Mystery 'doughnut' materializes in front of Mars rover: 'OH MY GOD! It wasn't there before!' Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are puzzled by a mysterious rock that has appeared in front of the Opportunity rover, Curiosity's never-say-die older sibling. Opportunity rock Is someone – or something – screwing with NASA? "Mars keeps throwing new stuff at us!" NASA Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist …
... but good ones. Heck, _great_ ones! :-) :-)
<
the rock was either lodged in the rover on its ten-year trip and it fell off
>
Ten. Year. Trip.
I still get shivers when I read that. There's, like, a robot! On _Mars_! And we bloody built it! And it's been going and going and goingandgoingandgoingandgoingandgoingandgoing...
FOR TEN YEARS!
Shivers. Really, really _great_ shivers. You go, little 'un! You rock!
that's called 'journalistic license', to extrapolate 'facts' from unfounded second or twentieth handed observations. it happens all the time, generates lots of 'click revenue' for struggling internet companies. the concept of God is another, has generated gobs of free food and cash for clever story tellers for eons also.
"… and we were like, dude, where’s my donut and they were like no way and were were like yes way and they were like noooo way!!! and we were like yessss way!!! and they were like aaawesome!!! …"
You know, it's not a donut, you know, don't blink, you know, Weeping Angel, you know, dropping, you know...
Grrrrrrr... You Know...
I'm glad I'm like not the only one, you know like, who got like really annoyed, you know about like what they said and stuff/
"we were like 'wait a second, that wasn't there before"
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! We SAID! *slamming ruler on desk* We SAID! Repeat it after me. We SAID, not "we're like". We SAID!
They could have made it worse and said, 'And like my colleague goes to me...". The use of "goes" instead of "said" really pushes my buttons!
Slid maybe, as it is nowhere near round enough to roll. Except there's a step up onto the rock pavement it is lodged on, difficult for a sliding object which would be more likely to come to a rest in the dusty stuff in between. There is also no trail from a sliding/rolling object visible which is why the ejecta or flipper from a wheel interaction is favoured.
IOW the scientists ran your hypothesis through the bullshit meter and discounted it early in the process for the sort of reasons above. I am not a planetary scientist but that is how most scientists think or should think. They explicitly point out they discounted the idea of rock throwing Martians. That one would not have taken long.
The team at JPL and NASA are serious-minded folk, so there was no mention of Martians deliberately playing mind games with us,....
When such is a possible reality, is that then serious .... and a serious alternative virtual reality? And to continue to be inclined to ignore and decline to engage with what would be in such validating cases, a Viable Alien ProgramMING, does by default allow free foreign access by ignorant invisible stealth protocols, to mind games being played ... and Mind Infiltration Network Gamesplay and/or Mined Intelligence Networking Gamesplay.
Real Spooky GCHQ Station XSSXXXX type stuff? :-) ..... which zigzags here, there and everywhere else, from the Wild Wacky West to the Erotic Exotic East? ....... although you may discover if one would ever be bothered enough to stir oneself out of stupor and inquire, that it be plausibly and extraordinarily well denied to all without a vital need to know, lest the IT terrify the animals and natives and cause panic and bewilderment in the madness and mayhem of that which media hosts and presents in its information packets as the realities to be experienced and enjoyed and endured. And that be perfectly understandable, for what fool would want to be dealing with spooked natives without a clue as to what be in front of them.
Unfortunately the last I knew we had no functioning nukes in orbit around mars for this eventuality. Please write to your local government representative to let them know that you do not approve of this lack of planning.
However we do have a nuclear powered laser tank already deployed. ETA... errm, about 15 months.
NASA kindly make all of their raw images for spirit/opportunity (and MSL) available to all for free & practically in real time.
Opportunity raw images here: http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity.html
And a particularly good shot of the mystery object here: http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/m/3541/1M442544805EFFCAEOP2955M2M1.JPG
It's about time ESA did the same thing...
Funny how every single time someone sees something weird on mars it winds up being "Shadows". The thing that gets me is that the images are from 12 Sols apart, if the rover had moved during that period then the hypothesis about the rover's wheels kicking out rocks is pretty plausible.
This isn't the stupid "face" in Cydonia, which the SAR images/scans prove that its just a oddly shaped weathered hill. This is pretty clearly a rock that is resting right in front of the field of view. I would generally say that its been moved by wind, but IIRC Mars doesn't have enough atmospheric pressure to have strong enough winds to push rocks bigger than pebbles.
Also if NASA had included a scale for reference, it would have been nice. If its the size of a pebble as opposed to the size of a doughnut, then hell, it very well could have been wind.
That or amanfrommars dropped part of his breakfast. I'll bet there's an empty coffee cup about 50 meters away.
It could, though a rare probability, be a part of a parachute etc. In which case the wind might be strong enough to move it. If the fragment was stuck on the rover (some foil or such like), then there is higher probability it would fall within viewing distance (and not just get blown to another part of Mars).
But it could be a newly made crater from a small meteor. Could be mud from off the tires etc. When was the last time the hosed down the rover? 11 years ago?
Using the two images in an overlay and flipping back and forth you can see a trace/aspects of the object in the first shot, so as Vladimir said its clearly the change of perspective + time of day that allows the shadow to be cast and thus illuminating the object (rock) in the second shot
One of the wheels is not working properly:
Opportunity’s front right steering actuator has stopped working, so [NASA Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve Squyres] identified that as the possible culprit behind the whole mystery.
Each wheel on the rover has its own actuator. Should an actuator jam or otherwise fail, the robot’s mobility can suffer. In the case of this wheel, it can no longer turn left or right. “So if you do a turn in place on bedrock,” continued Squyres, “as you turn that wheel across the rock, it’s gonna kinda ‘chatter.’” This jittery motion across the bedrock may have propelled the rock out of place, “tiddlywinking” the object from its location and flipping it a few feet away from the rover.
http://news.discovery.com/space/mystery-rock-appears-in-front-of-mars-rover-140117.htm
No, that would make it a metric size rather than "imperial" (Hah! USAians) sized.
Ring doughnuts, custard doughnuts, jam doughnuts, iced doughnuts and various other types of doughnuts all have their very own DIN/ISO standard size. This rock is very specifically jelly doughnut sized which in proper metric measurements is 1.023 jam doughnuts.
Though the "doughnut" isn't in the 1st picture there is a slight rounded shadow in exactly the same spot. This cannot be coincidence.
So it could be some chemical process whereby the shadow has grown into something solid or, perhaps less credibly, it could be an effect of different shadows producing a more distinct image, like the way the inside of a face mask can look like a projecting face.
Ir the chemical process might be life. I totally exclude the possibility of meteorite ir falling rock because it is statistically impossible it could land exactly on the spot of a previous depression.
I guess the defensive, insanity-inducing, crab-like rock critters mean the colonization of Mars is off limits, unless we can afford the weight allowance to bring along cocktail sauce, a pot of boiling water, crab forks and nutcrackers.
Then again, based on the box office, I might be the only one who saw that movie (documentary??). Thank God for late-night cable!
How come that the analysis indicates unusual soil composition compared to the surrounding rock?
Methinks it is the dried out remnants of a fruiting body, a bit like an Earth puffball.
We don't know how big it was to begin with, maybe thats what happened to the Russian probe, only a lot bigger and pushed it onto its side, causing it to fail mid signal.
No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope
studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered
the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds
immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and
surely, they drew their plans against us.
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