Mysterious Martian Plumes Discovered By Amateur Astronomers 62
An anonymous reader writes Amateur astronomers have spotted two clouds coming from the surface of Mars that are a mystery to the professionals. From Discovery: "The plumes extended over 500- to 1,000 kilometers (311- to 621 miles) in both north-south and east-west directions and changed in appearance daily. They were detected as the sun breached Mars' horizon in the morning, but not when it set in the evening. 'Remarkably ... the features changed rapidly, their shapes going from double blob protrusions to pillars or finger-plume-like morphologies,' scientists investigating the sightings wrote in a paper published in this week's Nature."
The Chances of Anything Coming From Mars (Score:5, Funny)
...are a Million to One.
Re: The Chances of Anything Coming From Mars (Score:4, Insightful)
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ALIENS!! Cue the Greek guy with the electric hair, he'll want to have a team at Roswell to welcome them.
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You're supposed to include a picture [prescientscifi.com] every time you mention him ;)
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It's Douglas Quaid (or is it Carl Hauser?) putting his hand print on the reactor controls!!!!
My eyes!! My eyes!!! It's like I am sneezing with my eyelids open!!!
It's farts ... (Score:1)
... from the rovers.
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First cylinder arrives (Score:5, Insightful)
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Minds "immeasurably superior" to humans', and they prefer bloody Woking to Mars?!
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Minds "immeasurably superior" to humans', and they prefer bloody Woking to Mars?!
Thanks, that just made my day [google.com].
this is how that old book started (Score:3)
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Nah, Mel Brooks is refilming Blazing Saddles on Mars to keep it secret before it hits the movie houses.
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That makes no sense. If you had said he was filming the Jews in space sequences of history of the world part 2, then it is believable.
Re: this is how that old book started (Score:2)
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Nope - Spaceballs III: The Search for Spaceballs II :)
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That's easy to find Spaceball II. It is here on this video cassette tape.
Colonel Sandurz: Try here. Stop.
Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
Colonel Sandurz: Now. You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now, is happening now.
Dark Helmet: What happened to then?
Colonel Sandurz: We passed then.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now. We're at now now.
Dark Helmet: Go back to then.
Colonel Sandurz: When?
Dark Helmet: Now.
Colonel Sandurz: Now?
Dark Helmet: N
The Martians (Score:2)
Are roasting marshmallows.
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or dead rovers
Volcanos? (Score:1)
The article is a little light on scientific details, has anyone ruled out some kind of volcanic eruption?
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Yeah, well I'm a scientician, and I say the evidence suggests a martian supereruption!
CO2 Crystals. (Score:4, Interesting)
Great set up for a scifi (Score:2, Interesting)
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There might be an angle of truth to this because the probes sent may have inadvertently seeded Mars with microbes that are beginning to transform it on a large scale. Look how invasive species gum up the balance of our life patterns on Earth.
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The pace per this incident probably is unrealistic, but the concept itself is not. Our sterilization technology is known to be imperfect.
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Thankfully for Mars, it has excellent sterilization of its own. And not just the heat of aerocapture; the regolith is full of peroxides.
I really don't think Earth life could spread on Mars just from a couple of poorly sterilized probes. Perhaps given enough generations life could adapt to Martian environment, but there's not going to be any "generations" when there's no suitable environment for reproduction to begin with. It's like dropping a few bacteria into a container of bleach and expecting them to ju
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It should also be added that one should expect any life on vastly different planets to be vastly different to life on Earth, just because the environments are so different; trying to shoehorn Earth life into an alien environment is a poor fit. Martian surface life would need to be highly peroxide, radiation, and cold tolerant. I remember when people were worrying about microbes contaminating Titan with the Huygens probe - as if Earth microbes would suddenly adapt to an environment with no oxygen or CO2 and
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Our sterilization technology is known to be imperfect.
Don't let NOMAD hear you say that.
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Meteor, anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why isn't anyone saying a strike by large scale meteor with a companion meteor? That would certainly kick up a couple plumes of that size.
Any of the devices we have at location able to report seismic activity for something of that order?
Life imitates art (Score:1)
Pretty sure we have it on tape... (Score:2)
Pics or it didn't happen. (Score:2)
Would it be too much to include a pic of said plumes, that are 'said' to have been 'spotted' several times?
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Where's the kaboom? (Score:2)
Asteroids? (Score:2)