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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

#31

Post by bfe »

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, they've discovered a Schrödinger's rock. With a ridiculously high Planck's constant, and conscious observation working backward in time through an imager and interplanetary transmitter to collapse the wave function. So, pretty big news.

[Edited to add umlaut.]

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

#32

Post by bad_alloc »

forktheif wrote: post #19
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?!

They sent Phoenix, which had a scoop and dug down a few centimeters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_probe

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

#33

Post by jrs235 »

I don't see any new rock in the second image. I see that the second image has different shadows/shadowing. Were the pictures taken at the same time of the sol? You can also see that the angle is different which will also lead to different shadows too.

It appears to me to be more of a sensor "malfunction" of the camera.

EDIT: I can't find the "original" photo from the archives for sol 3528. Can someone link to the two original images?

EDIT 2: Found it... http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3528/1P441385681EF...

UPDATE: It appears to me that some rocks moved. I'll be posting image shortly.

UPDATE 2: The two original images I used are

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3528/1P441385648EF...

and

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/3540/1P442453196EF...

Below I highlighted points to look at in both images:

http://i.imgur.com/IO6xGzl.jpg

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

#35

Post by runn1ng »

sisk wrote: post #20
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…

CSS has race conditions?

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

#37

Post by bookface »

runn1ng wrote: post #35
sisk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

CSS has race conditions ?

Not that I know of, but javascript does.

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

#38

Post by ehsanu1 »

runn1ng wrote: post #35
sisk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

CSS has race conditions ?

It's JS, check the gist. The race condition is with image loading. I don't think CSS has race conditions, but someone please prove me wrong here :)
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