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Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover
- mr-roboto 13y agoIf you had watched Apollo 18 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772240/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772240/) you would know what that rock is.
- mattezell 13y ago"“So my best guess for this rock … is that it’s something that was nearby,” said Squyres. “I must stress that I’m guessing now, but I think it happened when the rover did a turn in place a meter or two from where this rock now lies.” Opportunity’s front right steering actuator has stopped working, so Squyres identified that as the possible culprit behind the whole mystery." Reading a lot of speculation, but this seems pretty plausible - without the need for anything crazy like aliens, subterranean oozing or a rock falling from space and just so happening to land in front of the rover... But, Hey! Perhaps it is martian-cow dung afterall!
- BigTuna 13y agoIt's worth noting for the record that the photos were not taken from the same vantage point. The parallax seems to indicate that the camera position was higher in elevation in the second photo. Just something to keep in mind when examining the photos closely for very small differences.
- kowdermeister 13y agoThis is a warning. The first.
- jerf 13y agoI have to admit I laughed at this: "Only two options have so far been identified as the rock’s source: 1) The rover either “flipped” the object as it maneuvered or, 2) it landed there, right in front of the rover, after a nearby meteorite impact event." So, you know, our leading theories are that either the rover did it somehow, or, approximately 8-10 orders of magnitude less likely, we just witnessed a meteor strike. Really, nothing in between those two?
- krapp 13y agoWhat else could it be?
- BrandonMarc 13y agoEarthquake. Oops, crap, no, um ... Mars-quake.
- Tiktaalik 13y agoAliens trolling us
- krapp 13y agoOk... but what else could it actually be?
- saiko-chriskun 13y agoAliens trolling us
- randomdata 13y agoBigfoot.
- semerda 13y agoDidn't this jelly doughnut appear a few days later? I thought that mars has an active environment i.e. dust storms and an atmosphere. So stuff is bound to move?
- lnanek2 13y agoDo you see rocks the size of a donut blowing around on Earth as well? No. Sure we have more gravity, but also a thicker atmosphere. I don't think they blow around on Mars either.
- semerda 13y agoHow about the rocks that move in the death valley the size of 10 x donuts. Also vertical swirling column of air could move it. And we know those exist on Mars since those were responsible for cleaning Spirit's solar panels (rover).
- bitwize 13y agoA wild ROCK appears! OPPORTUNITY used TAKE SAMPLE. It's super effective!
- nkvl 13y agoClearer images: no rock http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3528/1P441385599EFFCADPP2385R1M1.JPG http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3528/1P441385599EF... rock http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3540/1P442453196EFFCAEFP2594L2M1.JPG http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3540/1P442453196EF...
- dredmorbius 13y agoLooking at the images, there appears to be a disturbed region above and to the left of the mystery rock, suggesting it (or something) might have impacted the ground there. The question I've got is whether there's any sort of local slope down which the rock could have fallen on its own. That's hardly clear from the photos.
- Gonzih 13y agoArticle is very close to some tabloid IMHO. Not much actual theories, but a lot of bold statements like "Alien Robots That Left Their Mark on Mars" without much explanation.
- funemployed 13y agoA wild ROCK appears?
- jboggan 13y agoI can't help but hearing Frank Zappa while reading this news. Strangely this music really helps me concentrate on coding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukbu9dmmzJg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukbu9dmmzJg
- scrumper 13y agoHow big a deal is it, scientifically speaking, that the rover has access to the freshly-exposed underside of the rock?
- dredmorbius 13y agoThe original Viking landers had scoops capable of penetrating a few cm down: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/vl1_11d128.html http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/vl1_11d12...
- tunap 13y agoIt has the potential to be huge. You never know what's just under the surface until you look. The NatGeo special, "Ten Years On Mars"[1] made a point to include how when a bad tire on Spirit dug a trench in the soft crust, an unexpected surprise revealed itself. http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/episodes/ten-years-on-mars/ http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/episodes/ten-y... Edit: Add pertinent link: http://www.sciencebuzz.org/blog/accidental_tourist_bad_wheel_on_mars_rover_leads_to_big_dis http://www.sciencebuzz.org/blog/accidental_tourist_bad_wheel...
- scrumper 13y agoThanks for the links. Maybe quite a lucky skid then.
- ck2 13y agoYou'd think they would start to put a plow or til on these rovers.
- clubhi 13y agoOr a digging laser. Dig out a small area with a laser and wait for the other side to cave in. We have digging lasers, right???
- forktheif 13y agoPretty big. I've often wondered why they don't send a dragline digger to Mars, so they can dig a decent trench. When Spirit's wheel broke and they started dragging it along, digging a little trench, they made a nice discovery and that was with something not designed to dig at all. If they could get a few feet down, who knows what they could find?!
