Though their pure Platonic Forms may only exist in the world of ideas, certain regular shapes can’t help but keep falling out of natural processes– case in point, the six-sided solid we call a hexagon, which is indisputably the bestagon. Don’t take it up with us– start an argument with the God of War, because its his planet that’s showing off six sided features, dubbed “polygonal fractures” which NASA’s Curiosity rover is currently crushing under tread in Valle Grande. Now, you might look at the photos and say– well, that’s clearly a dried mudflat. Evidence of water! No brainier, let’s all get Nobel Prizes. Not so fast.
Nothing in nature is ever single-sourced or that simple; if you live somewhere you get dried mud, you may have seen such hexagonal features, but ask anyone from the land of the ice and snow and they’ll tell you that freeze-thaw or frost heave can bring a field of rigolith’s inner Catan board out as well. Sure, we usually call it “dirt” here on Earth, but it’s rigolith by any other name. So NASA isn’t jumping the gun, and their announcement conservatively says that they aren’t sure how the polygonal features formed. Which is both fair enough and very interesting, as figuring it out is going to give some clues into what was going on in this part of Mars in the geologically recent past, especially since this vast field of grid tiles stretches as far as the camera can see. The consensus is that Mars was once “warm and wet” but that’s a relative term– how warm, and how wet, are very much up for debate.
Speaking of crushing hexagons under Curiosity’s wheels– did anyone think said wheels would last this long? They were already tweaking the traction control to extend their life nine years ago. Between it’s plutonium power and ongoing software updates, its a fair bet that Curiosity will outlast the late, lamented Opportunity who currently holds the endurance record at 15 Earth-years.
“smart-ass” ;)
Where’s your website, where you post about interesting hacker things of the day?
Oh, what’s that? You don’t have one? Never mind then.
You flew to Mars yourself? no? Never mind then.
I did. One day I gotta figure out what that guy dosed me with, definitely was NOT acid..
I also don’t get paid to write articles.
And yet I still take the time to proof read and check my spelling/grammar.
Expecting perfection is unreasonable.
Expecting HaD to post 95% or more of their articles without hanging sentence fragments, double words, missing words, incorrect grammar, or a pile of spelling mistakes is NOT unreasonable. Especially so when any tool more advanced than notepad/nano has a spell/grammar check.
Expecting someone to make sure they spelled a word right, when they themselves call out how that word is the ‘correct’ one, is the farthest thing from unreasonable.
The snark was warranted…
“You spelled it wrong both times so I’m doubting it was a simple fat finger”
Hmm… regarding a misstake what I know of fat fingers is that they usually not reduce (or increase) in size during the typing of a document, so making the same misstake twice (see what I did there) is not as unlikely as you think. Regarding spelling checkers: considering that “Rigolith” is a common spelling variant of regolith, which is a layer of loose, broken, and mixed rock and dust that covers solid rock on planets, moons, and asteroids. It can also refer to a track named “Rigolith” by Martin Merz from the 2023 album Planet Henri. This means that depending on the knowledge of your spelling checker a correction might not be sugested as the checker might consider it to be correct.
E and I are nowhere near each other.
Further, I took the time to search before snarking.
‘Rigolith’ got me exactly 4 results that actually contained that word (and thousands with regolith, despite me putting the search in quotes because I only wanted exact hits. But we aren’t ALLOWED to actually give orders to a search engine anymore…)
All were misspellings of regolith. That album wasn’t there. And it still isn’t unless I go to musicbrainz.
If my tires looked like that after 20 miles, I would be causing people to film me and post me online in the tire department at Walmart. But I understand there are extenuating circumstances on Mars.
…and here I expected someone to comment on a six-sided solid being a Cube, not a Hexagon (a six-sided polygon).
I agree that one or both of Curiosity and Perseverance will outdo Opportunity’s longevity record.
WHO WROTE IN THE DUST “KILROY WAS HERE” ?!?!
I’d hazard a guess that it was Kilroy
Wrong both times.
If anyone would know about being wrong it would be you. Keep it up.
Even worse if it was “Kilroi hic erat”
“if you live somewhere you get dried mud, you may have seen such hexagonal features”
Or if you live somewhere near volcanics, you may have seen hexagonal basalt columns.
Did anyone else open the first link? They have a picture of martian landscape taken by the rover.
Why does the sky look so earth like? Is it just me or does anyone else think so too?
Its greyish-blue, very uncanny. Like the sky in Beijing before they got their pollution under control
If I remember at least partially correctly our sky looks the way it looks because “air” molecules “absorb” and re-emit energy from the sun. Depending on the molecules and the specific wavelength the angle between absorption and “retransmission” varies – that’s why the sky is mostly blue but turns reddish in the evening (longer way for sun rays -> less blue light because more got emitted “sideways”).
Probably works similarly with Mars’s atmosphere.
Then again my memory of this is very vague/light and I may have “reconstructed” (made up) most of it.
Why is the sky blue? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering
As you have assumed the role of official spellchecker expert, how in the world did you (Ian) miss “brainier”? …and you totally missed “it’s” and “its”. How? Why?
If you are going to be a smart ass, at least demonstrate your sterling qualifications by finding all potential misspellings if you want to keep your smart ass merit badge.
[Writing a good article (which this is), with no errors, is hard work. As you plainly know from trying to put together a simple, error-free erudite comment here…
Time for you to submit an article to HaD. Oh…and it has to be 100% error-free]
I don’t have to find and comment on 100% of errors for the comment to be valuable.
When I simply point out spelling grammar mistakes my posts get deleted, without the errors being corrected. Why waste my effort when they are going to be so hostile about it?
I point this one out specifically because the author went out of their way to call out a word, and still got it wrong both times they used it.
I returned their cheek with some snark. And it hasn’t been deleted yet, which is shocking.
find me a hexagon please Tyler in the close up picture in the NASA article. I can see triangles and rectangles / squares etc, show me a hexagon….