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Water Ice On Mars
cathector sends along a story from SpaceWeather.com on the discovery of water ice on Mars.
"Scientists have figured out the mysterious white substance unearthed by NASA's Phoenix lander on Mars. It's frozen water. The breakthrough came last week when Phoenix's stereo camera caught the substance in the act of disappearing. Bathed in martian sunlight for four days, the white substance sublimated — i.e., it transformed from solid to gas without passing through the liquid state. This is how water behaves on Mars.... Some readers have asked, how do we know the white substance is not frozen CO2 (dry ice) instead of frozen water? Answer: Phoenix's landing site is too warm for dry ice. The average daily temperature is about -70 F while dry ice requires temperatures lower than about -109 F." The animated GIF showing the ice sublimating is pretty nice too.
Now we just need a little global warming.
In other news, NASA announced today that a manned mission to Mars is planned to retreive the newly found ice in time for the 2012 Kentucky Derby. NASA plans to upstage Woodford Reserve's famous $1000 Mint Julep at the race with its own $3,000,000 version of the traditional cocktail. While plans are still being firmed up, the beverage will reportedly come in a limited edition collector's glass.
It means we finally have a suitable accompaniment for Martian scotch.
You're absolutelly right, all we need now is some Martian Whisky and the social lives of any future human expedition is well and truly sorted out.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
News fails to take responsibility according to one internet poster.
More at 8.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Send your own fucking probe if you can't be bothered to subtract 32 and multiply by 4/9.
Were that I say, pancakes?
They would be better off sending their own fucking probe than subtracting 32 and multiplying by 4/9. I'm not sure what units those are, but certainly not Celsius.
Yep, Vodka.
Perhaps next mission they should take along some sugar. Put it out and see if it 'sublimates' as well.
Memo to all Enforcers:By order of the Council of Elders, anyone caught consuming the sweet, sweet bait near the robotic invader from the blue planet is to have his gelsacs summarily pierced.
Signed,
K'Breel
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
> Hopefully they are right about it.
Of course they're right about it, they have solid photographic evidence.
A similar experiment was recently conducted to determine the existence of life in Congress. A large pile of money was left sitting out which sublimated while votes accreted; thereby proving the existence of life in Congress. It is still up for debate how long before intelligent life is found in Congress.
A couple of 30-somethings embark on the ultimate roadtrip
The AC is thinking critically, while you appeal to authority. Which type gets to work at NASA?
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
>> Science is a hard mistress; she demands proof before making such claims.
I shall have this woman.
You'd hope that after 300 or so years of chemistry we'd understand how to recognize water...
we should wisely remember that all these claims of ice or dry ice and so many other speculations are based on our earthly experience and so are limited to our sense perception. the fact is that every planet, all those millions that you can and cannot see in the sky are fully habitable and many many people are living there. this is the knowledge coming from the topmost intelligent people who have ever appeared on this planet and given fully scientific information about other planets. spending billions on exploring other planets is waste of money when such knowledge already exists. For more details read "easy journey to other planetes" by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Hare Krishna.
And yet they've succeeded in every bar in America. Checking the units used to measure wine and booze ... yep, metric.
Sig goes here.
You're right. Definitely photoshopped.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
Long live imperial units! I say, if God had wanted us to use metric, He would have given us ten fingers! ...
oh, crap.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
After looking at that fascinating GIF from the summary, I'm not sure it is water. It just kind of disappears. It's probably some sort of highly advanced life form that can change its shape at will and lives beneath the planet's surface most of the time. It then just came up for a little Martian sunshine and, upon noticing our probe went back to tell its buddies that the Earthlings sent more crap to their planet and that they should expect an invasion soon. Unless they can prove to us they don't have any oil.
Well, that's what it looks like to me. Draw your own conclusions.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.