Mars Rover Spots Metallic ‘Arm’ Sticking Out Of A Rock

There’s another weird thing on Mars, and Nasa really doesn’t know what it is this time.

You may remember the $2.5 billion Curiosity rover currently drilling rocks on the Red Planet already found strange shiny things and what was labelled a ‘Martian Flower’.

But if anything, this is even weirder.

An image posted by Nasa on 30 January and taken with the right Mastcam on Curiosity shows what appears to be a 0.5cm metal spoke protruding out of a rock.

The strange sight - which looks a bit like a robotic arm - was noticed by imaging editor Elisabetta Bonora from Italy.

Whatever it is looks shiny, casts a shadow on the rock below and looks different to the rock it emerges from.

Universe Today speculates that it might be a different type of rock more resistant to erosion. Gizmodo instead wonders aloud whether it’s evidence of an alien death ship.

What do you think? Are you convinced this is proof of intelligent life on Mars, or just another boring thing in the dirt? (Which, by the way, isn’t red.)

If you dont kno what comet ISON is visit HERE

Oh, that’s easy to answer – WE DON’T KNOW!!!

Yet.

We can’t know. The comet’s appearance at the end of 2013 will depend on many things. It is ABSOLUTELY ONE MILLION PERCENT IMPOSSIBLE to predict exactly what Comet ISON will look like when it puts on its show at the end of next year. But it’s fun – and harmless! – to speculate and to let our imaginations and optimism off the leash, isn’t it? And we can’t help but wonder – how long will the tail be? How bright will the comet be? Will it look like Comet Ikeya-Seki, with a long, narrow tail, or will it look more like Comet McNaught, with a wide, peacock tail? It’s going to be a long time before we find out!

There are lots of charts on this blog, showing comets with long, long tails, and the first time you see them you’ll probably think “Wow!! Look at that! It’s going to be AMAZING!!!”

BUT…

A WARNING…!

These images are to be used and considered as FINDER CHARTS ONLY. The planetarium programs and Android apps they were created with cannot EVER accurately simulate the true appearance of a comet in advance, because no-one can, not really. All these images do is provide you with a guide where to look, and when, ok? They all show strikingly long tails, but DON’T TAKE THE TAIL LENGTH TOO SERIOUSLY! The tail angle on each image is correct, but a) that only represents the ion or “gas” tail of the comet in question, consisting of material blown directly away from the comet nucleus by the solar wind, and b) the comets’ dust tails aren’t shown because their length and appearance simply can’t be calculated either in advance or by this software. PANSTARRS and ISON are both likely to have extensive and curved dust tails which aren’t shown on my charts. And please note that the tail lengths shown on the images is not to be trusted too much either; it’s just drawn in by the software to represent “a comet tail”, with some attempt to simulate its possible length. Honestly, just use these images as a rough guide to where to look for PANSTARRS next Spring and ISON next Winter, ok?

NOTE: Anyone taking images from this blog and putting them on their own website, or in a newsy post about the comet, and claiming I said the comet would look like this, will be… well… well, I’ll be very cross, and they’ll look like an idiot, because I haven’t said anywhere on this blog that the comet will look like my pictures…!

There is a lot of absolute rubbish doing the rounds about these comets, and about ISON in particular, with many websites, newspapers and magazines parroting that it might be “brighter than the Full Moon!” Well, yes, it might, STATISTICALLY, but that will be when it is crazily close to the Sun in the sky and invisible. If the Sun went out at that time (it won’t, don’t worry!) THEN ISON **MIGHT** blaze with the brightness of the Full Moon, but we will NEVER see it that bright in the sky. But it will – if it behaves itself – be more than bright enough to be a striking sight, and might, MIGHT even become a magnificent sight, but we can’t tell yet. And if anyone tries to tell you that we can, or tries to tell you that ISON will blaze like the Moon in the sky, then they’re at best ignorant of the facts and at worst telling you a big pants-on-fire fib. There’s a whole page on this blog dedicated to “The Full Moon Thing”.

We’ll know more about both comets soon, when more observations are in. Everyone needs to calm down until then.

But in the meantime, of course I couldn’t resist having a go at creating images of what I think ISON **might** look like. The first of these images have been rendered to make them “follow the rules”, as it were, i.e. the angles of the tails shown should be pretty accurate, and their position in the sky too, but they are, PLEASE remember, really just me messing about, I’m no expert!

Above: Nov 27th: looking east before sunrise, Comet ISON’s tail visible above horizon,  sharing the pre-dawn sky with Moon and Spica (end of tail) and Saturn and Mercury beside the tail.

Above: December 2nd, after sunset looking NW…

Above: December 5th after sunset looking NW…

Above: December 7th after sunset, looking NW…

Above: December 27th, after sunset, looking NW…

Now, any – or more likely all – of those could be absolutely totally 10000%  wrong, I’m just having a bit of fun, ok? (and it’s my blog so I’m allowed to!) But of course, if any of those views turn out to be accurate then feel free to leave a gushing comment telling me how brilliant my predictions were, hahaha!!!

In the meantime, here are some purely fanciful views, based on nothing more than what I wish the comet would look like in the sky in November and December, again created just for fun, so NO-ONE use them in any blog post or newspaper article and say these are my “predictions” ok?

Well, we can dream, can’t we?

The truth is likely to be less impressive than any of my creations here, but we’ll have to wait and see..!

Mission scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory, Dr. John Grotzinger, talks to SPACE.com about how the instrumentation on the rover made the find that he calls “one for the history books”. Results to be announced early December.

What do you think they found?

C. Alex Young, a solar astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, who also runs a website called The Sun Today, kindly obliged in a posted video answer to Sunsflare that, unfortunately for ET-lovers everywhere, explained that the tethered sphere was actually quite a common occurrence.

“Filaments, when you see them on the solar disc at certain wavelengths, they appear to be dark because they’re cooler material in relation to what’s in the background. When you see them on the edge of the sun we call them prominences but they’re the same objects,” Young said.

“They sit in this kind of tunnel called the filament channel so when you look at it from the edge of the sun, what you see is this spherical object and you’re actually looking down the tunnel.”

You can hear and see his full explanation here.

MessageToEagle.com - In our previous article, Artificial Objects Discovered In North America Nebula we looked at some puzzling, oddly-shaped objects that look anything but natural.

The Universe is full of wonders and although many galaxies and nebulas do often have a strange shape, it is still possible that there are many artificial objects in space. The following very strange object is located in the Taurus constellation.

The object could be space debris, a space station or something else. Whatever it is, it is odd. Judge for yourself.

The object was found on Google Earth.

A close-up of the strange object in the Taurus constellation

Enchanced image of the object in the Taurus constellation. What is it?