NASA Mars Press Briefing & "Significant Findings" 485
An anonymous reader writes "NASA will have a press briefing today at 2 p.m. EST to announce "significant findings". Salty liquid water maybe? Bacteria? This meeting will also be broadcast on NASA TV."
They've found life! (Score:4, Funny)
They've found life! (Score:4, Informative)
The summary of the study can be found at USC here. [usc.edu]
With no biologist? (Score:4, Interesting)
# Professor Steve Squyres, Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Principal Investigator, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
# Professor John Grotzinger, MER science team geologist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
# Dr. Benton C. Clark III, MER science team member and Chief Scientist of Space Exploration, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Astronautics Operations, Denver
# Dr. Joy Crisp, MER Project Scientist, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
# Dr. Jim Garvin, Lead Scientist for Mars and the Moon, NASA Headquarters
Hmmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Now if cable TV companies were only smart enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Now if cable TV companies were only smart enoug (Score:5, Funny)
Of course. If Kennedy Space Center isn't sold out by the Thursday before the week, Nasa TV is blacked out for all the surrounding areas.
Go Support your local space exploration!
Satellite option (Score:4, Informative)
NASA Television can be found on the satellite AMC 9 Transponder 9C, 85 degrees west longitude, vertical polarization downlink frequency - 3880 MHz, Audio is at 6.8 MHz.
Re:Satellite option (Score:5, Funny)
Re:NASA TV streaming (Score:5, Informative)
Re:NASA TV streaming (Score:3, Informative)
NASA TV Programming - The Information Age, not yet (Score:4, Interesting)
I think I know what they did with the apes that came back from the early spaceflights.
They put them in charge of NASA TV programming.
I mean, J.H.C, when the "big spacewalk" was happening a week or two ago I tuned into NASA TV, and what did I get to watch?
**NOTHING**
Well, not quite nothing, a grainy image of the command center with an even grainer occasional camera view of a bigscreen projection of their track, which was 100 times worse than simply going to J-Track [nasa.gov]. Do you seriously mean to tell me that NASA controllers did not have a video feed of or from their own astronauts outside the station, and that all they had was nearly unintelligable acryonym laced audio? Or is it that they simply can't afford a $5 video splitter?
( During the hubble repairs a few years ago at one point they showed nothing but a video feed of an inanimate obscure connector between the shuttle and the telescope. Apparently the shuttle didn't have enough downlink bandwidth, and they needed them all for the job at hand. )
In any case if NASA and the administrationis so concerned about public image and if they really want people to get enthused about spaceflight, how about simply spending an extra $5000 for a single extra camera on the station to provide a view of the interesting things going on?
Throw in another camera to give us a LIVE view of the earth on another channel - 24/7. How many of you wouldn't LOVE to see a 400 mile wide live video feed from space of the earth, and follow it along with J-Track [nasa.gov], a recent GOES image [ec.gc.ca], and your atlas [odu.edu] / globe [nasa.gov], dynamic topographic and/or terraserver [microsoft.com] reference feed?
Isn't this supposed to be the information age?
Can you imagine how utterly amazing it would be for science teachers to be able to plan a science/geography class around an hour of that each couple weeks with a few groups of kids around 5 PCs all watching the different feeds and trying to match them to the live feed? Add in a few kids using google groups and google news to provide live socio/political/weather commentary, etc etc.
Martian life found (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Martian life found (Score:5, Funny)
Significant findings: (Score:3, Funny)
Waldo? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Waldo? (Score:3, Funny)
NASA TV (Score:5, Funny)
Darn. If it's broadcast on NASA TV, then there's no way on Earth (or Mars, for that matter) that it could possibly be anything of interest.... Forget C-Span, if you want boring TV just be sure to tune in to this.
Clearly... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Clearly... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Clearly... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Clearly... (Score:3, Funny)
NASA discovers mission (Score:3, Funny)
I know what it is! (Score:5, Funny)
And last night he slept at a... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, don't blame me for the bad joke... what are you supposed to say regarding a news conference about an unknown topic?
