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NASA's Curiosity rover discovers a surprise in a Martian rock
- lawlessone 2y agobetween this and the iron nuggets sitting out in the open on Mars,..No Mans Sky is more realistic than i thought.
- chankstein38 2y agoThis was my first thought too lol "I've mind a million of those yellow veins of sulfur in NMS"
- darby_nine 2y agoI wonder if it also has negative implications for finding life there—one of many possible explanations is the lack of biological forces breaking down and heterogenizing the surface.
- ronnier 2y ago> yellow crystals were revealed after NASA’s Curiosity happened to drive over a rock and crack it open on May 30. Using an instrument on the rover’s arm, scientists later determined these crystals are elemental sulfur — and it’s the first time this kind of sulfur has been found on the Red Planet
- sircastor 2y agoWe’ve found more stuff on Mars by driving over it than I would’ve expected.
- dylan604 2y agoDefinitely more than just orbiting it. Even with the rovers having such an extended mission, it's still just a small fraction of the surface.
- dotancohen 2y agoJust wait until we're stepping on it. That's when the real discoveries that will be recorded in the textbooks will begin.
- netcraft 2y agoWhen we figure out how this formed, I wonder if that will have any impact on the feasibility of sulfur based lifeforms?
- solardev 2y agoI wish NASA wouldn't use clickbait headlines :/ "Curiosity rover discovers sulfur crystals in Martian rock" would be nice.
- its_ethan 2y agoVery, very few people are going to click on the headline you've suggested, and engagement with the public is pretty important for NASA. "Martian surprise" is something that will get people interested, if only to click the link to see the picture of sulfur crystals and then leave the page 5 seconds later. Other news sites will also run with that headline, spreading the engagement far more than just a NASA article. Getting public engagement is a part of how they defend (and increase) their budget, so it makes sense that they would be more likely to use click-baity headlines. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- solardev 2y agoGosh, I really hope our premier scientific entities don't have to rely on page visits (ignoring bounce rate) to measure their impact or get funding :/
- Kye 2y agoThey're a scientific organization that lives or dies on the whims of people who have to win elections. Outreach is survival, and reach is essential to that.
- krapp 2y agoThey live and die on the whims of the CIA and military industrial complex. They are a platform for delivering spy satellites that's allowed to do a bit of science as a treat. The public, for the most part, stopped caring about NASA after the US stopped going to the moon. Most of the rest believe NASA is hiding aliens or controlling the weather or some such nonsense.
- 2y ago
- Zondartul 2y agoIt's cool how some minerals are just lying out in the open on Mars. On Earth this would have been washed away or buried under the soil.
- timmg 2y agoAs I was reading the article just now it made me wonder: does Mars have a really diverse landscape -- that just happens to be all covered in layers of red dust? I have no idea. But I'd always thought it looked so homogeneous from the photos. But maybe it's just that the dust covers everything?
- jjk166 2y agoIt's worth considering that most of the diversity of environments on earth are really diversity of ecosystems. Strip away the trees and the grass and the topsoil and then Earth would look like a desert wasteland pretty much everywhere.
- yencabulator 2y agoAlso, water! The different colors of dirt (containing copper, iron etc) near here are all exposed by water erosion.
- Terr_ 2y agoAlso, some of the geology is due to biology, especially with respect to erosion. (And oxygen level, I guess.) Without plants, mountains and valleys etc. would be shaped a little differently, as opposed to "exactly the same but without green on top."
- Tao3300 2y agoI'm wondering what that channel would have looked like when there was water flowing in it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 1970-01-01 2y agoI have a hunch this valley is hiding many more geological secrets. If you look at the map, Curiosity is finally arriving at the more interesting bits of Mt. Sharp. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/location-map/ https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/location-map/
- ravjo 2y agoI'll be interested to hear more about this.
- fusslo 2y agoso cool. First time I've seen that map It struck me that I have no idea how curiosity is instructed to move I suspect someone can't be sitting in front of a computer with a joystick, moving a foot, waiting for curiosity to move a foot, then move another foot... My next thought is nasa creates a route based on the map and then provides route data to curiosity. But there's no GPS (again, I assume). So is it all dead-reckoning? NASA somehow calculates 'move 100 ft forward, turn left 80 degrees, move 10 ft forward", etc? (I am also assuming NASA uses metric) OR does curiosity make its own decisions somehow? I gotta go google some stuff now
- coryfklein 2y agoSo, what did you find?
- icegreentea2 2y agoIt's both - mixture of exact commands + dead reckoning, and some semi-autonomous navigation (go to this rock). https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/video/mars-in-a-minute-how-do-rovers-drive-on-mars/ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/video/mars-in-a-minute-ho...
- mcswell 2y agoThat would be a long time between joystick commands, seeing as Mars varies from four to twenty four minutes away at the speed of light. Double that for round-trip (video to Earth, command to Mars).
- morning-coffee 2y agoThey could've gotten more mileage out of a headline like "Was an alien crystalline life form just discovered, or...!?"
- Symmetry 2y agoChemosynthesis often does produce pure sulfur as a byproduct but so do volcanoes. a priori I'd put the most likely scenario for Mars at chemosynthetic life with photosynthesis never evolving, but this press release doesn't really move the dial on that with the information so far.
- jonhohle 2y ago> “It shouldn’t be there.” What hubris. “We didn’t expect it to be there,” or similar would be more appropriate. I really would like to see more uncertainty and humility from scientists that base their work on theory.
- dzonga 2y agoI would rather know why water on mars evaporated and if there was life on mars when there was water on mars
- layer8 2y agoFor the first question, see https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/uyaogu/comment/ia35kuc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/uyaogu/comment/....
- layer8 2y agoFound the Martian hellmouth. ;)
- vinnie-io 2y agowhat's that perfect white circle in the bottom left
- mcswell 2y agoMust have come from Io. Lots of sulfur volcanos there.
- delsarto 2y agoCheck out Mars Guy https://youtube.com/@marsguy?si=AFAci3mConZv1L5- https://youtube.com/@marsguy?si=AFAci3mConZv1L5- Dr. Steve Ruff. Excellent videos from an expert, but one terrific thing is the use of common objects (like mars guy cutout) that gives you some better perspective on the images.
- aatd86 2y agoSo martians are into rock n roll huh? :o)
- olliej 2y agooh boo, it wasn't part of a soviet probe :( :D
- klyrs 2y agoTl,dr: not a furby