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NASA Mars Rover Begins Examining Strange Slab Nicknamed "Windjana"
An anonymous reader writes in with this bit of news about the Mars rover Curiosity. "NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is using several tools this weekend to take a closer look at a sandstone slab being assessed as a possible drilling target. If it fits the bill, the target could become Curiosity's third drilled rock. 'Windjana,' named after a gorge in Western Australia, would be the mission's first drilled rock that is not mudstone. To determine whether Curiosity should drill at Windjana, engineers have asked the rover to perform a number of tasks, including observations with the camera and X-ray spectrometer located at the end of the its arm and interpretations of composition at different points on the rock with a device that fires laser shots from the rover's mast."
Will we get information from this rock concerning ancient life? There could have been life on mars in ancient times that was wiped out when the atmosphere disappeared. That would be very intriguing for humanity. Better news than the search for this so-called missing plane or the Royals tour.
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
What if.... the plane turns up on Mars? Kidnapped by the Martians ;)
I vaguely remember a comic where a mars explorer writes his monotonous diary, and where the most exciting moment of the week would be to go a few metres far to have a look at a slightly darker stone...
Is that an xkcd ? I can't find it.
Just wait until the rock fires back
Maybe https://xkcd.com/695/
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Not this one. I think I was a human explorer, planing to have a look to such a stone.
Damn! I though they had found the monolith. Life would have been so much better going forward.
Will we get information from this rock concerning ancient life?
If you want blood from a stone I know a good lawyer, he reckons the legality of using a laser on the bastard is a bit "iffy" and should only be used if you have a ironclad alibi.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Try this:
http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/
As you know -- well, you didn't obviously -- LIberty GB is a new party composed of experienced people from older parties.
The arrogance of the prole.
Futurist Traditionalism
... and blast at things with ray guns.
FOR SCIENCE!
Cool.
Will we get information from this rock concerning ancient life? There could have been life on mars in ancient times that was wiped out when the atmosphere disappeared.
Sandstone would be a natural repository for the building blocks of life and biosignatures the limited mining abilities of the rover could exploit; a fact not lost on the very smart folks at NASA.
This would be very intriguing for humanity.
Unfortunately, not even nearly as intriguing as a mysteriously missing plane or the daily weather report for most of the humans presently making up "humanity".
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
for some reason, whenever I see 'windjana', I keep on thinking of a flatulent reproductive part.
Or starts playing music, especially if it's Strauss.
The summary and original article do everything but say "this might have been created by aliens!" until you read the fine print. Stick to Kartrashian headlines if you think science is that boring.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
No life... just lots and lots of oil...
-AlPhAbEt
Notice that the miniscule budgets for Opportunity and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have been zeroed-out by the White House for next fiscal year. For a savings of a whopping $25 million, 0.15% of the NASA budget. Funding is nominally restored in a supplemental budget appropriation, but there is no guarantee that the White House will even present the supplemental appropriation to Congress much less that the anti-science right-wingnuts in Congress will pass it.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Join me in signing a petition asking the president to instruct NASA to stop drilling on other planets. They will find no oil.
Stop Extraterran Fracking !
Will no one think of the little martian children frozen in their subsurface egg chambers?
Having quickly skimmed over TFA, I strongly suspect that the "cement-like fluids on Mars" were what caused the fall of the Martian Empire.
Unfortunately, not even nearly as intriguing as a mysteriously missing plane or the daily weather report for most of the humans presently making up "humanity".
Well, most of the time nothing newsworthy happens with the occasional huge discovery but it's practically impossible to average it out. CERN discovers the Higgs boson, off the scale news. The years of design, construction, testing, ramp-up and so on what's there to report but "we're working on it, we were working on it yesterday and we'll keep working on it tomorrow", it's not a process built to entertain an audience. Just because it's important doesn't mean there's a whole lot to say about it until it's done, unless you're interested in tedious technical details. Also as far as media companies are concerned, all their competitors will have the exact same story so it's market neutral, they're all looking for unique material that'll send all the traffic to their site. As a businessman I'd rather push an exclusive story about something less important than being one of a thousand reporting the same thing.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'm sorry, there are other comics than xkcd? Maybe in the multiverse...