- abruzzi 13y agoI'm probably crazy, but I've been staring at the two images for five minutes and can't see anything in one that isn't in the other, unless it is obscured by the annoying "view related gallery"button. EDIT: Ok, half the time I load the page, the page works and I see the rock, but the other half of the time, the image is shifted down, the top half of the display box is black, and the "rock" is off screen...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Zhenya 13y agoSame thing happened to me. I stared and then reloaded page. Something is wonky with their gallery.
- sisk 13y agoYou're not crazy. Psst. Discovery folks. You've got yourself a race condition. You're calculating a `margin-top` to center an image vertically irrespective of whether that image has loaded. You either need to explicitly set the width and height as attributes on the image (good for preventing reflow anyway) or hold off on calculating your dimensions until after the image has loaded. You could even just wait for window load (instead of DOMContentLoaded). EDIT: Here's an untested, hacky fix. Not an ideal solution but concise and without having to change anything. https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c40e8baf679aad65cb2c https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c40e8baf679aad65cb2c
- jayzalowitz 13y agoAliens?
- MaciejCzyzewski 13y agoMaybe?
- ssdfsdf 13y agoClearly a martian rat.
- codex 13y agoVery likely. There are several alien robots on Mars.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- niix 13y agoI think it's Martians trolling us.
- smoyer 13y agoWhen I look at both pictures, it seems as though the shape of the rock was there before it appeared ... almost as though it oozed up out of the surface. (Note: I know this isn't at all likely or even possible and just think it's an interesting trick of the eye)
- biggerwinky 13y agoHeadline correction: NASA'S MARS STUDIO PLACES "MYSTERY ROCK" IN FRONT OF ROVER TO DUM UP EXTRA OBAMADOLLA FUNDING
- jumbled 13y agoI thought a similar thing, imagining mud getting squeezed up between two rocks.
- bloddyfool 13y agoIt just fell from the top of the mountain or whatever that rock is on? There seems to be a slope...
- ryanmcbride 13y agoThe locals are upset at our occupation and are throwing rocks at us. Pretty obvious really.
- codingtheone 13y agoI think that's the unsaid part of the story, everyone secretly believes that some intelligent being placed that rock as a peace token (otherwise this kind of news won't make headlines)
- dclowd9901 13y agoJust wait 'til we start rolling our buses through there. (Sorry, I don't usually make such Reddit-esque comments on here, but I couldn't resist)
- aeon10 13y agoCouldnt it have been wind? or is the whether on mars really calm.
- ksmiley 13y agoMars does have wind. In fact, dust storms have been known to last for weeks and encompass nearly the entire planet. However, I don't think the wind is a likely culprit. If the wind was strong enough to knock over a rock, it would also be strong enough to blow a lot of dust around. That would be very noticeable to anyone watching the rover's feed, and would surely have been mentioned in the article.
- cjensen 13y agoThe atmosphere is very thin, so even a fast wind doesn't push much.
- m3mnoch 13y agoprobably not since all the other rocks (many an order of magnitude smaller) are still in their same places.
- joshdick 13y agoCould the rock have been blown there by the wind?
- cl8ton 13y agoThey mentioned meteorite impact ejecta as a possibility. Doesn't the rover have seismic sensors they could reference?
- jrs235 13y agoI don't see any new rock in the second image. I see that the second image has different shadows/shadowing. Were the pictures taken at the same time of the sol? You can also see that the angle is different which will also lead to different shadows too. It appears to me to be more of a sensor "malfunction" of the camera. EDIT: I can't find the "original" photo from the archives for sol 3528. Can someone link to the two original images? EDIT 2: Found it... http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3528/1P441385681EFFCADPP2385L5M1.JPG http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3528/1P441385681EF... UPDATE: It appears to me that some rocks moved. I'll be posting image shortly. UPDATE 2: The two original images I used are http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3528/1P441385648EFFCADPP2385L2M1.JPG http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3528/1P441385648EF... and http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3540/1P442453196EFFCAEFP2594L2M1.JPG http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3540/1P442453196EF... Below I highlighted points to look at in both images: http://i.imgur.com/IO6xGzl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/IO6xGzl.jpg
- 3rd3 13y agoHere are the raw images of sol 3540: http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_p3540_text.html http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_p3540_text... Sol 3528:
- etanazir 13y agoNASA is just scratching the surface.
- mrfusion 13y agoWould it be crazy to suggest it might not be a rock? They're always looking for life on Mars, could this be some kind of animal?
- joeframbach 13y agoI find it interesting that there is no better word to describe "tiddlywinking", and that this obscure game has become part of our vocabulary for this very rare circumstance.
- mogrim 13y agoHardly an obscure game, or an obscure word. At least not in the UK.
- lovemenot 13y agoPerhaps the reigning champion could come forward to consult on surface hardness, body shape, concentrated mass, trajectory and wrist-action. Personally I cannot see that rock being tiddlywinked at all. Though I love the theory for coining a new verb.
- return0 13y agoSome angry locals missed the target