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Mars Lander Sees Falling Snow
Riding with Robots writes "NASA reports that the Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds. According to the Canadian team running a weather experiment, a laser instrument designed to study how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers above the landing site. Data shows the snow vaporizing before reaching the surface, but one of the mission scientists said, 'We'll be looking for signs that the snow may even reach the ground.' Spacecraft soil experiments have also provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water."
Screw Neptune! Mars has way better perks!
Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.
Dan Quayle, 8/11/89
Turns out Dan was right ;)
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
should subside by now, and we should all be sobered by the fact that yes, there's water on mars, but only in the same way that yes, there's gold on earth: its rare and fleeting
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
OK, so any chance of a white Christmas on Mars?
Is it April 1st again?
Try it! Library of Babel
Canadian Scientist: We'd like some money to look for Snow on Mars
Canadian Funding: Errr we have lots of Snow already
CS: Ahh but if we find snow on Mars then we can ski-doo on Mars
CF: Errr we can ski-doo here
CS: Well yes but if we find the snow first we'll get first tracks which means the Yanks will have to let us go on the manned mission
CF: Sweeeeet
Yes folks, its all about finding freshies and there is no lengths to which Canadians will not go in the search for fresh powder.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
If we ever needed an "Ironic" choice for moderation purposes, this post is it!
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Global warming putting a damper on your ski vacations in the Alps or Rockies? Not a problem!
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Surely someone at NASA has thought about making the first extra-terrestrial 'snow angel' with one of their landers? You know, for Kids...
(Too bad the Hubble will not be able to take a picture of it though... http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/29/1846238 )
No, NASA, there is a problem with your browser check. Try looking at the "gecko" version instead of trying to guess at the many names a gecko based browser may have. I'm sure you have similar problems with webkit browsers as well.
eom
Rain or snow, like virga, on Mars may not be consisting of water only. Here is the Wikipedia entry on virga:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virga
Also Universities Space Research Association has some information on virga:
http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=47776
They have a excellent NOAA photo of virga.
...it's just a dream.
They're at the Poles. Winter is coming. It does snow there, they will see more. There will eventually be CO2 condensation as well, but IIRC that's after the Lander goes to sleep.
I caught my breath when I heard it. Then I realized that people like to post sensationalist headlines. If it turns out to be real, I want Martian snow as my screen saver.
God spoke to me.
If I'm not mistaken, Dr. Tom Duck of Dalhousie University, who is a member of the Phoenix weather station team, has an account on slashdot. If he's reading this: congratulations!
And for the oblig. reference to Cdn. stereotypes: it's aboot time an important discovery was made on Mars. Time to party with poutine and beer!
Perhaps I'm not looking in the right place but all the video and photos I've ever seen look worse than my camera phone. Why? I've yet to see any that are awe inspiring. If you've found some please post for me...
That would be Kombucha. Wonder how much a liter of Martian water would be going for?
Why didn't the damn bastard say "snows on Mars" instead, it could have saved $700 billion!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
C'mon, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you
I think AC has lost his mind. Not only are his posts completely off topic, but he's arguing with himself!
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Seriously, can we just start terraforming the damn thing already? Who cares if there is water there, lets just start sending over plants in protected spacecraft with their own water supply and see how they do with some exposure to the atmosphere. Hell, algae would probably do the trick better than plants. Or we could make some machines to do the conversion, if we even know how to do that. I'm sick of all this "oooh, it's not completely dead yet!" research, we should just start rebuilding the damn thing!
(i realize this is short sighted - i'm mostly just ranting - but in truth, i would love it if we actually did just do this, even though it would contaminate the planet and we'd never know its true past)
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
If you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.
If you ask a Canadian everything looks like snow.
Do they know for sure that the snow is H20 snow. Or could it be snow made of something else?
The irony of it is, Hell's been frozen over this whole time...
This would be the perfect time for Santa Claus to conquer the Martians.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
the fact that you got modded down, says a lot about the moderation system. It simply means that even stupid people or neo-cons (one and the same?) can get mod points here.
So how much power would be required to generate a field large enough to protect mars?
this dihydrogen-oxide will destroy the ozone layer
Thats because of global warming ...
thousands for victimless crimes like smoking marijuana in your own home
Shit! If thousands of people invaded my home and started smoking dope then I'll get upset, especially around munchie time.
Doofus. ;-)
Is it transitioning solid -> liquid -> gas or going straight from solid -> gas? That would imply different things about the conditions in the atmosphere.
It goes about 30 degrees F below dry ice temperature in middle of the night.
Evaporation is when you go from a liquid to a gas state. This phenom is called sublimation, going from a solid to a gas state. There is no need to repeat the same error that the article made.
...I say mosquitos! You just can't seem to get rid of 'em.