Significant finding? (Score:5, Funny)
Or maybe.. (Score:5, Funny)
I hope it's not life (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I hope it's not life (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I hope it's not life (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I hope it's not life (Score:3, Interesting)
If we all came from the same 'stuff,' it's likely these microbes could be compatible enough with humans to cause some nasty infections.
Re:I hope it's not life (Score:3, Interesting)
moreover, it's very unlikely that stuff from here would contaminate whole mars anyways.
and even moreover, so what if it would contaminate most of it? isn't that the whole point of dreaming about terraforming?? if there's signs of life there it means other, much more significant things! answer to things like "is earth the only place in the universe with life?" and other 'little' things.
News Flash! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:News Flash! (Score:3, Funny)
You're confusing the NASA announcement with the SCO announcement.
Then again, maybe that's what's going on... SCO will announce a partnership with NASA, by which means they intend to:
Actually, that sounds a whole lot more plausible than what SCO's done so far...
News about Mars. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, they found remnants of bacterial life and water but...
... not on Mars. The probes navigational systems malfunctioned and they spend the last few weeks driving around Nevada instead.
Re:News about Mars. (Score:5, Funny)
Heck, I thought that was the mission plan. The "Mars" set is in the building right next to the "Apollo" set.
Re:News about Mars. (Score:5, Funny)
NASA TV via Internet - RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Re:NASA TV via Internet - RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
Microbes? I doubt it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Microbes? I doubt it. (Score:5, Informative)
For details about what the rovers are carrying, instrument-wise, see this page [nasa.gov].
Re:Microbes? I doubt it. (Score:3, Funny)
What they found. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What they found. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What they found. (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't speak german. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If you don't speak german. (Score:4, Funny)
The "tuxedo Gun", the irrefutable proof for the existence of past tides on Mars, is one in the stones discovered sulfate connection, which can be formed only in the environment by water.
??? The "tuxedo Gun" ???
manual translation (Score:4, Informative)
SPIEGEL ONLINE EXKLUSIVE
"Opportunity" finds proof for martian floods
by Thorsten Dambeck
The mars rover "Opportunity" managed to find proof that once upon a time, there was flowing water on mars. As SPIEGEL ONLINE heard from sources within NASA, the US space agency will make this discovery public tonight.
[caption]Water trace: Light stones close to Oppotunity's landing spot (NASA/JPL)[/caption]
"I am flabbergasted, I am astonished", said Steve Squyres, scientific head of the rover mission, in face of the pictures from the second mars vehicle "Opportunity". No other landing zone is similar to the broad plain Meridiani Planum, where Spirit's sister probe landed. The scientist was especially taken in by the light rock formation that appeared in front of the rover's camera eyes, peering out of the dark martian sand.
After thorough mineralogical and chemical analysis of the rocks in the past few weeks, it seems clear now that Squyres spontaneous excitement was justified. As SPIEGEL ONLINE found out from sources within the US space administration, the rock formation is sedimental stone which was definitely built up in a stagnant body of water.
First suspicion hardened
The "smoking gun", the irrefutable proof for the existence of past floods on mars, is said to be a sulphate compound that was found in the rocks, and which can only come into existence in the presence of water. NASA will present these results tonight, Tuesday, at 8 PM german time on a press conference in Washington.
Already the first close-up pictures of the formation fed the suspicion of planetologists, that the rock formation may have been built by sedimentation, by the process of deposition. The single strata were clearly visible on the high-resolution snapshots from Opportunity's panoramic camera. An important contribution to the discovery can be assumed to have been made by the Mossbauer-Spectrometer "Mimos II" , built by the physicist Gostar Klingelhofer from Mainz, which is responsible for the mineralogical analysis of ferrous martian rocks.
Breakthrough with german instruments
Already on the 9th of February, German members of the rover research team reported surprising results from their APXS ("Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer") instrument. According to these reports, analyses of a light rock named "Robert E." using the spectrometer found substantially higher levels of zinc and sulphur than in all previously investigated mars rocks. "This indicates that the rock is a hardened, salt-containing sediment, and not of volcanic origin", said a member of the Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry, where the APXS spectrometer was built.
