7th Graders Find Large Cave On Mars 139
A newly discovered cave on Mars was found as the result of an interesting crowdsourcing project. As EMB Numbers writes, "CNET news reports that 'the science class from Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., found the opening while working on a research project with the Mars Space Flight Facility run out of Arizona State University in Tempe. ... The students examined more than 200 images of Mars taken with the Thermal Emission Imaging System (Themis), an instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.' The only other similar opening near the volcano was found in 2007, when Glen Cushing, a scientist with the US Geological Survey, published a research paper on the surface anomalies. The opening is estimated to be 620 by 520 feet and the hole to be at least 380 feet deep."
Re:Just kidding, folks. (Score:5, Informative)
They say "at least"; I'd take that to mean "if it was any less deep than that, we'd see some trace of the bottom".
Re:Wow .. Grade 7 has changed (Score:3, Informative)
If you read TFA, the kids were trying to find Lava Tubes around Pavonis Mons, a volcano on Mars.
It seems to me that the forces of vulcanism, pushing up lava with only 1/3 gravity MIGHT cause them to form differently from those on Earth, which is why Olympus Mons is much taller than any volcano here.
There is a cave found recently in Mexico with Crystal formations unlike anything ever seen before, outside of that I don't know how much interesting stuff there still is in caves on Earth.
I've been to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, and none of the caves there are 5-600 feet wide, tall, or anything.
I remember 8th grade AP Science and we never did anything this cool, although in 7th grade we were programming TRS-80s and Apple IIs.
Re:Just kidding, folks. (Score:5, Informative)
Why do they call a vertical hole a cave?
Don't caves typically have roof/ceilings?
Its just a hole, lava vent.
Re:Just kidding, folks. (Score:5, Informative)
You also know the angle of the sun at the time of the photo and measure the lit (or unlit) area below the hole, that'll give you an approximation of the depth.
Re:Just kidding, folks. (Score:5, Informative)
They were using thermal imaging, not visible light.
ok, to revise then:
I would think that by using the image to get the angle of the sun striking the surface of Mars that they could say that if it was any shallower than that the light from the sun would Heat Up part of the bottom of the cave. Therefore since they see no heat from the bottom it must be deeper than the minimum.
Happy, mister snippy pants?
Cannon (Score:5, Informative)
That's no cave. That's the opening to the underground cannon the Martians used to fire their invasion cylinders at Earth during the opposition of the last years of the 19th century.