UFO Streaks Through Martian sky

lkatz writes "The BBC is reporting that the Spirit rover has observed an object streaking across the Martian sky. They believe it was either a meteor or possibly the Viking 2 probe which still orbits Mars."

Misleading title

[Lane.exe]

The editor probably should have put "object" rather than UFO. Do not feed the trolls, remember?

Or perhaps...

[ArmenTanzarian]

It's the Earthlings and they've come to give the Martians anal probes! (or whatever organ is worth probing on a martian)

Hmmm.

[Pig Hogger]

This could be a flying cup from Earth!!!!

Or was it the Vogon Constructor Fleet?

[The I Shing]

I'd better charge up the batteries in my Subetha signalling device and hope the Dentressi are feeling like a bit of company for the voyage back!

Now who are we going to blame the UFO's on....?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously can't blame the martians for this one....

Well...

[Boing]

If it was Viking 2, let's hope those martian conspiracy theorists only got a blurry picture. We wouldn't want to let them know that there's extramartian intelligence just yet. First we have to set up the slave camps.

The Administration has declared ...

[Anonymous Coward]

this is proof that Al-Quaeda is using Mars as a base of operations in their development of WMD, requiring a 50-fold expansion of funding for the Mars liberation effort.

Either a UFO or..

[broothal]

Or Steven Spielbergs special effects team working on his next SciFi movie [slashdot.org]

And the kooks will be yapping about it in....

[sdo1]

...3... 2... 1....

I predict the wackos at Enterprise Mission [enterprisemission.com] will have some far fetched explanation for it by the end of the day.

-S

Hurry!

[Anonymous Coward]

AHEM! I, for one, welcome our new Martian overlords! Really I do!!
I always knew they were watching, waiting, ready for the final moment...

It could be Dick Cheney

[spidergoat2]

Headed for yet another undisclosed location.

Aliens!

[Zardus]

Its those damn Earthlians trying to take over Mars! Run for your life!

Its A Bird, Its a Plane Its.....

[DarthTeufel]

The Infinium Phantom Gaming console. Finally a prototype is seen

Delusional kooks.

[grub]

It was only the Enterprise going back to the 23rd century with a whale from Earth. Anyone screaming "UFO!" tells me that some idiots will believe anything...

streaking, eh?

[donnyspi]

"streaking across the Martian sky"

How indecent, call the FCC.

UFO?

[mcnut]

[tinfoil hat] Perhaps it wasn't unidentified, and even further- Mars could be where Saddam has been hiding those weapons of mass destruction all this time. We're just witnessing it making its loop around before aiming straight for my house. [/tinfoil hat]

Re:Well...

[YanceyAI]

extramartian intelligence

Wouldn't that be us?

In related news

[shaka999]

There has been an unexplainable surge in the price of Aluminum foil. Representative of the Aluminum manufactures of America are at a loss to explain the sudden demand.

Re:Now who are we going to blame the UFO's on....?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously can't blame the martians for this one....

Why not? Seeing a UFO on mars proves that that's where UFO's come from. And I find it very interesting that you start trying to cover it all up, mr anonymous spook.

What could it be?

[myownkidney]

5. Laryonov's Space Advertising [mithuro.com]
4. John Kerry on Campaigning on Mars
3. North Koreans Test-firing missiles
2. Superman coming back from vacation
1. Martians getting ready to invade earth

where's the kaboom?

[understyled]

There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom! [gargaro.com]

UFO?

[hike2]

So it's unidentified, on a distant planet ...
We have trouble identifying everything flying our own skies but now we have to worry about aliens invading our "yet to be conquered" planet.
That should bolster the arguments for building that interplanetary cannon so shoot down asteroids and other mean things coming our way. Wait, it could be a terrorist plot to take over Mars, better establish a base there, pronto.

Re:Misleading title

[Anonymous Coward]

URL, of cource, being a TLA for U niversal R etard L ocator...

Beagle 2?

[zeux]

I'm surprised nobody yet did a joke about this flying object being Beagle2 that is just still bouncing on the Mars surface...

Re:Well...

[the_consumer]

Yes, that would be us.

well

[rabbot]

did it look like a giant vacuum cleaner?

Re:Or perhaps...

[aliens]

Keep your damn probes to yourselves! We all know it's those nasty Venusians who enjoy probing everything they can find.

It got so bad we turned mars into a desert because we realized they prefer wet worlds. (Probably something to do with the lubing of the probes or something equally disgusting)

Asteriod?

[IO ERROR]

Isn't that the asteroid that's headed towards Earth?

Marvin

[Legal Penguin]

It was my Illudium Q-35 Explosive Space Modulator. I was wondering where it got to.

-Marvin

P.S. Where was the Kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.

It wasn't a UFO, it was ...

[SmackCrackandPot]

... just another weather balloon.

Could it be!?

