back to article Alien gimp gag or cosmic golf ball? NASA tackles question everyone's asking

Mars watchers have spotted another weird object on the surface of the Red Planet: images uploaded from the Curiosity rover feature a small, nearly perfect sphere that was photographed by the machine's MastCam. Mars ball Mars has a tiny ball (click to enlarge) The photo, which was snapped on September 11 and posted on …

  1. stucs201

    True mission objective

    So there are already balls there, and now they're drilling holes and have had to negotiate sandy patches where they might get stuck?

    This is just a plan to turn Mars into a golf resort isn't it?

    1. Anonymous John

      Re: True mission objective

      I hear that Donald Trump is already talking to Elon Musk.

      Alan Shepard hit a couple of golf balls on the Moon. I don't suppose.... Nah!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      So

      Martians play marbles....

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: So

        Something fell off the Indian spacecraft...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: So

        Camel shit is round...

      3. Mark 85

        Re: So

        Mars has balls.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: True mission objective

      Now you know why Bush and Obama have been keen to talk about going to Mars - they're both avid golfers.

      They could save a lot of money by playing Connemara instead. These pictures from Mars remind me of the rocky landscape on that course!

    4. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Concretion implies 'additive manufacturing' ?

      It looks more like those spherical rocks that are formed through the process of wear by motion within a depression. See them on the rocky tidal beaches sometimes. The sphere's material is irrelevant; can be igneous or sedimentary. The original rock happens to end up in a depression in a larger boulder, and after a few years of tidal motion you'll find a sphere and a smooth depression in the bedrock. The ratio of the radius is about 10:1, until the sphere wears away enough, to become small and light enough to be dislodged.

      On Mars, lacking tides and wave action, this sort of process would take aeons since the driving force of motion would be infrequent wind (dust devils) that are so weak and rare.

      I doubt it's metamorphic "concretion".

      It's negative manufacturing. Wear.

    5. xyz Silver badge

      Re: True mission objective

      You thought that was good? Take a butcher's at this...

      http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1034315/pg1

      Now that's good.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sod balls ..

    .. I'm only interested if there are bars.

  3. Someone Else Silver badge
    Facepalm

    So THAT'S where that errant sliced drive went...

    No wonder I couldn't find it in the allotted 5 minutes. I have got to take a lesson!

  4. i like crisps
    Alien

    DAMN!!

    Thought it was the football that Beckham sky'd in the 2004 Euro's against Portugal, come to rest....too small though....wonder if NASA is tracking it as harmful debris?

  5. lawndart

    says:

    It's clearly a previously undiscovered moon of Mars in a particularly low orbit.

    I think we should name it Ike.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: says:

      Unless this is somehow linked to Roswell, I don't see what Eisenhower has to do with this?

      (He wasn't even listed on the "most salvageable persons list" in case the alien invasion would be going ahead before 1960, as everyone in the know expected, a plan nixed by the Council of Reticuleans uniformly in disgust once they discovered that humans had invented COBOL, a feat that indicated a new low for the Orion arm and earned this part of the galaxy a few additional demerit points.)

    2. Martin Budden Silver badge

      Re: says:

      That's no moon. It's a (tiny) space station.

  6. IT Drone

    It's life Jim, but not as we know it...

    Silicon-based life-forms. Climate change. Cold weather. Just saying.

  7. VinceH

    Who gives a damn about a silly little ball? I'm more interested in the Martian Sand-Shark whose dorsal fin is clearly visible breaking the surface to the left and up a bit - and whether or not it's equipped with frikkin' lasers.

  8. rusty94114

    What about the shark?

    I'm more interested in the shark fin sticking up out of the sand near the golf ball...

  9. willi0000000

    it has no moss so it's shape is a natural result of its motion.

    [it probably just stopped there to get a look at the rover and will be moving on soon]

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Yeah, it'll move on down when it can't get no satisfaction.

      1. A Twig

        But what will happen on the day the music dies?

  10. GitMeMyShootinIrons

    Has our laser-toting explorer...

    ...found any cats yet?

    After all, we all know what Curiosity has form for.

  11. Faux Science Slayer

    Mars had lots of water....while it still had a magnetosphere....

    once the Red Planet lost internal volcanism, it then lost it's protective magnetosphere, and it took little time to strip the atmosphere and oceans away. Based on double wingspan of Jurassic flying reptiles and insects, Earth has had at least half of it's atmosphere stripped in the last 60 million years. Since wing area is a product function of wingspan, likely that there was a four fold increase in surface air pressure during the dino era, also solving the 'cold/warm blood' issue. This fact also refutes the linear extrapolation for 'proxy' data on previous conditions, see....

    "Amazing ! New ! Wrongco Proxy Crock" in archive at Canada Free Press and at FSS site.

    1. cray74

      Re: Mars had lots of water....while it still had a magnetosphere....

      No, this fact doesn't necessarily refute proxy data such as rain fall patterns (which have shown consistent air pressures over the past 2.7 billion years). An alternative explanation is that the originator of the Thick Jurassic Atmosphere theory had poor grasp of aerodynamics. (And geology, considering the faulty logic about Earth's CO2 cycle, and a worse grasp of climatology.)

      Still, I'll indulge this. Quadrupling atmospheric pressure with carbon dioxide (the culprit gas in the Thick Jurassic Atmosphere Theory) has a dramatic impact on global temperatures. Never mind hitting the magical 350ppm today, the Thick Jurassic Atmosphere calls for an atmosphere that 75% CO2 (3 bars CO2, 1 bar everything else). But the Jurassic was not the warmest era on record. Indeed, it is succeeded by periods of warmer temperatures despite (according to this theory) rapidly-thinning atmosphere, and was only modestly warmer than the current era by a few degrees C. Why was the Jurassic temperature so modest in a 4-bar, mostly-CO2 atmosphere?

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like