This is what happens if you use too much sandpaper...

Same thing stumped Rosie's gyno. Turns out, it was just old ham.

So Mars is just a big giant kitty-litter box?

I still say that this is the coolest mission that mankind has ever undertaken.

best use of the Spiffy tag ever.

Gosh, I sure hope we get another Mars related photoshop thread.

Sandpaper??? Perhaps we caught them at a bad time...as they were just getting underway with a massive remodel project. Trading Spaces:Mars & Venus. Paige looks hot in her tight spacesuit, and Frank livens the red planet up a bit with "earth-tones". Meanwhile Hildie gives Venus a new "Giligan's Island" theme. Hot damn.

Joy Crisp is no name for a respectable scientist. I'm kinda surprised he let himself be quoted.

...much of it stuck together in clumps that scientists conceded they did not yet understand.

Got fiber?

Pete and Repeat walk into a bar. Repeat says, "Hey, is that Fark? I went to high school with him!"

Maybe some of the local wild life had to much fiber?

I love how NASA reads 'water' into everything they find on Mars. It reminds me of the 'Cities of Gold' the conquistadors were hunting for in the New World.

Norm Avery would have swept that crap up

Martian toilet paper. A bit course, but necessary to handle the task. Filthy, nasty Martians.

UMMMM... yesterday called and they want their topic back....


Scientists are puzzled about a patch of soil near the Mars rover Spirit lander that they now call "Magic Carpet"

Read, people, read.

Whoever thought to put a microscope on this thing is a genius.

doccm9 - I still say that this is the coolest mission that mankind has ever undertaken.


Sorry, can't agree with you there. One of the most useful and well-equipped robotic missions to Mars yet, but as far as I'm concerned, landing people on the Moon, multiple times, with 60's technology is still way cooler. And the Apollo missions did a lot of useful science too.

Martians used to use those spots to buff the callouses off their feet. They didn't care what caused them. And it was just this very lack of interest in understanding the world around them that led to their demise. Idiots. Lack of curiosity killed the Martians, my Pappy always did say.

i think someone said it best in this article:

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/spirit_gusev_040116.html

"If it looks like muck, and it puddles like muck, and it tracks like muck -- it must be muck."

Countless other theories are being proposed by the mysterious cohesiveness of the sandy stuff, said Rob Sullivan of Cornell, another member of the science team. In coming days, Sullivan and his colleagues plan to spin each of the rover's six driving wheels separately in order to dig trenches in the sand, and then focus the Microscopic Imager on the soil a few inches beneath the surface.

Hopefully it has a robot arm to attach chains to the tires after they get the thing stuck in the sand...

Actually what they thought was sandpaper turns out to be pixelization from their 1 megapixel camera. ;-)

"I love how NASA reads 'water' into everything they find on Mars. It reminds me of the 'Cities of Gold' the conquistadors were hunting for in the New World."


Maybe because that's the point of the whole mission? hmmmmmmmm....
Oh don't forget that WATER ICE has already been found at the poles..

Let's see, there's a white rock and a black rock not 6ft away from the rover and what do they do? Look at the dirt. WTF? WHy is one rock white and the other black? What are they made of? Is one a meteor and the other a form of sandstone? Well, is it? I am waiting NASA. And this crater they landed in. Why do that? What about that place that has the lake on it? You know, the one with the terraced hills? How can there be a lake on Mars? It is there, I saw it. It's as plain as day. Now that's where we need to look for life. I bet one glass full of that water would answer quite quickly whether there was life there or not. But noooooo we gotta send our spacecraft to the deserts. I wonder what the Martians would think if a probe of theirs landed in Saudi Arabia? Nothing but sand dunes as far as the eye can see.

I swear these scientists need some learning for something.

farking_texan water ice?

Well, I'm looking at my cat and asking, "So..."

Xevious, they landed in a crater that held a lake at some point. You can see it in the orbital photographs: there's a big crater with a huge canyon coming into the side of it. The crater (and therefor the lake) are as big as Connecticut, which is why you only see sand dunes.

noah's_fark - that's "wooter ice". I'm not certain Texan's are in on this regional joke.

Xevious, you should build and send your own Mars rover, so you can tell those smarty-pants scientists "I told you so!" and impress them with that third-grade education.

water water everywhere... and not a drop to drink...

I think sand on earth does that.. Go to Glamis, (sp), and walk around in some of that cookie dough sand..

I want to drive a dune buggy on mars... yeah! :)

Regards all

What's the big deal with finding water on Mars? We're lousy with it here on Earth. Now if they discovered multi-butted monkey, that'd be notible.

Xaxor you are my hero

That is defiently an ugly baby!!

Maybe they're Klingons from Uranus.

</an oldie, but a goodie>

SFGate? Don't they have some Bush-bashing to do? Can't believe they are even willing to run a story concerning Mars if it doesn't have a liberal spin to it...