground.
;)
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Now all we need is to find a few nymphs to lure out those pesky 'Old Ones' and my plan to rule the world will be almost complete. Now where to find a painting crazy enough to interest them for a couple of thousand years while I grok the source of their powers. Hmm, maybe I should have killed Da Vinci while he was in the middle of drawing Mona Lisa..
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.