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Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover

news.discovery.com

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Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover

#12

Post by [deleted] »

abruzzi wrote: post #9

I'm probably crazy, but I've been staring at the two images for five minutes and can't see anything in one that isn't in the other, unless it is obscured by the annoying "view related gallery"button. EDIT: Ok, half the time I load the page, the page works and I see the rock, but the other half of the time, the image is shifted down, the top half of the display box is black, and the "rock" is off screen...

[deleted]

Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover

#13

Post by scrumper »

tunap wrote: post #10
scrumper wrote: post #8

How big a deal is it, scientifically speaking, that the rover has access to the freshly-exposed underside of the rock?

It has the potential to be huge. You never know what's just under the surface until you look. The NatGeo special, "Ten Years On Mars"[1] made a point to include how when a bad tire on Spirit dug a trench in the soft crust, an unexpected surprise revealed itself. http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/episodes/ten-y... Edit: Add pertinent link: http://www.sciencebuzz.org/blog/accidental_tourist_bad_wheel...

Thanks for the links. Maybe quite a lucky skid then.

Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover

#15

Post by Zhenya »

abruzzi wrote: post #9

I'm probably crazy, but I've been staring at the two images for five minutes and can't see anything in one that isn't in the other, unless it is obscured by the annoying "view related gallery"button. EDIT: Ok, half the time I load the page, the page works and I see the rock, but the other half of the time, the image is shifted down, the top half of the display box is black, and the "rock" is off screen...

Same thing happened to me. I stared and then reloaded page. Something is wonky with their gallery.

Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover

#17

Post by smoyer »

When I look at both pictures, it seems as though the shape of the rock was there before it appeared ... almost as though it oozed up out of the surface.

(Note: I know this isn't at all likely or even possible and just think it's an interesting trick of the eye)

Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover

#19

Post by forktheif »

scrumper wrote: post #8

How big a deal is it, scientifically speaking, that the rover has access to the freshly-exposed underside of the rock?

Pretty big.

I've often wondered why they don't send a dragline digger to Mars, so they can dig a decent trench. When Spirit's wheel broke and they started dragging it along, digging a little trench, they made a nice discovery and that was with something not designed to dig at all.

If they could get a few feet down, who knows what they could find?!

Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover

#20

Post by sisk »

abruzzi wrote: post #9

I'm probably crazy, but I've been staring at the two images for five minutes and can't see anything in one that isn't in the other, unless it is obscured by the annoying "view related gallery"button. EDIT: Ok, half the time I load the page, the page works and I see the rock, but the other half of the time, the image is shifted down, the top half of the display box is black, and the "rock" is off screen...

You're not crazy.

Psst. Discovery folks. You've got yourself a race condition. You're calculating a `margin-top` to center an image vertically irrespective of whether that image has loaded. You either need to explicitly set the width and height as attributes on the image (good for preventing reflow anyway) or hold off on calculating your dimensions until after the image has loaded. You could even just wait for window load (instead of DOMContentLoaded).

EDIT: Here's an untested, hacky fix. Not an ideal solution but concise and without having to change anything. https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c40e8baf679aad65cb2c

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