What is Digg?149 Comments
- sjbdallas, on 06/17/2008, -3/+92Seems to me they should have included a tongue on the lander.
- meruru, on 06/17/2008, -5/+82Let's say it's frozen salt water and call it a day
- MattFid, on 06/17/2008, -8/+39Should have brought a slug to sprinkle it on. Noobs.
- mountvale, on 06/17/2008, -0/+30Hopefully it's both, so they can make the first Martian Margarita.
- n8f8, on 06/17/2008, -3/+32It's coke. they don't want to admit it.
- DeviateSeptum, on 06/17/2008, -5/+33I'm not an engineer but since detecting water ice was a primary mission goal, you'd think this would have all ready been answered by now. I mean, wth, it's right there! With the buttloads of spectrometers and whatnot this lander should have, answering the question "Is it ice?" should take all of 5 seconds.
- lpmiller, on 06/17/2008, -2/+23clearly, we've found the secret baking soda mines of Arm & Hammer
- viveknarain, on 06/17/2008, -9/+28Forget salt or ice, it may just be another Dharma station.
- reqage, on 06/17/2008, -4/+22...but if it was ice, wouldn't it get stuck to it?
- Memnochxx, on 06/17/2008, -0/+15I guess salt is incapable of being cold.
- orangefly, on 06/17/2008, -1/+14BREAKING:columbia anounces new space program
- hoisonsauce, on 06/17/2008, -2/+14Maybe Mars was deserted after they tried to turn the whole planet into a giant ice cream maker and failed (you could even say it was desserted, har har).
- mrbradg, on 06/17/2008, -2/+13I get Twitters from the Mars Lander all the time and will be excited once I get notified what the hell it is.
- MoralThreat, on 06/17/2008, -2/+12Oh you've been there?
- Yeyui, on 06/17/2008, -0/+9You vastly underestimate the difficulty of running a low budget operation remotely from another planet. Things cannot be done rashly as all resources are limited. Every move must be rehearsed in advanced because realtime communications are not possible. They do not have buttloads of spectrometers. There are only 8 ovens in the TEGA which is the primary instrument and these cannot be reused. The only spectrometer is in orbit and has already detected signs of water, which is why Phoenix was landed in this area.
But rest assured, the Arizona team is working hard and will most definitely answer this question - MattFid, on 06/17/2008, -0/+9You mean like an oven they could shovel it into, bake it and see what the compounds are that make it up? Yeah, someone should have thought of that oh wait they did.
Read all about it: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/ - MattFid, on 06/17/2008, -0/+8The shuttle missions just give us the facts with their tweets. They don't go out of their way trying to make the space shuttle sound like a hip 15 year old sending text messages. Phoenix should do the same.
- Kidtuf, on 06/17/2008, -0/+7I hate that you made me laugh with such a bad pun.
- legendxx, on 06/17/2008, -0/+7Are you ***** stupid? It's below 0C 24/7 on mars in that region so the salt is just as cold as the ice is just as cold as everything else. I can't believe you honestly think the ice for some strange reason is going to be colder than anything around it.
- Recuso, on 06/17/2008, -0/+7Oh god. Mars' hidden secret is that the planet is MADE OF COCAINE?! Better keep Whitney Houston away.
- chanop, on 06/17/2008, -0/+7They're too buisy killing mars-ants with the magnifying glass
- AudeVive, on 06/17/2008, -1/+7Why do we only have two choices: ice or salt? Can't it be something else, some other chemical?
- cawpin, on 06/17/2008, -0/+6Actually, it would take about 6 minutes, 5 seconds. It takes about 3 minutes for signals to get to Mars.
- seanmx, on 06/17/2008, -7/+13its megatron
- orion846, on 06/17/2008, -7/+13probably a stupid question and i'm not grasping some scientific explanation, but is there no zoom on their camera? couldn't they just zoom in to see if they see crystal-like salt or a clean sheet of ice?