But even if non-volcanic processes are being favored more and more: Until last week, NASA scientists emphasized that various formation mechanisms -- including variants without the influence of liquid water -- are possible. Now, it seems, liquid water made the race.
With this, the US-rover would have confirmed from the ground what the european probe "Mars Express" already discovered from orbit: End of January, ESA scientists interpreted the breath-taking pictures of the red planet as clear evidence that once upon a time, rivers and seas existed on mars.
The BIG News (Score:4, Funny)
OIL!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:OIL!!! (Score:4, Funny)
To be paid for by the US tax payer at a cost of (pinkie to corner of mouth) one hundred billion dollars!!
Re:OIL!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OIL!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.the-planet-jupiter.com/Shoemaker-Lev
Finally! They found copied SCO code... (Score:5, Funny)
No wait, that would be rather far fetched. I mean, it probably doesn't exist anyway. It's probably something mundane and obvious like water or proof of life.
DAMN. so close.
Just out of interest (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a fascinating project. Take a look at the "Animated guide to the Rosetta mission" about half way down the page on this BBC news item [bbc.co.uk]).
Re:Just out of interest (Score:3, Interesting)
Fascinating project, but 10 years to wait for results... Man, it takes patience to do this kind of science!
Re:Just out of interest (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know if it was covered in local media like the evening News. However, I'm sure it was mentioned, at least in passing.
Re:Just out of interest (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Just out of interest (Score:4, Funny)
Val Kilmer's robot dog (Score:3, Funny)
Leaked image! (Score:3, Funny)
To ruin US surprise, France has released image of the announcement:
http://www.humour.com/Image/AffichageImage.asp?VI
"Onion"-style Version (Score:5, Funny)
"It's not funny anymore guys! I was into the whole robot thing for a while. That was cool. But it's been like, weeks now, and the that time delay thing is REALLY getting to me." Says Mark McGraffy, associate technician on the Spirit & Opportunity Mars data-gathering projects.
"Look... see! There it is
Mr. McGraff then ran off screaming. More news as it happens.
Ryan Fenton
No bacteria (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be regrettable if this annoucement only amounted to "We have evidence from the rock layers / erosion patterns / spherule concretions that water must have been involved in the creation of these features", as we already know that water can today exist in liquid form on 30% of the planet's surface, and that water has been active on the Martian surface in the recent geological past (source [nasa.gov]). But given NASA's reluctance regarding all things water-related, I wouldn't be surprised if that's what it's going to be.
The really interesting stuff is the things they have avoided talking about, like the "mud-like texture [lyle.org]". But most interesting in terms of water evidence is the trench [lyle.org] dug by Opportunity. If you look at the fairly solid wall of soil at the right you will see a slightly dark streak on it. That streak leads directly to a puddle on the floor. Given this visual evidence, and the structure of the soil, it is pretty obvious that this stuff is wet.
The simple reality is that Mars is a wet planet. The oceans didn't just vanish, they went underground into the porous subsurface world of Mars. That's where the real action is, not on the UV-sterilized surface. All we see of Mars' underground water world on the surface is the occasional puddle or pond, the black streaks and Malin's famous gullies. If you want to see Martian life, find wet underground regions with geothermal activity.
Re:No bacteria (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No bacteria (Score:3, Insightful)
Actual real proof of liquid water is a big deal! It has never been scientifically proven to exist other than on Earth. If you read your source link you will discover that your 30% figure is just speculation: "There are 5 five distinct regions where we might sometimes find surface water... Together
Europeans: (Score:3, Informative)
so 2 p.m. EST should be 19.00h (GMT) in the UK and 20.00h in Amsterdam/Paris/Berlin (GMT+1).
The BBC carried this yesterday (Score:5, Informative)
So exciting stuff, but probably not any microbes.
Big Black Monolith (Score:5, Funny)
A typo (Score:5, Funny)
Who said science can't learn from religion?
