21 November 2012

Exciting news about Mars pending...


As NPR reports, NASA has "exciting" news that it is withholding pending confirmation:
They have some exciting new results from one of the rover's instruments. On the one hand, they'd like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument...

SAM is a kind of miniature chemistry lab. Put a sample of Martian soil or rock or even air inside SAM, and it will tell you what the sample is made of.

Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something earthshaking...

Grotzinger says it will take several weeks before he and his team are ready to talk about their latest finding.
Personally, I'm hoping they will announce they've discovered who is drawing the happy faces on Mars.
This picture of a crater resembling a "happy face" was acquired by the Context Camera (CTX) on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on January 28, 2008. The unnamed crater is about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) across. It is located among the Nereidum Montes, north of the Argyre basin, near 45.1°S, 55.0°W. North is toward the right and sunlight illuminates the scene from the upper right.
Another happy face was observed on Mars as early as 1976.

Image (credit NASA/JPL/MSSS) cropped slightly from the original at The Planetary Society.

And with that happy face, my holiday blogcation starts.  Happy Thanksgiving to all.

17 comments:

  1. It's Jon Osterman aka Doctor Manhattan drawing the happy faces...

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    1. Now we must, as a nation, come together with steely resolve to DIG UP THIS CRATER -- this is an unmistakable sign powerful Martian intoxicants are BURIED UNDERNEATH.

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  2. It's Red John!

    (A _The Mentalist_ reference, for the uninformed.)

    Lurker111

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  3. My money is on the announcement being something about water

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    1. Please Please PLEASE let it not be about water again! We've known about water on Mars since the 70's. Great Ghu, let it be about finding life forms - ANY life forms!

      But secretly I think you're right...*sigh*

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  4. Would love it to be something concerning possible life or some evidence for past life even. But I'm not going to get too get too speculative until the news is released, waiting with great interests though! "Something for the history books" is going to be interesting anyway no matter what it is. We know already that liquid water flowed on the Martian surface in the ancient past. Just gotta wait & see

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  5. I bet its discovery of organic molecules in the soil.

    The Viking landers didn't find any, but there is a theory that some were observed, just that the instrumentation on Viking didn't work quite as expected.

    What this means, is that life as we know it *might* exist in some form on Mars. Doesn't mean its there, or that it can florish, but that it might have in the past, or in the future. BIG news. Up to now the theory has been that peroxides in the Martian soil would react with and tear the organic compounds apart. Without organic compounds no possibility.

    And please.. someone go look up the definition of organic compounds, as compared to the usual usage of "organic = natural".

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  6. Well, we already know Mars was at one time loaded with water, and that pockets of it still remain to this day. So... this announcement ("one for the history books") could only mean one thing, evidence of... LIFE! Microbial life to be sure, but... l-i-f-e all the same!!!

    Of course, the scientist who devised the original Mars Viking biology test for NASA way back in 1976 insisted his experiment proved there was life- and now, other scientists think he might well have been right.

    Curiously, NASA purposely chose to send up a microscope for the geologists, but not one for the biologists to see if we could spot a little Martian microbial dance of life in a specially heated, specially treated stew. This is science that could have been done right now! And yet, NASA specifically chose not to. You have to ask if they first have to accustom the fragile (Christian, American) public to the very idea of "alien" life, before the absolute shock of letting us see the little pornographic boogers...

    Then again... it could be The Monolith...

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  7. Honestly, I dont see what the big deal would be about finding organic molecules or evidence of some microbacterial lifeform.

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    1. If 'life' or 'past life' is the case, it answers a question humanity has been wanting answered for centuries or millenia. The big deal would essentially be that life is not just confined to planet Earth. If we find it on Mars, we know life wasn't a fluke of nature on Earth and it opens up the possibility that life may be abundant in the entire Universe. Which is a very interesting thing to think about!

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  8. i wonder if they'll release the findings on 12/21/12....

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  9. Wow, those 'happy faces' are eerie

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  10. Not only do we have Martian happy faces, but now there seems to be a major Bigfoot finding: A Texas scientist says she has sequenced Bigfoot DNA. There's an entertaining discussion of it at http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/11/like-omg-scientists-have-sequenced-bigfoot-dna/

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  11. Apparently, the announcement isn't exciting at all.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/science/space/nasa-plays-down-mars-speculation.html

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    1. Yes, you are correct. Apparently he was talking about the Sample Analysis Machine performing tests and bringing in results as being worth of history books. Not actual results of the test. Lets hope for more clarity in the future!

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