Meta:
Travel Posts
Writing Stuff
Probable, Possible, and Ugh
Tags
- airlines
- airports
- Aliens&UFOs
- Alternative History
- America Unearthed
- Ancestry.com
- ancient aliens
- Bigfoot
- Christmas in Basel
- Christmas in Strasbourg
- Christmas in the Alsace
- Christmas Markts
- Curiosity
- European Christmas Markets
- european travel
- Family history
- FamilyTree.com
- Fantasy Fiction
- Germany
- Hiking Vacations
- Holy Grail
- Mars
- Men in Black
- multi-city flights
- NASA
- Oak Island
- origins of life
- Panspermia
- Paranormal
- Religion-God
- Rhein
- Scandinavia
- Science Commentary
- Science Fiction
- Scott Wolter
- Space Exploration
- spontaneous generation
- Templar
- Time Travel
- Word Cloud
- World Travel
- writer's advise
- writer's help
- Writer Promotions
- writing tips
-
Recent Posts:
So I Wrote:
- Ask Mother (+flipping villains into heroes)
- Excerpt from “A Far Traveler”
- Excerpt from “The Robot’s Daughter”
- Excerpt: “From the Agenda”
- Home at Last (+ saving a one off piece)
- The Reserve (Short Story)
- Trail of Transformation (short story)
- Vicky Falls to Vegas (+using short stories to develop a novel)
- Weissenbach Bridge (+ commentary: what makes a good short story)
News from Mars
Recently I read two articles about Mars. They are this and that. The first shows spider-like black objects that appear every Martian summer.
Right now I have to point out that these photos were taken from 200 miles above the surface and I can’t even tell that they are spider-shaped, although I can see that they are black.
Several theories have been proposed for these things. The hopeful among us say they might be colonies of microscopic creatures that come out during the summer to warm themselves. I guess they hide in the sand when it’s cold. I would model it after my little pond. In the summer when the sun is high and the temperature is hot, it fills up with algae and all the microscopic beasties that feed on it, and those that feed on them, too. Later in the year, when the sun drops lower in the sky, the water clears up and you can hardly find a microscopic beastie. That is to say there is a seasonal hatch and die-off. I would think it is the same on Mars—they don’t come out from under the sand, they hatch and grow in the warm period then die. But what do I know.
The other idea is even more bizarre; but it is more popular. It is that the whole surface of that part of Mars is iced over with carbon-dioxide. The heat gasifies carbon dioxide below the surface (Not on the surface?) and that gas breaks through as flowing geysers (not explosions, but steady geysers?). Doesn’t seem right to me. I’ll go with the microorganisms, because I expect the carbon dioxide on the surface to turn to gas before the underground stuff did, and if the underground did go to gas first, I expect it to explode, not flow like a geyser.
Other than that, microbes goes well with the idea that Mars once had an atmosphere and liquid water and life, and it had all that before Earth cooled down enough to have those things. This being the case, then it is possible that shrapnel from a collision between Mars and a meteor seeded life on Earth. If Curiosity finds life that is genetically like us, then the odds for panspermia will go up at Vegas, although I don’t think life going from one planet to one other counts as panspermia. It would be more like plain ol’ Martian-spermola, and we’re all the little bastards.
Other than that, Curiosity saw a little shiny object in the sand nearby it. It’s so shiny and metal-like that we all, including NASA officials, wonder what it might be.
It could be a natural mineral, but then why aren’t there more of them?
I did my own research and checked out what Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles had to say about it and the answer became clear. The thing probably is one of those horrid golden bees that flies from Ylla’s gun and stings and poisons and kills.
You would think NASA could do they’re own research. I expect them to, and I’m not going to e-mail the answer to them.
They think maybe it’s a bolt from the rover. How silly is that? Didn’t they put the rover together right? With all the bolts tight?
So do they think there are Gremlins on Mars, always hiding just out of sight of the rover’s cameras, wrenching and screwing on the bolts and throwing them on the ground, one by one?
Much better that it’s Ylla’s gun.
Share this post: