Comments on: A fresh Martian impact

By: XRBfan

XRBfan — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 13:51:03 +0000

@squawky & @ Arthur Maruyama, Thanks for the THEMIS images! The valleys are a good guess Arthur. I think I agree with you. Cheers, Amanda

By: amphiox

amphiox — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 18:57:17 +0000

Chris @39;

I was thinking about Shoemaker-Levy 9, which was captured by Jupiter into a decaying orbit that lead to impact. Earth’s greater gravity should mean a higher likelihood of that impact mechanism. And a deeper gravity well means greater velocity change for incoming objects and a sharper deflection angles, which means that an approach that is a near-miss for a smaller gravity well becomes an impact for a larger one.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:45:40 +0000

Robert (35) said:

One exploded near the surface, tunisia-style. . .

Wait, when did Tunisia explode?

By: CR

CR — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 05:13:27 +0000

A hundred years from now, Martian colonists studying history will marvel at how we were amazed by this photo, when they likely will be observing similar impacts live and in person.

I can dream, can’t I?

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 03:52:17 +0000

Perhaps the impactor split: One exploded near the surface, tunisia-style, causing the black lines, and another impacted, causing the blue ones?
I, too would be interested in the before picture, to see exactly what was there. Something interesting happened here, that I know!

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 21:10:43 +0000

@28 amphiox
But it also has much lower gravity to draw in impactors, so there’s that.

Actually gravity doesn’t draw in impactors like you think, it’ll just change their velocity. Consider all the asteroids which pass by the Earth. None of them actually hit unless the Earth is actually in the way. All the others just speed on by. Orbits severely perturbed and sometimes may hit in the future, but most of the time nothing happens. Gravity doesn’t suck. If the object wasn’t gravitationally bound in the first place, it won’t be drawn in.

By: roymeo

roymeo — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 19:43:44 +0000

Maybe I’m just pissing into the wind here, but the rays could have been affected by the atmosphere and the same wind that blows the dust around. Blowing wind and air resistance would have different affects on differently sized particles.

And I totally though Phil was doing a joke here and the reveal was going to be that the impact was from part of the Curiosity landing (heat shield, etc.).

By: W Sanders

W Sanders — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 19:02:27 +0000

There are blue rocks on Earth, why not on Mars? One of my favorite mountain bike trails (in My Diablo State Park, California) passes through a patch of blue rocks. I think they are travertine or travertine-like, but I’m not much of a geologist.

By: tim Rowledge

tim Rowledge — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:39:29 +0000

@kuhnigget: Actually, that’s the real color. The meteorite landed on a Smurf

Actually it was a Smurf-ship that crashed. There’s way to much blue material to be less than a dozen Smurfonauts, making it likely it was a Smoogle class interplanetary chemtrail disperser vessel. It was in fact one of these that crashed into the WTC, following a failed attempt to divert the planes. The chemtrail fluid is what burned with enough heat to melt the steel. Truth. Wake Up Sheeple!

By: Ed Davies

Ed Davies — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:26:27 +0000

@18 Wzrd1 – I believe that the more widely accepted view is that the order, going outwards from the Sun, is Mars, asteroid belt, Jupiter.