I totally agree, Don. It seems to me that this is the same phenomenon we've seen throughout history -- people get overwhelmed with a world that's far too complex for them to understand, so they are attracted like moths to a flame to simplistic world-views that offer them the chance to feel like they really understand what's going on in the Universe. Hence the creation of fairy-tale religions which offer some kind of feeling of worth and self-importance by assuring people that, for example, they don't have to worry about things like Global Warming, since weather is controlled by God, used by Him to reward believers and punish sinners, and any talk from scientists about the subject is not only wrong, it's blasphemous.

Especially in the last couple of hundred years, our understanding of the Universe has grown to the point where the average person feels like a complete idiot in comparison with the vastness and complexity of what we can now see Out There (or In Here, for that matter). That seems to lead to severe self-esteem issues in a lot of people, and they seem desparate to fall in with simplistic "answers" that make them feel like they *know* what's going on. In fact, they seem to try and crow about how they "know more than them damn-fool sci-in-tists what think they know everything."

I don't see that there is any real solution to this. Idiots are just idiots, and I, for one, refuse to let their idiocy ruin a perfectly wondrous Universe...

-the other Doug

Neil Armstrong was 38 years old in 1969, during Apollo 11. Aldrin and Collins were also 38 at the time. That would make them all about 87 years old in 2018.

The youngest man to walk on the Moon was Charlie Duke, who was (IIRC) about 32 years old for Apollo 16 in 1972. That would make him only 78 years old when we're scheduled to return there -- practically a spring chicken!

There were 12 original Moon walkers, BTW, and of those, nine are still alive. I believe Ed Mitchell, who was 40 when he walked on the Moon in 1971, might be the oldest of the remaining group (though that would still mean he was born in 1931, so Armstrong and Aldrin may still be as old as he). I fully expect to lose at least half of the remaining Moon walkers within the next five years...

-the other Doug

Here's one from that list that caught my eye:

(25924) Douglasadams

If that's a NEO, maybe, at some time in the far future, it *will* be time for the dolphins to say "So long, and thanks for all the fish"...

-the other Doug

Yep -- I imagine the Beacon will look really impressive from a far rim location, situated as it will then be across the crater on the other side, where we'll see it in context with the rest of the near rim...

-the other Doug

Yeah, I can just imagine a guy who specializes in observations of distant galaxies thinking, "Why should I be concerned with such tiny little objects? I have whole galaxies to worry about!"

-the other Doug

Both I and my roommate are pagan -- he's a Druid and I'm a Wiccan -- and when we heard the names they chose for 'Xena' and 'Gabrielle,' we were floored! I mean, there are certain groups who refuse to even speak those names (or the names of similar gods of discord and mischief from other pantheons), as just their mere mention, it is thought, can invite that discordant energy into one's life... It's sort of like going into the Harry Potter universe and naming a new planet 'Voldemort,' if you know what I mean.

However, as a jibe at the discord that the current "debate" has engendered in the astronomical community, I think they're absolutely perfect!

-the other Doug

How the heck do they think they're going to expand the ISS crew to six people if they only have two sleeping berths on the whole complex???

-the other Doug

I think the real difference between Griffin and some of his predecessors is that Griffin came up as a working engineer. A good majority of NASA Administrators have been politicians and professional bureaucrats. Griffin is not of that mold.

-the other Doug

I was just looking at the large-scale Opportunity route map done by OSU Mapping/GIS Laboratory, and my impression that the etched terrain overlies what was once heavily cratered terrain was highly reinforced. Here is the original OSU/GIS route map:



I see what looks like the highly eroded remnants of rather heavily cratered terrain all throughout the etched terrain to the west of Oppy's route. Here is a version of that same image that I have somewhat roughly annotated with red circles that approximate many of the ancient craters I think I can see:



Sorry about the crudity of my drawings -- all I have available is MS Paint to do this kind of thing.

Anyway, this gives me the impression that the area was once heavily cratered. The question is, are the ancient craters features that predated the deposition of the evaporite, or have they just eroded down because they were made in the very soft evaporite layer? I'd think that these craters would be so large that they would easily penetrate well beneath the evaporite layer -- so my bet would be that the ancient craters were worn down by water, after which the evaporite was laid down on top of them. That would explain why they are so subdued.

Since we have actually visited the rim of one of these craters (Erebus), it seems to me we ought to be able to make some kind of judgment as to whether these craters were made before or after the deposition of the evaporite.

-the other Doug

I hate to say this, Rodolfo, but the spaceref.com article gave me the impression that they were planning to start studying Meridiani with MRO in November or December. I'm wondering if the Victoria area might not get a priority for at least a first-look from HiRISE and CRISM *before* the solar conjunction.

-the other Doug

I seem to recall that Brown, et. al., were holding off on announcing the "real" names of their discoveries until after it was determined whether or not 'Xena' would be considered a planet. Something about planet naming conventions vs. TNO naming conventions.

So -- does anyone know, are these names the TNO versions of the names they had in mind? Or were they looking at these names all along?

-the other Doug

I'm not sure I agree with that characterization. I'd say we have four rocky planets, two gas giant planets, and two ice giant planets. Jupiter and Saturn are far more similar to each other than either is to Uranus or Neptune.

As an off-topic aside, we always hear that Jupiter and Saturn may well have rather small, rocky cores. Considering that most of the mass in the stellar disk probably migrated early to the gravitational center of the disk before the Sun ignited, is there a theory that the Sun has (or had) a rocky core in there somewhere? That would be a heck of a thing to see...

