Martian Life's Last Stand in the Trenches? "Scientists have found water-bearing deposits on Mars that are out of step with what was happening elsewhere on the planet, raising the prospect that the sites could have hosted Martian life's last stand."
posted by Fizz
on Sep 28, 2011 -
27 comments
NASA May Have Discovered Flowing Water on Mars Dark, finger-like features appear and extend down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during the next spring. Repeated observations have tracked the seasonal changes in these recurring features on several steep slopes in the middle latitudes of Mars' southern hemisphere.
posted by modernnomad
on Aug 4, 2011 -
65 comments
The Physics of Space Battles "I had a discussion recently with friends about the various depictions of space combat in science fiction movies, TV shows, and books. We have the fighter-plane engagements of Star Wars, the subdued, two-dimensional naval combat in Star Trek, the Newtonian planes of Battlestar Galactica, the staggeringly furious energy exchanges of the combat wasps in Peter Hamilton's books, and the use of antimatter rocket engines themselves as weapons in other sci-fi. But suppose we get out there, go terraform Mars, and the Martian colonists actually revolt. Or suppose we encounter hostile aliens. How would space combat actually go?"
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey
on Dec 17, 2009 -
106 comments
"
We have water," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or
TEGA. "We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix
last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted."
posted by finite
on Aug 1, 2008 -
52 comments
The "
Great Filter" is a hypothetical barrier to explain why civilisations are so unlikely to progress to the point of inter-stellar colonisation that we have not encountered any in 40 years of looking. Maybe humanity has already negotiated the filter - as some massive evolutionary improbability - or perhaps it lies in our future as an almost-certain threat to our existence?
We should hold our breath as we look for evidence of life on Mars.
posted by rongorongo
on May 12, 2008 -
85 comments
The evolution of Mars imaging from orbit:
Mariner 4 (1964),
Mariner 6 and
Mariner 7 (both 1969),
Mariner 9 (1971) (all NASA),
Mars 5 (1973) (USSR),
Viking 1 (1975),
Viking 2 (1976),
Mars Global Surveyor (1996),
Mars Odyssey (2001) (NASA),
Mars Express (2003) (ESA), up to this spy-quality shot of an
active avalanche taken by NASA's
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2005).
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot
on Mar 5, 2008 -
11 comments
There's a slight chance that
an asteroid could impact Mars at the end of this month. Usually, collisions between heavenly bodies have vanishingly small odds (a million to one, say), but the chances on this one have been steadily improving, from 350-to-1 to 75-to-1 to
25-to-1 (link to Washington Post). Scientists say that this could be comprable to the famous
Tunguska blast in Siberia a hundred years ago (not to be confused with
this other Tunguska blast).
[more inside]
posted by math
on Jan 7, 2008 -
37 comments
Mars and Beyond - 50 years ago, this animated episode of Tomorrowland aired on Disneyland a few months after the launch of Sputnik - an entertaining melange of astronomy, sci-fi, pop culture, science, speculation, and surreality. Walt himself and Wernher von Braun make guest appearances and clip 5 is particularly trippy. (Parts
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
posted by madamjujujive
on Jun 10, 2007 -
9 comments
The
government of Canada has just
turned down a request that would have seen Canada build the
European Space Agency's Mars Rover, even though no additional funding was required. Saying it hasn't made up it's mind about the future of Canada's space role, the government has also let the position of president of the
Canadian Space Agency remain vacant for more than a year (after
Marc Garneau resigned to run for the
Liberal party. The decision has left the ESA scrambling to find a new partner and already has some wondering whether the uncertainty will lead to another
Avro Arrow-esque brain drain.
posted by Zinger
on Dec 14, 2006 -
22 comments
Miracles You’ll See In The Next Fifty Years (Feb, 1950)
Some more up-to-date predictions:
science,
invention,
space travel,
colonisation,
immortality,
water
shortage,
flooding,
nanotech,
techno-apocalypse,
extinction,
mental health,
smart machines,
robots, mind uploading,
AI,
Asia,
economics,
demographics,
goverance,
cities.
What is your prediction?
posted by MetaMonkey
on Oct 5, 2006 -
54 comments
Cartography is a skill pretty much taken for granted now, but it
wasn't always
so. Accurate maps were once prized state secrets, laborious efforts that cost a fortune and took years (or even decades) to complete.
How things have changed. (Yours now,
$110) It took almost 500 years to map North America, but it's only taken one tenth of that to map just everything else. In the last 50 years, we've been able to create acurate atlases of
two planets and
one moon (with a
second in the works). Actually,
we've done a lot more than that. We're actually running out of things to map.
Maybe Not.
posted by absalom
on Jan 27, 2005 -
17 comments
With all this talk of wars in distant countries, it's easy to forget that there's exciting things going on just 300 million km from your back porch. NASA has provided 90 second videos of the first 90 sols of the
Spirit [5MB .mov] and
Opportunity rovers [5MB .mov].
posted by fatbobsmith
on May 18, 2004 -
11 comments
Life on Mars? Methane has been found in the Martian atmosphere which scientists say could be a sign of present-day life on Mars. It was detected by telescopes on Earth and has recently been confirmed by instruments onboard the European Space Agency's orbiting Mars Express craft. Methane lives for a short time in the Martian atmosphere so it must be being constantly replenished. There are two possible ways to do this. Either active volcanoes, but none have yet been found on Mars, or microbes. The Independent has it as
Methane find on Mars may be sign of life.
The second group to detect signals of methane in the Martian atmosphere is led by Michael Mumma of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, who used powerful spectroscopic telescopes based on Earth. This team is even believed to have detected variations in the concentrations of methane, with a peak coming from the ancient Martian seabed of Meridiani Planum, which is being explored by a Nasa rover. This could indicate a subterranean source of methane which is pumping out the gas, either due to some residual geological activity or because of the presence of living organisms producing it as a waste gas. Asked whether the continual production of methane is strong evidence of a biological origin of the gas, Dr Mumma said: "I think it is, myself personally." As to how...
posted by y2karl
on Mar 28, 2004 -
25 comments
