Techies 29 : Marks on Martian Dunes May Be Tracks of Dry-Ice Sleds

Marks on Martian Dunes May Be Tracks of Dry-Ice Sleds

Several types of downhill flow features have been observed on Mars. This image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is an example of a type called "linear gullies." Linear gullies are characterized by relatively constant width and by raised banks or levees along the sides. Unlike gullies caused by water-lubricated flows on Earth and possibly on Mars, they don't have aprons of debris at the downhill end of the channel. The grooves shown here, on the side of a large sand dune inside Russell Crater, are the longest linear gullies known, extending almost 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) down this dune slope.

New research points to chunks of frozen carbon dioxide, commonly called "dry ice," creating linear gullies by gliding down sandy slopes on cushions of carbon-dioxide gas sublimating from the dry ice. Linear gullies are on mid-latitude sandy slopes, where the ground is covered with carbon-dioxide frost in Martian winter. Before-and-after pairs of HiRISE images indicate that the linear gullies are formed during early spring. Some linear gullies -- such as the ones in the magnified section of this image shown.

Astrophoto: Star-Studded Beauty in Gemini

Wide Field view of IC 443 and IC 444 in Gemini. Credit and copyright: Martin Campbell.

Speaking of shots of awe, here’s an amazingly beautiful wide-field view of IC 443 (also known as the Jellyfish Nebula) a supernova remnant, as well as IC 444, a small reflection nebula, together in the constellation Gemini, surrounded by a sea of stars. Astrophotographer Martin Campbell put this image together by stacking 30 images, totalling 1.5 hours of exposure. His equipment was a Takahashi Epsilon 180 and a modified Canon 5D MKII DSLR.

In 100,000 years, we'll all look like scared teddy bears

In 100,000, we may have finally discovered alien life. Then again, we may merely look like alien life. At least, that’s what an artist and a computational geneticist think.

Nickolay Lamm, the former, and Dr. Alan Kwan of Washington University, the latter, decided to figure out what humans would look like in 100,000 years presuming our history continues on the path it seems to be on.

And man, do we look strange.

The first major difference between homo sapiens of today and those predicted of tomorrow are the sheer size of our heads. Like Seinfeld’s Elaine, we’ll all have cause to be sensitive about our head size since our brains will be larger thus needing a bigger case.

Those larger brains will come in handy too, as they’ll help us conquer some more advanced aspects of space travel. Colonization is key in this scenario, as the new environments will cause some other major changes.

First, our eyes will grow to anime-level caricatures (i.e. they’ll be enormous) to handle the dimmer environments as we live further and further from the Sun. Though this might seem odd at first glance, our skin will have more pigmentation for the same reason: we’ll be further from the Sun, therefore we’ll lose the protection of Earth’s ozone.

Finally, we’ll need thicker eyelids and a “more pronounced supercilliary arch to alleviate the effects [of] low or no gravity that disrupt and disorient the eyesight of today’s astronauts on the ISS.”

And, of course, the face will be generally hotter: stronger lines, straighter noses, and an adherence to that old golden ratio and perfect symmetry.