-the other Doug

Well, the decision as to where to go to get burgers ought not be that difficult...





-the other Doug

I'm thinking that the area around Victoria Crater would be a high-priority area to get HiRISE images of, as soon as possible. That would allow the MER team to spend their time during conjunction doing some real planning. The MOC images we have are nice, but the HiRISE images of the site will be invaluable for planning the Victoria campaign.

Oh, and some good CRISM work in the area would be extraordinarily helpful, too.

In fact, I'm thinking that the first CRISM work ought to be at the MER sites. We have a lot of ground truth at those sites, which will let them approach the overall CRISM results with valuable information about how their readings correlate with what's actually on the ground.

-the other Doug

Don't y'all think that, now that the aerobraking campaign is over and MRO is actually in its science orbit, it's time to close this thread and start discussing other things (like SHARAD deployment, CRISM lens cap ejection, and initial science observations)?



-the other Doug

I'm thinking it has something to do with gravitational resonances from the moons. A small resonance would cause a local thickening of a ring, which would cause a very small moonlet to form within the ring. The moonlet would then exert its own gravitation on the surrounding ring particles, causing the gaps we see.

Of course, that's an opinion from an admitted amateur...

-the other Doug

I would imagine they're moving the IDD workspace into an area of interest for a set of integrations. Either that, or they got another drive fault of some kind.

-the other Doug

Yes, thanks, Don! In particular, the "hills" remind me a lot of a lava dike that has breached and allowed a fan-shaped flow of lava to come in and pave the area upon which the lander sits.

Fascinating place!

-the other Doug

Yep. Please note that in the attached image, there are really four different size populations in the objects we see.

The finest particles are dust-sized, and are consistent with windblown dust particles or the aeolian erosional remnants of local larger bodies which have been worn down by local winds. These particles form the primary portion of the soil matrix at this site, and they resemble (a lot) the fine dust portion of the soil that we've been seeing all along.

The next largest size of body resemble, in size and general shape, the blueberries we've seen ever since Eagle. They seem to be more broken up -- some appear to have started out spherical but have been partially or completely shattered. But these look like the blueberries we've been seeing.

The next largest size of body we see are what Bill is calling tektitic. Most of them seem to have a conical shape, and while the linked image doesn't show this well, many of them have a small depression, pit or hole at the apex of the cone. One would be tempted to say, with a quick glance at the image, "Oh, yeah, those are blueberries." But if you compare their size (larger than the blueberries we've seen before) and their presence in the same soil with smaller bodies that far more closely resemble the blueberries we've seen before, you can see that these are different types of bodies. The conical (or teardrop) shapes seem unlikely to be ventifacts because of the very small size of the bodies and because they appear to have been evenly shaped into regular cones all along their circumference.

There is one larger sized body type in this image, as well -- a more rough-edged pebbly kind of stone that someone remarked (sorry, I don't remember who originally noted this) looks rather like chert or flint. These have multiple fracture planes that form their surfaces, and are significantly larger than either the blueberries or the tektitic droplets.

These four different types of bodies seem to be fairly well mixed in the soil here. But they are definitely all different in appearance, and I would imagine they are all different morphologically.

I'm about 80% convinced that the conical or teardrop shaped objects are some form of impact melt. I don't necessarily have an explanation for why they don't look glassy. I suspect it's a matter of either their initial composition or, more specifically, the volatiles content of the original melt that is responsible for this appearance.

-the other Doug

I don't know if I'd call them tektites, exactly, but I think the larger rounded bodies in these soils, which tend to have randrop or conical shapes, might well be droplets of impact melt. That would make them similar to tektites in origin and general configuration. But tektites are often formed in the initial blast, from materials near the surface, and are blown a considerable distance away from the impact site. These droplets, if they're impact melt, came from less than 200 meters away. So they were formed later in the impact process (and hence probably contain materials from deeper within the excavation), and were ejected far less energetically than the more far-flung ejecta.

-the other Doug

Atlantis is passing directly over London right now, guys -- go see if you can see her!

-the other Doug

Ticktickticktickticktick.....

KABOOM!!!!!



Fine, it's a (very, very inferior) means of communication. Just don't ever call it English in my presence, please... *sigh*...

-the other Doug

You know, while I admire language's ability to grow and change, I resist the concept that "if enough people use the language wrong for long enough, it becomes acceptable." I'm tending to agree with the French on this -- yes, let the language change and grow. But enforce rules.

Or is the Oxford English Dictionary's next edition going to recognize such constructions as "R U going 2 be there l8ter?" as acceptable?

-the other Doug

wowsh the moon.....

It all seems to depend on your phase angle relative to the Sun. Many of the Apollo astronauts saw brownish tints in the Moon at high phase (Sun directly or near-directly overhead), while some others never saw anything except shades of gray. I think you have to be a lot closer than Earth-Moon distances to get enough sunlight off the lunar surface to really see much color there with the naked eye, though.

In actuality, sensitive spectrographic studies have shown that some portions of the visible lunar surface have a reddish tint, while others have a bluish tint. I believe reddish tints include much of the anorthositic highlands and a few of the maria, and bluish tints predominate in high-titanium mares.

Also, some of the more sharp-eyed Apollo CMPs have seen streaks of both yellow-orange and light green glasses deposited in various areas where fire fountains once emplaced basaltic glass droplets. I recall that Ron Evans, in particular, was able to see orange and red glass streaks in the Sulpicius Galles (sp?) region.

-the other Doug