[Dutchmaan]

I've had a 1989 Yugo in orbit around Mars for about 10 years now! I miss that car.

Re:Meteor?

[turgid]

Could it be that meteor that is coming near to Earth today?

Absolutely. It skimmed the atmosphere of Mars and bounced off and then travelled to Earth at a substantial fraction of the speed of light, to miss Earth by a few Earth radii. Rocket Scientists call this "Vogon pin-ball." It's one of those geeky jokes.

Re:Or perhaps...

[garcia]

I could see if this was happening on Uranus but certainly not on Mars... As martian as that might seem.

Re:Well...

[be-fan]

You are presuming that there is intelligence on earth...

Re:In related news

[MajorDick]

Aluminum is for posers.

Us who are REALLY in the know , know you can only buy the good Tin at a supply house.

Re:Aliens!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually...at the rate the mars rover moves I think we can walk.

In other news...

[Archalien]

Future Mars rovers will come equipped with special space-age tinfoil hats.

Re:Or perhaps...

[Shoten]

Don't be silly. Aliens wouldn't be going to Mars to do anal probes...there aren't any rednecks there!

Re:Misleading title

[Thud457]

"Well gol-durn! Them NASA boys be sayin' that dem der Martians be zipping around up there with their a-flyin' saucers!"

Yeesh, just because our faith-based edumactional system ("we believe you've got a chance to graduate...") doesn't teach important critical reasoning skills, like reading comprehension, that doesn't mean that slashdot should play down to that level. Doing so makes life to easier for the trolls.

X-Prize test flight?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just SpaceShipOne in an X-Prize test flight gone horribly wrong.

When streaking is outlawed...

[GojiraDeMonstah]

Only outlaws will streak.

Re:Delusional kooks.

[0racle]

Not only was it a Bird-of-Prey they were in, and it was the 80's as someone else mentioned, but they slingshotted around the Sun, so they would have approached Earth from the inner Solar System and would not have flown by Mars.

My girlfriend just called and called me a dork for watching Star Trek, and now I feel like one.

Re:Well...

[nexex]

its a fly in the studio that they are 'filming' this in!!!

AutoJoke 0.1

[privaria]

#!/usr/bin/tclsh

proc joke {} {
set jokes [join {
It's Dick Cheney!
Now Darl McBride will send more accusation letters!
M$ in search of new markets!
Bin Laden finally has a safe place to hide!
} \n]

return [lindex $jokes [expr {int((rand()*[llength $jokes])-1}]
}

if { [regexp {found.{1,10}(object|water|life)]} [join $argv]] } {
puts [joke]
}

Re:Delusional kooks.

[Psmylie]

No, it could still be the Enterprise during one of the many times they wound up in the 20th century.

If you are going to probe anything on Mars...

[Anonymous Coward]

make it Dejah Thoris.

Re:And the kooks will be yapping about it in....

[el-spectre]

Ah HA! Clearly they are being stopped from speaking... must be a conspiracy.

Re:streaking, eh?

[AnonymousKev]

"streaking across the Martian sky"

I called out "Don't look Ethel!", but it was too late -- she'd been MOONED

Or would that be PHOBOS'ED in this case?

I smell trouble...

[MoeMoe]

I really hope none of the Martian life caught it on home video... Or they're gonna have an hour long mini-series based on the event with the title "We're Not Alone"...

**cue X-Files Theme**

Re:Misleading title

[Awptimus Prime]

Sure it is, you are just using the redundant channels for performance.

Silly /.ers...

[thrillbert]

Don't you know that there is no such thing as a ship that travels from one planet to another.. err...

---
"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets"

• -- The Brigader, "Dr. Who"

Re:Misleading title

[Virtex]

But UFO means unidentified flying object. If it's falling out of the sky, it's not really flying. Maybe we should call it an unidentified falling object. Now we just need to figure out the acronym for it.

Re:Or perhaps...

[SquadBoy]

are you telling me you would not probe one of these
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&i e=UTF-8 &oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=nice+ass&sa=N&tab =wi

Or a manhole cover...

[SmackCrackandPot]

... which achieved Mars orbit after reaching escape velocity during nuclear bomb tests in the 1950's.

Re:Misleading title

[Anonymous Coward]

Score:-1, Insightful

Hahhahahahhahaha

Re:And the kooks will be yapping about it in....

[scrytch]

Wow. That site is ... wow. I just have one question? Why can't kooks put together a decent website? It's not like they need expensive software or publishing apparatuses that their shoestring budget couldn't absorb ... and they are trying to "get their message out" ... so why are their sites invariably so heinously ugly?

Re:The Administration has declared ...

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

If anything needs to be liberated, it's the "u" in "Quaeda". Honestly, do people go around pronouncing it "All Kwida"?

Re:Misleading title

[jamshid42]

NASA is lucky that the UFO's Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator wasn't charged up!

