New Cave Entrances Seen on Mars

Riding with Robots writes "The Mars Odyssey orbiter has come across what look to be openings to cavernous spaces under the surface of Mars. NASA reports the find is fueling interest in potential underground habitats and sparking searches for caves elsewhere on the Red Planet. These latest images follow other recent discoveries of intriguing places to explore. From the article: 'The find has led some to wonder if these or other caves on the planet may provide shelter to life or former life on the Red Planet. "Somewhere on Mars, caves might provide a protected niche for past or current life, or shelter for humans in the future," said Tim Titus of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff. These caves, however, likely never hosted life due to the extreme altitude of their location. "Even if life has ever existed on Mars, it may not have migrated to this height," said Cushing.'"

Hidin' in a cave

[BWJones]

Gee, maybe that is where Osama Bin Laden has been hiding. :-) After all, Bush had said "He could be hidin in a cave with the door open, he could be hidin in a cave with the door closed". It may also explain why Bush wants to go to Mars so bad...

Crap.

[Roadkills-R-Us]

I was *sure* we'd camoflaged our front door better than that!

Caves of Mars

[$RANDOMLUSER]

We prefer to say "Caves of Barsoom". kthx

There better be something in that cave

[Nymz]

Otherwise how do we justify honoring the Martians with their own Slashdot Topic Icon.

• Pluto was denied (because it's too small, a dwarf planet)
• Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, & Neptune were denied (for not being terrestrial enough)
• Venus was denied (she's female)
• Earth was denied (no intelligent life?)

Why who else would be in the cave but OBL?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why Bush wants to go to Mars. It will no longer be the war on Terra.

If we don't fight them there, we'll have to fight them here.

~ Lorena (too lazy to make an account today)

Re:slow dow!

[geoffrobinson]

And by "all" you mean "very few", right?

Re:There better be something in that cave

[Ambiguous Puzuma]

Poor Mercury didn't even make it onto the "denied" list...

Futurama was right

[KefkaTheMad]

Zapp: "The great stone face of Mars. Hmm, the only known entrance to the marsian reservation."
Leela: "What about the great stone ass of Mars?"
Zapp: "Well, yeah. But it's way on the other side of the planet."

Re:B4

[TheDarkener]

Grasshopper, YOU must elaborate.

Re:Don't look! Can't you hear the strange music?

[Basehart]

The edges do look as if they were dug away by a machine of some kind. And is it just a coincidence that most UFO's are circular objects, albeit not as wide as these holes are. Maybe the mother ships use these ports and there are smaller ones for the scouting ships. Either way, you wouldn't catch me going down into one of these on my own.

Re:Mars robots

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd be fools to just wander in without knowing what lurks below. At the very least NASA should form a standard adventuring party with a warrior, a priest, a rogue and wizard.

Your rover is at the entrance to a cave....

[COMICAGOGO]

To your right is a torch...
To your left is another passage....
In front of you is a Martian Cave Troll...

What do you do?

      Use Mineral Sampling Device.

On what?

      troll

Unknown command: troll

The troll hits you for 12 damage, you are dead.

Re: Uranus

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, Uranus wasn't denied. It has a HUGE cavern!

I saw it just the other day, and I think I'm going to be scarred for life because of it...

some kind of joke?

[ILuvRamen]

Is this some kind of joke? They vaguely say it could be a good underground habitat? FOR WHAT?! Martian cave rats? Everyone agrees nothing large enough to see with the naked eye lives on Mars, let alone a living "habitat" of bacteria, which I also don't think is the correct use of the word. Or maybe they mean for us to live in? Yeah we'll get to Mars using super advanced technology and then live in a cave? More like a metal tent thing, I mean come on, watch some movies lol. I suppose you could build the tent in the cave though but still they say "habitat" like astronauts will just be sitting on logs around a campfire and fishing inside the cave. This is complete made up speculation by people who don't know what they're talking about. As if we'd go all the way there and rely on having to find a cave to withstand the wind storms otherwise they all die and the mission fails. That's like 100000x the risk Nasa would ever take. Not to mention the apparent risk of martian cave rats of course.

Re:Hidin' in a cave

[stonedcat]

You must be new here.

Re:Old news, from APRIL 2!

[Plutonite]

So get off my damn lawn and stop posting pointless comments complaining

It is our duty as Helpful People to help make slashdot more interesting, and less ridiculous, by pointing these things out.

about something you can easily just NOT CLICK ON IF IT DOES NOT INTERST YOU.

You spelled interest wrong.

Fuck, Slashdot is full of whiners the past couple of years.

Uh-oh. Please disregard my above grammar nazism :)