- inactive, on 06/17/2008, -1/+7They already found water on Mars:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://apod ... - rootsm3, on 06/17/2008, -3/+9*****' Mars lander sucks...
He's being all coy with us, not telling us whether it's ice or salt. Bitch. - diggzaphod, on 06/17/2008, -1/+7they did. Have you even bothered to read the article?
- tschau, on 06/17/2008, -0/+6More importantly, salt and ice are the same temperature at 0 degrees.
I think this guy still gets the "what's heavier, a pound of iron or a pound of feathers?" question wrong. - hoisonsauce, on 06/17/2008, -0/+5As far as I know, both salt and ice can come in sheet-like form.
- BufordT, on 06/17/2008, -1/+6Or maybe some type of fancy scientific device like a microscope. It's been three damn weeks and they haven't been able to scoop any of it up yet, or even scratch at it to see how it behaves under mechanical pressure. I thought this was supposed to be a mission of discovery and answers.
- jj9000, on 06/17/2008, -1/+6Dude, they plan on doing that. They're looking at the soil right now, they'll get to the ice.
- chanop, on 06/17/2008, -1/+5/facepalm
- yowhat2002, on 06/17/2008, -0/+4They have to deal with twitters word limit. The woman who does it tries to fit as much info into each tweet as possible so those with device updates on dont get bombarded with hundreds of updates.
- freddoo, on 06/17/2008, -2/+6Maybe it's white oil, we are saved
- powatom, on 06/17/2008, -2/+6Silly dumb-dumb - we WILL need to live on another planet at some point if we want the human race to survive forever. Just because Mars isn't habitable doesn't mean we can't use the information gathered, and the technology developed, to find a habitable planet.
- Flatlineskillz, on 06/17/2008, -0/+4I triple dog dare ya!
- DeFex, on 06/17/2008, -0/+4energon! the fuel crisis is solved!
- daemonix, on 06/17/2008, -2/+6NASA Engineer: "I told you we shouldn't have painted the bottom of the scoop white! Now how are we going to explain this one?"
- haydentech, on 06/17/2008, -0/+4It's either ice at -180F or salt at -180F. I'm not sure how a temperature measurement helps here.
- vat0r, on 06/17/2008, -1/+5Let's kill two birds with one stone and send Gene Simmons to Mars.
- legendxx, on 06/17/2008, -1/+5d1gg3r1 - A dude who joined Digg on June 9th, 2008
Keep your retarded questions to yourself and give common sense a try.
From the FAQ:
Digging, Burying, & Promotion
1. How many Diggs or buries does it take to promote or remove stories?
The promotion and burying of stories is managed by an algorithm developed by Digg. There is no hard number of Diggs/buries to promote or remove a story. It's based on a sliding scale that takes several factors into consideration, such as number of Diggs, reports, time of day, topic submitted to, Digging/burying diversity, etc. - Onyxblaze, on 06/17/2008, -0/+4Salt and ice look the same at 0 deg C, stupid.
- 4degrees, on 06/17/2008, -2/+6its anthrax! the terr-ists beat us to mars! freedom is dead.
- nc60659, on 06/17/2008, -0/+3WHERE'S THAT ***** ISLAND?!
- MattFid, on 06/17/2008, -0/+3I get those too and holy hell they should fire the copywriter. Cause if the Mars Phoenix really said "Many ask how I'm programmed, how do I get new instrux each day? My buds on Earth write it and beam it up" it needs a good ass-kicking.
- Chebsi, on 06/17/2008, -1/+4It's worth it.
- wsuBobby, on 06/17/2008, -1/+4Crack is Whack
- whitecranberry, on 06/17/2008, -1/+4This is soo ridiculous.. They make this lander to find water, launch it off into space.. It successfully lands on target, and right below it may be ice but it cant really tell. Well, I'm no scientist, but before you go looking for water shouldn't you make sure the thing you send off is able to detect it??
- loubeck, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2Do you have any idea what the street value of this planet is!?!?!
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