Our favorite headline of the day has to be Space.com's "Pew! Pew! Pew! NASA's Curiosity Rover Zaps Mars Rock With Laser."
As the story says:
"A NASA rover has fired the first laser gun on Mars to take a peek inside a small Martian rock. The Mars rover Curiosity zapped a rock scientists are now calling 'Coronation' on Sunday (Aug. 19) to test an instrument that measures the composition of targets hit by its powerful laser beam. The rover fired 30 laser pulses in 10 seconds at the fist-size Coronation rock in order to analyze the results."
And our favorite new Twitter place to spend (or waste?) some time is also Curiosity-related: @SarcasticRover.
Two-Way readers might recall we have a fondness for Twitter accounts that purport to be the "voice" of something voiceless. Remember "Bronx Zoo Cobra?" @SarcasticRover has a similar ... sarcastic ... tone:
-- "You laser one stupid rock in the face and suddenly people say you have anger issues. Like the rock wasn't asking for it!"
-- "I'm gonna do so much flippin' biology up here that life on Earth will start wishing I was searching for it! TRU DAT."
-- "Best part about science is that even after you've done it once, you can do it again just for fun! (Same goes for sex... apparently)."
The man behind @SarcasticRover(sorry to disillusion anyone) is Jason Filiatrault. There's also an @SarcasticRover blog, where Filatrault goes into more detail about the Mars mission. Of the laser experiment, for instance, he writes:
"Armed with a MILLION WATT atomic-laser, Curiosity blasted away at a small patch of an ordinary Mars-rock code-named, in best Bond-movie fashion – 'CORONATION.' ... Basically – the laser melts the rock, the camera telescopes the fumes, and by doing that we can tell what distant objects are made of without having to make the rover go right up to them and ask for the info directly."
(H/T to NPR's Russell Lewis; @NPRrussell.)
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