UFO, cosmic ray or flasher? NASA rules on Curiosity curiosity The internet has been all aflutter after a picture taken by NASA's Curiosity rover appeared to show a beam of light emanating from the Red Planet's horizon. Mars light snapped by Curiosity Martian garden lights "This is not a glare from the sun, nor is it an artifact of the photo process," claimed the image's discoverer, …
I wonder where skeptics and conspiracy 'buffs' think their search for the truth, or whatever they call it, will lead? If they were told by NASA, say, 'Yes, we believe the beam of light in the photo is emanating from the roof of what appears to be an ancient Martian drive in theater that has been converted into a Martian titty bar. The rather unique spectrum of the light is a perfect match, adjusted for atmospheric differences, to that used in both the alien craft and the 'flight suits' of the aliens we have at Area 51. Based on interpretations by our cunning linguists, we believe the aliens we have here were somehow tricked into boarding a craft without enough fuel to return to Mars and their former 'girlfriends' have been pleasing their former colleagues, sexually, since that time'.
Would it be shouts of jubilation that their suspicions have proven true? Would they think they were still only getting 'part of the truth'? What do they expect?
I can roll with that. Makes perfect sense to me and it's good to know that Mars has a quantifiable population of sluts. Billy Shatner is our only hope! .... Gert Leboski
Angels of XSSXXXXualised Delight, Gert Leboski, not sluts, and with Imperial Grand Mastery of ITs Arts and Heavenly Craft for the Glorious Vice in Sinful Saints and Saintly Sinners.
Fab Fabless Dessert like No Other.
If the light were in a single pixel, or in several pixels belonging to a scan line, I would have no problem accepting that it was due to radiation interfering with the rover's electronics. However, the image given with the article seems to indicate otherwise, although I suppose that could conceivably be a compression artifact.
However, this doesn't mean Edison on Mars just yet. Perhaps the sun's glare reflected off of a shiny rock on Mars, which could even explain why it only showed up on one of two stereo cameras.
Those cool pictures from particle accelerators like the LHC create showers of particles heading away in various directions (easily 90 degree angles). They really indicate that's exactly what we'd expect. I personally wonder if it's small enough to be a cosmic ray hit. Cosmic rays are more common on Mars' surface than Earth's, as they are not deflected by a magnetic field like Earth's. So a single camera image like this (out of tens of thousands) is far more likely than with the average consumer-grade camera in your back yard. They happen on Earth occasionally, too, so we know what they look like.
To put things in perspective, the most energetic cosmic ray detected (one particle) had the kinetic energy of a baseball because of how close it was traveling to the speed of light. Imagine a baseball hitting a camera's sensor, only concentrated in the area of a few hundred pixels.
"Puny humans. We Martians have developed a technique for transferring all of your acquired immunities to our own bodies."
"Damn, you got us beat straight this time, Marty. We might as well give ourselves up for your chow time now. So, for starters, may I recommend a carpaccio of Gaëtan Dugas?"
Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy fame has posted an animated gif of the left and right NAVCAM views, showing that it's in one and not the other. Normally that would be the end of the argument, but not necessarily in this case. That's because we're looking at irregular terrain and the occlusion details differ between left and right cameras.
There's also the issue of simultaneity between the two cameras; then the left camera showing nothing would mean that the flash only began in time for the right camera to grab it.
Either or both of these caveats argue for Curiosity to live up to her name, and to get the hell over there and check it out. But this is NASA, so they won't.
"Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy fame has posted an animated gif..."
Not really. I've known Phil for ages and am quite familiar with his blog.
He's really good at showing how some notions are wrong, but some people suffer from fixation.
They have their own view of what is and it borders on, or even crosses deeply into the realm of delusion.
And worse, they're not shy about sharing their delusions with anyone unfortunate to come across them.
"Either or both of these caveats argue for Curiosity to live up to her name, and to get the hell over there and check it out. But this is NASA, so they won't."
OK, I'll bite. *Precisely* where is "over there"? Can you provide precise direction and range?
That said, if it's repeated and the location of "flash" corresponds to the same area, it *would* give a decent range and bearing. I know of a lot of geologists who would *love* to know what mineral could withstand Martian sandblasting and still remain reflective.
I'd pay real money for it, get my glasses made of it so they won't scratch or chip.
I'm curious, what would 'NASA' stand to gain by refusing to investigate a potential sign of extra terrestrial life? As government agencies go, NASA has a pretty damn good track record of jumping onto truly interesting discoveries and being really cool with people in space, and on Earth, cooking up home grown experiments. They deserve quite a bit of credit for fostering creative searches for 'budgetary expansion opportunities' wherever they can find them instead of a DARPA like process that's extremely rigid and inflexible.
NASA has done a good job hanging on to the funding they've still got. They know very well they're somewhere below God, terrorists, abortions, food stamps and petroleum on the Federal priority list and if they thought there were living beings on Mars you can be absofuckingloutely certain they'd be all about making it huge news, not covering it up.
quote: "I know of a lot of geologists who would *love* to know what mineral could withstand Martian sandblasting and still remain reflective.
