Life on Mars? It might have dropped its teddy
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This handout picture from Nasa reveals a formation on Mars that resembles a bear. (Agence France-Presse)
LOS ANGELES — Yogi, Paddington, and Winnie the Pooh, transfer over. There’s a brand new bear on the town. Or on Mars, anyway.
The beaming face of a cute-looking teddy bear seems to have been carved into the floor of our nearest planetary neighbor, ready for a passing satellite tv for pc to find it.
And when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter handed over final month, carrying aboard essentially the most highly effective digicam ever to enterprise into the photo voltaic system, that’s precisely what occurred.
Scientists working the HiRISE (Excessive Decision Imaging Science Experiment), which has been circling Mars since 2006, crunched the information that made it again to Earth and have now revealed an image of the face.
“There’s a hill with a V-shaped collapse construction (the nostril), two craters (the eyes), and a round fracture sample (the top),” stated scientists on the College of Arizona, which operates the package.
Darkish flows, mud devils
Every one of many options within the 2,000-meter (two-kilometer)-wide face has a doable rationalization that hints at simply how energetic the floor of the planet is.
“The round fracture sample may be as a result of settling of a deposit over a buried impression crater,” the scientists stated.
“Perhaps the nostril is a volcanic or mud vent and the deposit could possibly be lava or mud flows?”
HiRISE, one in all six devices aboard the Orbiter, snaps super-detailed footage of the Crimson Planet serving to to map the floor for doable future missions, both by people or robots.
During the last 10 years, the crew has managed to seize photos of avalanches as they occurred, and found darkish flows that could possibly be some sort of liquid.
They’ve additionally discovered mud devils twirling throughout the Martian floor, in addition to a characteristic that some folks thought regarded loads like Star Trek’s Starfleet brand.
One factor they haven’t discovered, nevertheless, is the little inexperienced males who have been as soon as popularly believed to inhabit the planet.
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