Comments on: Spectacular sand pit found on Mars!

By: Monday morning links « mathbabe

Monday morning links « mathbabe — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 11:01:11 +0000

[...] how friggin’ cool is this? Makes me want to visit Mars [...]

By: Uncle B

Uncle B — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 20:01:48 +0000

Meanwhile, back here on earth where we live, “Unemployables” lines lenghten in America, Capital flees to Asia and the American infrastructure crumbles. Even China has safer cheaper pebble bed gas reactors, safer, cheaper Thorium fueled CANDU reactors, and will soon have Thorium fueled LFTR reactors. Chinese folk ride on electric bullet trains for modest ticket prices, live in great planned cities just recently built, expect full employment at Ford Motor Company factories – all Ultra Modern designed to be run by 98 pound Asian women, yet make the same product the U.A.W. did here, but for much, much cheaper, and astoundingly faster, to computer controlled and much tighter specs! GM even put a Chinese engine in light trucks sold in U.S. already.
Yes, Americans are freely given fantastic pictures of the Universe, close-up details of Mars, even geological information and actual rocks from the Moon – but just what is the point of all this?
Stoned on cheap drugs from Mexico and Columbia, soaked in Fluoride salts, drunken, poorly fed on fatty high corn sugar diets, and totally mesmerised by the Great corprate, Capitalist whor’s propaganda machine into obsessive consumerism, the fatted calves await for the Asian sacraficaial alter to arrive. Nothing from the skys will save them, nothing found on Mars will change earthly facts, America is not only broke, but deeply in debt – the largest debtor nation in the history of mankind – and mostly to the growing Asian hoards.
Time is soon, the holocaust will arrive, the U.S. dollar will fial, there will be no mercy, no oil, no electricity, no food, America ! The capital is fleeing with the corporatists! You are so doomed!

By: Chris Winter

Chris Winter — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 16:53:31 +0000

“Any chance this is an impact crater over a lava tube with a collapsed roof?”

It’s either that, or the lair of the dreaded bat-rat-spider.

(cf. The Angry Red Planet)

By: Brent

Brent — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:21:51 +0000

This image is awesome.

The comments following, caused my love of nerds to increase ten fold.

By: featheredfrog

featheredfrog — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 00:04:52 +0000

Man those Martian Ant Lions must be huge! So how big are the martian ants?

By: Wzrd1

Wzrd1 — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 17:33:41 +0000

One other possibility that wasn’t discussed by BS, subsurface water flows could ALSO generate such a chamber.
As could highly saline water, which dissolved the stone beneath the surface, forming caverns, which can have a roof failure, generating a sinkhole.
Well, I’ve got the coordinates for that location. When I get my ship’s engines fixed, I’ll pop on down and look it all over for you nice folks.

By: Astroswanny

Astroswanny — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 02:47:17 +0000

Who cares how it formed…..How many star fighters can you fit in there?

By: Martian Sand Pit of the Day - TDW Geeks

Martian Sand Pit of the Day - TDW Geeks — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 22:10:20 +0000

[...] [badastronomy] Submitted by: UnknownIncorrect source or offensive? [...]

By: Donna Beard

Donna Beard — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 20:46:46 +0000

It looks to me that this is a hill, and the sand is falling away from the outside.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 19:47:33 +0000

Chris A (52) said:

I didn’t say it was nothing! I said it was “survivable but uncomfortable” (mitigated somewhat by the fact that you’d be landing on soft sand). Ask the military guys who rappel comparable distances at near-free-fall speeds from helicopters.

Actually, a 25′ fall onto a hard surface is likely to result in a crippling injury. And sand is only good at dispersing the energy of impact up to a certain point (which is why they no longer use sand as a landing surface for the high-jump in athletics, but they still use it for the long-jump and the triple-jump).

As for marines or paras who abseil from helicopters – they slow down at the bottom, shortly before reaching the ground.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 19:43:34 +0000

The BA said:

they’d be protected from sand storms, temperature swings, and solar radiation (which is worse than for us on Earth because Mars doesn’t have a strong magnetic field to protect it).

Aw, c’mon, BA, that’s only half the picture!

Our magnetic field protects us from the solar wind, but it’s our atmosphere that protects us from harmful UV insolation. Mars has neither a magnetic field nor a thick enough atmosphere to protect its surface from harmful radiation (whether particulate or EM).

By: Dr Medford

Dr Medford — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 19:27:19 +0000

THEM!!

By: Emily Windsor-Cragg

Emily Windsor-Cragg — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 19:21:22 +0000

Don’t these people know anything about digital image processing? I think not! The cone is made of worked METAL! It’s not sand at all! Anybody can see THAT who correctly processes the photo!
http://www.freecommonlaw.us/mars2/MaSaucer.png

By: Richard Smith

Richard Smith — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:01:14 +0000

@alfaniner (#46): The 1953 version, of course? Not Tobe Hooper’s 1986 version with those giant rubber meatball martians and their penny-powered weapons. (Not that the…um…head martian in the original was exactly awesome FX…) The public school I went to had a big sand pit in the playground, and I’d always feel a bit leery of it after watching that (1953) movie.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:33:18 +0000

That would make a great album cover! Oh, if only they still existed…

By: Mircea

Mircea — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:32:54 +0000

That’s the lizzard eye, from Rango

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:55:48 +0000

… but you couldn’t pay me enough to go inside one of those. I have no desire to be slowly digested over ten thousand years.

So .. being digested by the Sarlacc *increases* your lifespan by many orders of manitude from being about 80 odd years to living to ten thousand years old? Meh, I could live with that. (Although the “in great pain” bit I could do without!)

If that’s a punishment it’s an odd one. Not to mention the biological improbabilities. I’ve heard of slow metabolisms but ..

Still a classic scene and battle though.

(Click on my name for the memories – the first movie I ever remember watching.)

If this cave isn’t already known as “the Martian sarlacc” it will be now.

PS. If you hadn’t said that was on Mars I never would have guessed. Looks so much more like ice or salt than sand there.

By: Chris A.

Chris A. — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:35:52 +0000

@Chris (#39):
“Falling only 25 ft on Earth is nothing? OK go walk blindfolded on your roof and let me know how that goes!”

I didn’t say it was nothing! I said it was “survivable but uncomfortable” (mitigated somewhat by the fact that you’d be landing on soft sand). Ask the military guys who rappel comparable distances at near-free-fall speeds from helicopters.

By: J5

J5 — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:22:56 +0000

@21. Freerefill

That’s a good point! There’s a very good chance we’re looking at a mound of sand inside the tube, aren’t we? I wonder how deep it really is!

By: Cavernas Bajo Marte. | Pablo Della Paolera

Cavernas Bajo Marte. | Pablo Della Paolera — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:58:40 +0000

[...] Spectacular sand pit found on Mars! [...]

By: Davec

Davec — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:52:13 +0000

Two words: Martian Graboids!

By: Elfino

Elfino — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 09:20:38 +0000

I said it before with other nick, some years ago. I insist: there is a specific name for that geological feature. In the canary islands those holes are called “jameos”.

By: the_Butcher

the_Butcher — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 07:12:51 +0000

That’s not a hole…

Crater’s shadow + comet’s remains (dark)

By: alfaniner

alfaniner — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:46:26 +0000

@44Booker_53 Glad somebody else remembers it! Invaders from Mars for those playing along…

By: Digital Atheist

Digital Atheist — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 03:03:53 +0000

AH! Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina.