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Rover Curiosity Discovers Australia-Shaped Rock On Mars
astroengine writes: "NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has begun science operations in a new area of study nicknamed 'the Kimberly' after the Western Australian region. But in a new image uploaded to the Mars Science Laboratory raw image archive, it seems 'the Kimberly' is a little more Australian than mission managers originally thought. As spotted by @CoUdErMaNn on Twitter, Curiosity's Navcam photographed a rather interesting-looking rock formation just in front of the rover. The rock, which appears to have been formed through some erosion process, will likely fascinate geologists for some time. But at first glance the rock also appears to take the shape of Australia."
Proof that Australia exists! Your move atheists.
But no matter how I squint my eyes I can't see Australia in that rock.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Come on, people. Do something useful, like looking for that damned missing air liner. Looking at clouds and seeing various animals used to be a childhood past time of mine. But giving press time like this is ridiculous.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
at first glance the rock also appears to take the shape of Australia
Oh, come on. At first glance 'every' rock appears to take the shape of Australia.
Call me when they find a rock that appears to take the shape of the virgin Mary.
The Australians have landed on Mars! We need to step up our space exploration unless we want to be eclipsed by this foreign power diametrically opposed to everything we stand for! (that is they're on the other side of the planet to where we're actually standing!)
Let's see if we can spot the maps of Kzin, Down, Jinx...
Most likely that life will be giant spiders.
Dear Slashdot,
Please consider your audience. This might be the top "science" story on Hollywood Insider, but on Slashdot it's just insulting.
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Wake me up when they find one that looks like Jesus.
Australians?
You probably mean Austrians. The people in Austria are either called Mr./Mrs Aboriginal or Mr./Mrs Convict. The guy's next door from Switzerland are called Australians.
Dont blame me for getting my topography wrong, it is about as accurate as that stone looks like Australia!
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
Has it found any shaped Jesus yet?
I can only guess that this is Australia after North Queensland has seceded off into its own banana republic
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
That stone looks more like a horseshoe crab than Australia.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
rock on /. http://megashare.info/watch-the-day-the-earth-stood-still-online-TWpRNA
Redonkulus as this story is, it did get me to wondering:
We've found a fair share of Mars meteorites on Earth. How likely is it that it works the other way around?
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Watch your epistemology, now. It only proves that Australia can be conceived of. Still, a major discovery, since many of us weren't even convinced of that.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Looks more like Antarctica to me...
And next week the big news will be they found a rock in the shape of Justin Bieber's ass. Can we please not devote precious pixels to such inanities? It's not like browser pages grow on trees.
Why are we even having this conversation ? Do the right thing, delete this article. now.
This would be highlight of my Australian shaped rock collection
love is just extroverted narcissism
The rock above it looks like TOS Romulan War Bird. The little one below it look like a bird wing.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
now a rock that's shaped like a.. rock. oh boy! I bet it finds one that roughly resembles something else soon and I bet we'll read about it here
I am at a loss as to what to say about this "story".
Best I can do is an "Idiocracy" mention...
In before formation shaped vaguely like Jebus discovered.
So the Land Down Under, is seen on the Land Out Yonder?
Looks more like the Y U No guy (facing left, with his mouth open).
Bonus points for the first Slashdotter who finds a Mars-shaped rock in Australia. Picture or it didn't happen.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Poor old Tasmania, left off the map AGAIN!
I love humans...always seeing patterns in things that aren't there
It can't be Australia. It's got no Vegemite on it.
In other news, Tasmania is now confirmed to not exist.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Bloody Australians, stealing all our rocks. This is clearly a rock the shape of Jersey. And it's a lot closer in size.
No, wait, it's actually just a bloody rock. If you can't think of anything more interesting to report on a Mars rock than "it's vaguely Australia-shaped," you don't have a story.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Without you, how would we ever see jesus in a taco ? Or other places *cough* Like there *cough*
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The other one is called "Africa".
Take the western lobe of Africa, fold it inward to the eastern edge, then fold the north edge of the continent to the south edge. Australia is the same but rotated west 90 degrees. The North bits of Australia resemble the western coast of the Red Sea.
It's kind of a gently bent, gently squashed shape that has a rough NS to EW golden ratio sort of thing going on.
It's a rock! It takes a pretty stoned mind to call it Australia. And Tasmania misses out again!
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Well, I found a Mars-shaped rock in Australia.
Table-ized A.I.
What's next, a rock that looks like Jesus on the cross? How is this news?
...explains more about Australia than it does about Mars.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If it had that feature, the resemblance would be much more striking.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You're absolutely right. Someone didn't remember their geography right.
Please come back when you see a roch with the dimensions 1x4x9. Untill then don't show us this kind of drivel.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
In Australia there are Mars-shaped rocks.
The guy's next door from Switzerland are called Australians.
Shouldn't the guy's next door from Switzerland be called "the door from Switzerland that will replace the guy's current door?"
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Especially when this looks nothing like the shape of Australia.
Never happened. True story.
At a stretch, perhaps there's a passing resemblance. Personally, I think it bears more resemblance to the Millennium Falcon.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Oh yeah? My genitals are shaped like Florida.
Table-ized A.I.
If the area is named after the region in Western Australia they should spell it the same way, 'Kimberley' (I'm in Kununurra at the moment!).
... except, of course, to most Australians, and anyone who has looked for more than a few seconds at a map of the world.
it is about as accurate as that stone looks like Australia!
So true, as an Australian I can not see the resemblance at all. Perhaps the comment was made by one of these people who failed geography in school and don't even know what the basic shape is.
To me it looks more like Latvia with a big chunk of Lithuania slapped on the bottom of it.
One might pretend that the chunk missing from the rock on one side looks like the Gulf of Carpentaria, but there is no corresponding Great Australian Bight on the other side.
This article only provides evidence of possibly three things: 1) to many in the media and general public are geographically challenged or 2) the Mars Rover Mission is desperate to find a handle on maintaining public interest and relevance or 3) Slahdot has once again found yet another way for slashdoters to waste their time by entertaining themselves with nonsense and to make itself even less relevant as a site informative with regard to technology and science. A more informative piece would have involved a discussion with some experts on Martian geology suggesting what the shape of Martian rocks tells us about the red planet that we don't already know.
When are they launching the mission to check the other side of mars for a rock shaped like 'merica?