"Significant findings" (Score:4, Funny)
(from the press conference:)
"The bad news is, no, we haven't found water."
"But the good news is, we just saved up to 15% on our car insurance by switching to GEICO."
"Hey, come back..."
Re:"Significant findings" (Score:3, Funny)
It's water - says SPIEGEL magazine's exclusive (Score:4, Informative)
NASA TV is viewable with mplayer! (Score:5, Informative)
mplayer mms://wmbcast.nasa-global.speedera.net/\
wmbcast.nasa-global/wmbcast_nasa-global_jan\
212004_1021_53608
(Watch out for the \ that mark line continuations!)
Frame rate is low, but the audio's nicely in sync and is certainly decent enough for watching press releases.
Beware, though, that as I post, NASA TV is broadcasting some ghastly children's programme. You have been warned...
Water means manned missions (Score:4, Interesting)
But the big excitement of finding water on Mars means that manned missions are possible. Not the one-way missions that were discussed previously here on slashdot, but the kind where we go in light and process our own fuel for the return trip.
Re:Water means manned missions( not really ) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Water means manned missions (Score:3, Informative)
We've known there's plenty of water on Mars for years, in the polar ice caps. (No, they're not all frozen CO2.)
The excitement is over finding liquid water (or evidence of same). -Isaac
They found him! (Score:3, Funny)
NASA TV also available via Internet2 Multicast (Score:5, Informative)
You can view it with Quicktime, Real 9 (real 10 crashes with SDP), VideoLan and CISCO IP/TV.
To view it on Videolan start the player with
--extraint SAP
and look at the playlist....it can take up to 10 min before you'll see the NASA listing.
If anybody wants the sdp file I'll try and find a way of posting it. I tried to...but the slashdot forum filters killed my post!
"Significant Findings" (Score:3, Funny)
Problem with NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Anniversary (Score:5, Interesting)
Might make for interesting synchronicity.
-Peter
Re:Seriously, any NASA geeks got the scoop? (Score:5, Interesting)
That being said, it means there is a possibility there was past life, and perhaps some future probe (or manned landings) will discover microscopic fossils.
Okay, WTF. (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a reasonable comment to make, and I agree with it, but come ON. How is that insightful? That should imply it saying something interesting that perhaps the moderator didn't think of. Who here didn't think that same thing? Lets see a show of hands.
Pickles are green.
Now moderate me insightful.
Oh yeah, Martians are green too, so no moderating me off-topic.
Re:Okay, WTF. (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps NASA TV needs to cover slashdot more often.
Re:Seriously, any NASA geeks got the scoop? (Score:3, Informative)
More or less, the appearence of the martian bedrock appears to be sedimentary in origin, with a clumpy, sticky soil that hints at a bit of brine. [msn.com] While it's not life, water is one of the building blocks of life.
Re:Seriously, any NASA geeks got the scoop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seriously, any NASA geeks got the scoop? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of hype?! Are you kidding? Liquid water has never been seen naturally anywhere but on Earth. This IS a big deal! It's like the difference between deciding the Earth wasn't flat and actually sailing all the way around it. Yeah, "everyone knows" Mars probably had water, but no one has ever proven it, which is the important part.
Re:Religion (Score:5, Funny)
(In my defense: Well, what do you expect with a story that says there's going to be a story...)
Re:Religion (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Religion (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Religion (Score:3, Interesting)
As a Christian and believer in God, I find your comments to be ignorant and intolerant.
You should know that I of course believe that God created the world in 7 days. Why not? If there is an omnipotent God, why could he *not* do it in 7 days? Put it this way, if you were God, and you created a mountain, then you allowed a geologist to immediately examine the strata in in the side of the mountain, would the geologist be able to determine that it was only minutes old? Anyway, that's neither her
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Ex...
I beleive in an omnipotent God because he must have created the universe. Therefore God created the earth in 7 days because he is omnipotent.