I'd pay real money for it, get my glasses made of it so they won't scratch or chip."
My first recommendation would be to try out crystalline Carbon; it tends be be exceedingly expensive, but is also exceedingly abrasion resistant. Unfortunately the refractive index coupled with the material hardness may cause some shaping issues for corrective lenses, so I'll make no guarantees they won't end up looking like the ends of bottles, or have optical defects making them unsuitable for prolonged use. :(
I occasionally get a flash of light at night in the vitreous fluid of my eye ball! It only happens once in a blue moon, and is very faint and fast. The energy here on earth is very weak compared to the same experience on the space station. They were very startling at first because I thought I was having a stroke. but I could see the floaters for a split second, so I knew it wasn't a brain aneurysm or anything like that. And not a cloud in the sky I might add - although it could have just as well been lightning from a mild earth quake in our area. Those are even more rare. With the drought and the settling of the Ogallala Aquifer it could very well be. I wonder if any geologists have proposed this for the Mars shot as well? I'm sure Mars has "earth" quakes too!?
""Look closely at the bottom of the light," Waring wrote. "It has a very flat surface giving us 100% indiction [sic] it is from the surface. Sure NASA could go and investigate it, but hey, they are not on Mars to discovery life, but there to stall its discovery.""
100% addiction to some substance, I think. Either this or he forgot his pills for the second consecutive day ...
Wait, they're there to *stall* its discovery? Because if NASA hadn't sent up rovers then somebody else would have, and that somebody would be resource-rich enough to do so but not in the thrall of whatever dark forces manipulate NASA?
You'd think these guys could at least gin up some motives that make sense given that the actual 'evidence' never will...
Whatever your thoughts about the various people that post and pursue this sort of stuff, NASA do have an incredibly long and undistinguished record when it comes to ignoring the bleedin' obvious or (more usually), the bleedin' "what the fuck is that?".
There are zillions of photos of stuff from Mars and the moon, and elsewhere that if you saw them on Earth you would not hesitate to wander over and take a better look. If you just take a quick look at Scott Waring's web site, and ignore the commentary, it's quite difficult to ignore that some of the photos definitely look "odd" or unnatural, and any sane person with an ounce of curiosity would look closer.
Of course, "wandering over" isn't so easy on another planet, but even so, NASA have been incredibly good at ignoring stuff that any normal person would be killing themselves to take a better look at. Instead, they would rather spend weeks and months (years?) coming up with strange explanations for stuff.
I saw a cartoon many years ago of a chap from NASA and some other guy. The second chap was jumping up and down and pointing at an alien. The chap from NASA had his fingers in his ears and his eyes tightly shut. Seems bizarrely accurate.
"NASA have been incredibly good at ignoring stuff that any normal person would be killing themselves to take a better look at"
That's because when NASA find people to evaluate photos taken with equipment sent through f*cking space to another planet at immense expense, they choose people who know what they're looking at, and who can recognize red herrings when they see them, not random nitwits from the internet who don't realize that there's a difference between there being something *they* don't understand and something that *nobody* understands.
And what, pray tell, is your explanation for NASA's motivation to hush up all the interesting stuff that would undoubtedly lead to orders of magnitude more funding for them? Why the hell would an organization devoted to space exploration spend a billion dollars getting a rover to Mars to look for stuff, and then cover up everything they find - except for releasing a few random tidbits with enough information to make people question them?!
"I know, guys! I've got a great idea! We've devoted our lives to exploring space, but here's what we'll do - when we get there, knowing that our budget is really low, we'll find proof of aliens, but we have to MAKE SURE TO IGNORE IT! I mean obviously we'll release pictures that show definite hints but we'll come up with BS explanations and use a lot of resources in order to avoid explaining it. If we do that, we can make sure that we won't get increases in funding to keep our jobs! Sound awesome?"
"Hell yeah! We're stupid enough to think this is a good idea; it's amazing we can design a robot that can be operated from millions of miles away for years without breaking down, isn't it?"
Still... you have to laugh at:
The first is that the light comes from sunlight reflecting off a rock on the Martian surface. A crater on the horizon could have reflected light from the Sun, which was relatively low in the sky when the image was taken.
That sounds suspiciously like " Light from the planet Venus reflecting off of swamp gas..."
Nevertheless, sarcasm noted...I tend to agree with you in that they do have people who know what the hell they are doing (as opposed to the "armchair quarterback netizens" who, after reading a couple of Wikipedia articles are now "experts" in field of digital imagery and manipulation...)
I've got to say two things about this lunacy. First, I'm pretty sure if there were life on Mars we'd have found it by now. I know it's a big planet and all (actually it's quite a small planet, but there's a lot of surface even on a small planet), but we've been looking pretty closely at it for a long time.
Second, what possible motive could NAS or JPL have for covering up evidence of life on Mars? Seriously. Those accusations stink of the kind of ignorance that makes me want to reach for a clue-by-four.
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