Cumberland
I wonder if the sample is sausage shaped?
Curiosity plunges its drill into Mars AGAIN, seeks life-giving sample
Intrepid Mars rover Curiosity has bored into its second stone on the surface of the Red Planet, taking a sample from the interior of a rock called "Cumberland". Second stone drilled by Curiosity The Martian nuclear truck drilled into Cumberland on Sunday, making an impression 1.6cm in diameter and 6.6cm deep, and is expected …
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Tuesday 21st May 2013 12:33 GMT Thomas 4
I just realised something
I'm looking at a photo of another world, taken by a nuclear powered robot and then beamed 225,000,000 km to a radio telescope dish almost 4000 m2 in size, where it travels along 5200 miles of copper and fibre optic cables at speeds up to 2/3rds the speed of light just so I can sit here and comment on it.
I am a god.
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Tuesday 21st May 2013 15:01 GMT Lee D
Re: I just realised something
If you aren't already amazed that portions of your whole living room are powered by controlled nuclear reactions (or windmills blowing in the wind, or water running down a hill or whatever) from the other side of the country, that you have a connection to billions of human beings around the planet, that you are able to watch those probes being sent up in the first place in real-time, that you're using technology that wasn't even discovered 110 years ago to talk to electronic gadgets across your room that make it possible (radio!), etc. etc. etc. then you're going to spend much of your life doing nothing but looking aghast.
I find it infinitely more amazing that these things "creep up" on us and we end up using them without even noticing. And our kids will think we're stupid for thinking there's anything special about them.
Hell, my daughter isn't ever going to know what it's like to not know radiowaves exist and can be exploited. She won't see that Star Trek communicators were a work of fiction at the time and now we all have one in our pocket that does more. She won't even know what it's like to actually not know what her friends are up to (and that's something that my generation took for granted that you'd never have thought of at the time) or where she is on the planet.
Technology is shocking. More shocking is how well adapted humans are to just write it off as "the norm" in the space of a decade.
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Tuesday 21st May 2013 15:15 GMT Steve Knox
Re: Perhaps it's just some visual trick played by the alien atmosphere...
But that looks wider than 1.6cm in diameter.
What's your frame of reference? There's nothing in that picture that I can see to identify how "zoomed-in" it is, so any measurement based solely on the image is likely to be wildly inaccurate.
Now, my brain tells me that hole looks bigger as well, but as I think about it I realize I'm making assumptions about the size of the particles and formations I see in the image. This is the same error that leads people to swear they see UFOs travel at hypersonic speeds and make instant right angle turns -- almost invariably the video evidence shows there's not enough reference information to determine size, distance, speed, and direction of travel with any accuracy whatsoever.
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Tuesday 21st May 2013 15:25 GMT Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
@ Steve Knox
"Now, my brain tells me that hole looks bigger as well, but as I think about it I realize I'm making assumptions about the size of the particles and formations I see in the image"
Nah. I'm not doing that. I'm just saying that it looks bigger than 1.6cm.
But if you want more then I guess what I'm doing is using my experience and personal judgement to reckon how big a 1.6cm hole might be - and then going onto say that the one in the pic looks bigger than it.
How is that for you?
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Tuesday 21st May 2013 17:51 GMT Herby
Technology progress.
Less than 50 years ago, the first Martian "probe" was a "flyby" mission that took pictures to a tape recorder (for storage) and then sending the (monochrome, with two filters) results back here to Earth. That was the "state of the art" at the time (around 1965 or so). We really have come a long way since then.
Think of the technology changes in your lifetime. They are quite "fascinating" (as Spock would say).
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Tuesday 21st May 2013 18:59 GMT tempemeaty
Yay, more holes in rocks.
Some day another NASA mars mission will be drilling a hole in a rock looking for proof of life in the martian geology when Chinese construction crews will take a break from building their mars installation there, go visit that NASA rover and pose for pictures in front of it laughing at NASA and the US Congress.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
