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2008-03-04 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-

Spacecraft photographs Martian avalanche for first time

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Posted by Frank G 2008-03-04 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 Most of the landscape that has been imaged so far has not changed much in millions of years.

and they know this because they have images starting from several years ago.

Posted by Crease Poodle1618 2008-03-04 06:22|| 2008-03-04 06:22|| Front Page Top

#2 Actually Crease, they know that by analyzing the distribution of craters. The size and quantity of space rocks has been declining in a predictable way for billions of years (as the initial supply gets swept up by planets and is largely not replaced) so a Marscape that has not been disturbed for a long time will have lots of craters and quite a few large ones, while a 'young' Marscape will only have a few small craters.

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2008-03-04 08:10|| 2008-03-04 08:10|| Front Page Top

#3 [Inserts tongue in check] Of course our opponents simply paint destruction on their runways to fool, often with some success, our image intel specialist into wrong battle damage assessments. Just imagine what a million year old civilization could do :)

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-03-04 10:10|| 2008-03-04 10:10|| Front Page Top

#4 Of course our opponents simply paint destruction on their runways to fool, often with some success, our image intel specialist into wrong battle damage assessments.

Most of us aren't fooled, P2k. We laugh at the poor-quality attempt at fooling us. Even the crappy photography available on Google Earth is good enough to see through the attempt.

It's often amazed me that our government has the best imagery analysts in the world, and so severely under-utilizes them. "Commercial" applications abound, and are ignored. NO college professor would dare hire a former military imint specialist, for anything.

Actually, there was some imagery on APOD a few months ago that showed such avalanches after a quick dusting of CO2 snow. There were at least a dozen of the "streaks" left by sliding snow/ice/sand down a crater wall. None of them reached down more than halfway down the slope, indicating the surface tension was pretty high.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2008-03-04 16:57|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2008-03-04 16:57|| Front Page Top

#5 surface tension? Or lower gravity?

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2008-03-04 17:30|| 2008-03-04 17:30|| Front Page Top

#6 I blame ~~Bush~~ the sonic boom of the spacecraft passing overhead. You can't tell me any different!

signed
pathetic lefty man-child living in MeeMaw's basement

Posted by Almost Anonymous5839">Almost Anonymous5839 2008-03-04 20:05|| 2008-03-04 20:05|| Front Page Top

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