Creationism is a farce, and is easily debunked by someone with sufficient knowledge of biology. Only quack scientists are advocates of it as a theory. However, this is a free country and you can believe whatever you want. Just realize you are deluding yourself.
This is just one facet of the greater problem of religious fundamentalism.
The Flood kills that, though (Score:3, Informative)
Instead, we see miles and miles [talkorigins.org] of sediments stacked up on top of each other, many full of animal burrows, others requiring deposition in still water, others are deserts, others have dessication cracks.
There is a difference between what you say and the evidence. God sure did a good job of making the earth look old.
Missed the point (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine, for a second, God has just crated Adam.Boy, is he ever hungry! Because his digestive tract is completely empty. In fact, he has a blood sugar level of zero. He goes unconscious and his brain dies in a few minutes. Obviously (taking one possible creationism standpoint for a second), God created Adam as if he had eaten meals in the recent past, had been innoculated with the appropriate intestinal flora, had grown through the normal proceseses of metabolism, had had the amount of exercise that would be normal for an adult human being. In other words, with all the hallmarks of a history that never actually happened. A lemma, if you will, of this viewpoint is that Adam had a belly button.
Same goes (in this theory) for the world at large. It was created as an ongoing affair, complete with geological features (including fossils) that are indicative of a history that never happened. This history can be studied in any level of detail you wish, because it is perfect and indistinguishable from the results of an actual history. In fact it is an actual history in every respect other than it did not happen.
"But, but," you will object, " this kind of theory is not scientific."
Exactly.
All long term successful relgions go through periods where they "go back to basics". Ad fontes -- "to the wellsprings" was the cry of the Reformation theologians. The Cluniacs of five hundred years earlier in their own drive to recreate primitive Christianity inaugurated many of the institutions that the Reformation theologians rejected as corrupting innovations.
The problem is that you can never truly go back.
Fundamentalism is just a more recent variation on the same theme. They are following ad fontes impulse to try to recreate what they believe to be a primitive literal belief in the scientific truth Bible. Another, perhaps more hostile view of the Bible is that it is a pre scientific view of the world, and therefore it is obsolete. Personally, I think both viewpoints are misguided. Premodern religious people were not concerned with scientific truth, with its standards of evidence and negatability. To make the Bible "scientific" is both to add something to it that was outside the kenn of its creators, and to obscure its real value. By in large early religious people were concerned about the inner quality of human life. You can see this in the rather free way they treated their myths.
The Lurianic Kabbalists, for example, completely overlayed the Torah's account with their own highly detailed and symbolic creation myth. On the Christian side, much of what we receive as standard myths about Angels, particular Lucifer, is extra-Biblical. Almost every Chrisitan takes it for granted that the serpent in the Garden was Satan. In the Genesis account, the status of the serpent is much more ambiguous; while he is cursed in the end, he is certainly no Prince of Darkness -- he is a bringer of knowledge with all its attendant pain. Furthermore, read critically and in the cultural context in which Genesis was likely written, it would appear to be a gloss of earlier creation myths and shares many familiar symbols.
Why do people need a creation myth? In part, to address their curiosity about origins, a need that is now better satisfied through palentology, geology and cosmology. But curiosity about natural history is only a secondary reason; after all most people can make it through the day, the year, perhaps even their entire lifetime without giving any through to the creation the universe. The reason people need creation myths is that they need some kind of working hypothesis to questions that have no final answer: Why am I here? Why is life the way it is, full of pain and suffering?
Re:Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
It does not seem that there is any more evidence for the existence of an omnipotent, omnicient Christian God than there is for Shiva.
I have heard some Christians claim that evidence is unnecessary, that pure faith, faith pure of grounding in evidence is necessary. I the fail to see how any Christian can criticize someone for entering, say, David Koresh's cult. There is as much evidence for Koresh being Christ as there is the content of the Bible being true (and, heck, the Bible is self-inconsistent in many places). The same argument a Christian uses to argue in favor of his beliefs being reasonable seems to also justify, say, Satanism.
Re:Religion (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:no life (Score:5, Funny)