Re:Marvin

[daves]

OOOO. That makes me very angry!

reminds me of a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

ripped from Jokedump
When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training. One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks. The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people:
"What are these guys in the big suits doing?" One of the astronauts said
that they were practicing for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon.
Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, "Why certainly!" and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder's comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate.
So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder's message to the moon.
Finally, an official government translator was summoned. After he finally stopped laughing the translator relayed the message: "Watch out for these assholes - they have come to steal your land."

Makes me curious...

[bl8n8r]

to what is is happening when Opportunitites' back is turned, looking at the ground.

Re:And the kooks will be yapping about it in....

[Xzzy]

The intent is similar in effect to moths or butterflies that have scary patterns on their wings, it tries to scare off birds that would be hunting them.

Swap "moths" with "foil hat wearing kooks" and "birds" with "us" to understand the point.

It's a defense mechanism, plain and simple.

Re:Misleading title

[athakur999]

Unidentified Not On The Ground Object (UNOTGO)

Even has a pronounable acronym. You not go!

It's a balloon

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon, it's just a weather balloon.

Re:Or perhaps...

[nospam007]

> Don't be silly. Aliens wouldn't be going to Mars to do anal probes...there aren't any rednecks there!
---
Aliens?
Aren't rednecks probed by sheep?
Or was that the other way 'round?

And in the rest of the English Speaking world

[OzPeter]

Sales of Aluminium were up.

better left unsaid, sorry

[emc]

I for one welcome our new Earthling Overlords

In A.D. 2004

[Joe the Lesser]

War was beginning...

Martian Captain: What Happened?

Martian Soldier: Somebody set us up the bomb!

Martian Soldier: We get signal!

Martian Captain: Main Screen Turn On!

Martian Captain: It's you!

Viking: How are you gentlemen!!
Viking: All your rover are belong to us
Viking: You are on the way to destruction

Martian Captain:What you say!!

Viking: You have no chance to survive make your time
Viking: HA HA HA HA...

No Shit Sherlock!!!!

[leon.gandalf]

Of course its a damned UFO... They do not know what it is and its 'flying'. SO of couse its a U nidentified F lying O bject! :)

Re:Meteor?

[rjelks]

I think the speed range would fall around 100,000 to 200,000 mph though. For it to be going 3.5 million mph, it would have had to be hurled at us by large insectoid aliens. Damn bugs.

-

Re:Or perhaps...

[struckleberry]

BackOrifice [bo2k.com]! *ducks*

Re:Delusional kooks.

[Zak3056]

No, it could still be the Enterprise during one of the many times they wound up in the 20th century.

Except that it's currently the 21st century. :)

Re:Let me get this straight...

[andr0meda]

Shh.. hush.. come here.. let me give you a taste of injecting weird stuff in a freaky way in rather special places after I abduct you first, and it will all be allright soon.

Re:Or perhaps...

[horos2c]

ok, fine.. an obligatory KITH quote comes to mind:

"No, I don't think I should. I don't think I should question the leadership of our Great Leader"

"Oh, come on! I mean, we've been coming here for 50 years and performing anal probes and all that we have learned is that 1 in 10 doesn't really seem to mind."

"oh really? and you have a better plan in mind than our great leader?"

"yes. yes I do. My plan is to have no plan. That we don't travel 250,000 light years, we don't come here. And the best part is that we don't do any anal probes."

Re:Would you think up something new already?

[anagama]

The day it's proven that having getting a blow job by a chubby intern directly resulted in the deaths of many people.

Re:Or perhaps...

[Drooling Iguana]

On Red Mars, rednecks probe YOU!

Re:Velikovsky serves a purpose...

[soft_guy]

and that we DID go to the moon, and went there after creating an amazing space launch infrastructure in a very short time.

Merely asserting something doesn't necessarily make it true. I seriously believe that the moon landing may have been faked, not based on nit picky evidence and counter-evidence. Instead, I base it on the fact that supposedly we did all this in the 60s and early 70s with such great success. Since then, NASA hasn't taken a human outside of earth orbit and has killed a lot of people with the Space Shuttle.

Plus, I just don't trust the US government not to lie big time. They had the means, motive, and opportunity to fake the moon landing. That plus the fact that the US hasn't been back, or done anything significant with human space flight since the suppoed moon missions leads me to believe that it was fake.

Insensitive to Venusians!

[Sensitive Claude]

extramartian intelligence

Wouldn't that be us?

Assuming that Venusians exist then I think you are being insensitive to them.

Re:Uranus

[macdaddy357]

Yeah! And it didn't even include the standard goatse link to make the newbies toss their cookies either.

Re:Offtopic - Dyson sphere

[fucksl4shd0t]

but I'm sure the necessary Impossibilium we're buying to glue it all together will only take a little longer.

Dude, don't use the name brands. Improbabilium is just as good and a helluva lot cheaper.