Touche!!!

Gary 7

“Only a fool or a madman does that.”

,,,or somebody who can run really, REALLY fast,,,

Gary 7

If we define life as a self replicating, self sustaining system, then living dunes might be possible but their energy input would appear to be limited to blowing winds,,,not too efficient in my book,,,

“Living” plasmas would seem a great deal more probable. Though how they would pass on a genetic code, both mutable and stable, beats the heck out of me.

Guess, I’ll just have to wait and see,,,

Gary 7

Duke Leto II would be displeased, and you don’t want that.

Do you think the God Emperor of Dune would have enough human humour left in him to let us worm our way of that thumping problem – and using the odd bad puns?

Incidentally, the Wikipedia page for Arrakis seems to say “Dune” orbits Canopus instead which I don’t remember from the novels & is much less plausible than the Mu Drac stars given the more massive white supergiants shorter lifespan and lesser likelihood of having planets. (Massive stars like Canopus are very hard on protoplanetary disks tending to destory them via excessive radiation.) Oh well.

&

http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/dra-t.html

for a photographic finder chart

While this :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrakis

is the wikipage for the fictional exoplanet.

@ ^ Atreides : are you counting your comment in that?

The dunes of Mars would seem far safer than dunes of Dune where sandworms and space wars are concerned – and yet Martian conditions are actually far harsher and less hospitable atmosphere & pressure~wise.

Still this picture certainly spices them up too!

I agree with Atreides on the need for a scale bar there too.

***

PS. Did you know Arrakis (the real name of “Dune” in the Frank Herbert’s classic novel series) is a real star system name – for Mu Draconis a faint but interesting binary star – two F7 Procyonese dwarfs – located near the head of the “dragon” roughly in line with Rastaban (Beta Draconis) and forming a triangle with Kuma (Nu Drac). There is a slight confusion here in that the star Arrakis in the 1988 edition is also listed by the ‘Alrakis’ variant of its name in a later updated 2007 edition of Collins Guide To Stars & Planets, Ian Ridpath & Wil Tirion, Collins. (First published 1984.)

On a serious note, cool picture. What is the scale btw?

* No. Duh. C’mon.”

Crap can be black.
Maybe it´s Martian guano. Made from the inside seeping and oozing outwards. And since Martian gravity is less than ours it can grow and grow and grow.

We recently spent an hour-plus at one of the local Science on Tap presentations examining photos of Martian land features. Good stuff.