Inquiry into Nature in the Spirit of John Ray
Large depressions, layers of rocks, precipitated minerals in rock cracks, erratic rocks strewn about, mountains inside of craters: these are just a few examples of the diversity of landscapes on Mars that the Curiosity rover has discovered and been investigating the past six months. The mountain at the center of the crater that Curiosity […]
After the Mars Science Laboratory, otherwise known as the Curiosity rover, dropped down the rabbit hole and safely landed on the surface of Mars there was much ado about the first images and hints at a watery past. Since then the rover has left the public eye but the rover has been no slouch, […]
Previously we explored some meteorites that have been found on Earth that are very likely from Mars (Finding Mars on Earth). Only a small percentage of the meteorites found on Earth are from Mars with a few more (over 100) originating from the moon. The remainder presumably come from the far reaches of the […]
Maybe you missed it last week with all the excitement of the pictures from Curiosity and its analysis of the rocks on Mars (See my last post: Curious Geology: Stunning Images Reveal a Complex Mars) but there was another pronouncement of further evidence that watery processes were once active on Mars. Where did this evidence […]
The data flowing from Mars has been impressive the past two weeks. Each day brings hundreds of new images many of which contain scenes like no others ever sent back to Earth before. I have followed the travels of previous rovers and looked at 10s of thousands of pictures they have beamed back over […]
Curiosity has beamed back some really remarkable images from Mars in the past couple of days. The site for its landing was chosen because it appeared from satellite images that there was layered rock and some diversity of chemical signatures at different elevations but the pictures taken from ground level reveal a more spectacular and […]
How could anyone not be curious about Mars Curiosity rover? NASA gambled by playing up the “7 minutes of terror” landing, using social media very adeptly to get a huge audience right in the middle of the Olympics. Failure of the rover to safely land surely would have been a crushing blow to the […]
This is the first in what will be a series of posts on the “apparent age” or “appearance of age” theory as an explanation for some of the features of the earth and cosmos. There is a long tradition of those that have espoused various forms of apparent age including probably the most famous proponent […]
Our perceptions of the age of an object are frequently based on our common experience but I have found that for many people those common experiences are of little help when it comes to examining objects for which a person has no experience at all. A couple of years ago I had an interesting experience […]
