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11 Responses to “Mars Rocks” 

1. 1 Simon  Jan 7th, 2004 at 12:44 am

   not sure how relevant the distance is tbh. There would be a delay for sure, but once the feed is established the data will be transfered at whatever the bandwidth provides. A digital signal would not occupy too much space, so this could in fact be pretty good. In addition i doubt they have to worry about contention ratios
   Just think how much data must be pumped across a television satellite and thats 500+ channels with sound, teletext, interactive content. The difference in this case is that the faded signal must have distinct high and low states, but this probably isn’t too much trouble and some extra error correcting and redundancy in the signal should sort it out. This is assuming that it is communicating in a dedicated range, but even so, the receiver has to be pointing to it anyway so there is a very high chance that the hook up is faster than your net connection. I could be totally wrong, but what hope do we have in exploration if our specialised high budget telecommunications aren’t blisteringly fast in the present day and age? What more can we do with EM? We could improve compression but thats not gonna achieve much. Basically, if probes aren’t able to communicate with high bandwidth now, then unless we come up with a new way of using EM or a completely different carrier technology we are pretty much fooked.

2. 2 Andrew  Jan 7th, 2004 at 11:02 am

   You’re right, it probably wasn’t that difficult. Still impresses me, though
   Regarding other carrier technologies, might there be hope in the gravitational spectrum? We’re only just approaching the ability to even detect ‘gravity waves’, but once we can you never know what wonders may lie within

3. 3 Edward  Jan 7th, 2004 at 12:19 pm

   I’m waiting for the realtime video links Did anyone else notice what looked like a burnt patch of perhaps a wet patch on the right hand side of the photo?

   I was just wondering: if there was condensation forming on the rover as it came into Mars, would that mean that we were contaminating Mars? Perhaps give a few hundred years we really might find some form of life forms!!

4. 4 Andrew  Jan 7th, 2004 at 12:43 pm

   there’s an unknown patch they’re keen to investigate yes. They think it might be soil which isn’t normally exposed reacting to the ultraviolet radiation, but that’s just a guess.

   all spacecraft have to conform to the COSPAR planetary protection standards - http://www.cosparhq.org/scistr/PPPPolicy.htm - which are really strict. Here’s the relevant part of the faq:

   12. Will the lander contaminate Mars with life forms from Earth?
   This is very unlikely. All US space missions are required to meet planetary protection standards, and these standards are particularly stringent for Mars. As a Mars lander with no life detection experiments, the Mars Polar Lander is categorized as a Category IV A mission. This requires that the spacecraft has to be assembled in a class 100,000 clean room, and that contamination control effectiveness must be monitored and demonstrated by periodic microbiological assays. The spacecraft carried fewer hardy spores at launch than the number of bacteria that might be found in a large glass of water, and many of these will die before the Lander reaches Mars. The planetary protection approach also takes into account the extreme dryness, oxidizing soil, and lower atmospheric pressure of Mars, which will limit any growth by terrestrial organisms. The Mars Polar Lander project has completed the Planetary Protection Plan for the mission detailing how the requirements will be met.

5. 5 Simon  Jan 7th, 2004 at 3:09 pm

   I thought about the use of gravity, but then i thought there might be a lot of background noise. I mean hell, I ‘emit’ ‘gravity waves’ (assuming gravitons exist in any real terms, otherwise I merely have a gravitational effect and the concept of emitting and/or gravity waves becomes a bit more dubious)

   I would imagine that quantum effects would be the best way to improve communications. Either in totality or as a modification to EM if we can ever use it, it should yield greater bandwidth (in a composite system) or maybe even eliminate delay (in a pure system, but I do not know if this is even theoretically possible. Stupid quantum theory). Ofcourse, maybe we will develope FTL or a work around which will yield ’subspace’ radio.

   Thinking about it, any carrier wave would be hindered by speed, noise and signal degradation. At present both EM and grav are limited by the speed of light. Both are hindered by background noise. So, would a ‘gravity wave’ be less susceptible to signal degradation and noise? Would a ‘gravity wave’ have a greater capacity for data? I would imagine that research into this field would either require or yield a unification theory. If such a thing exists it would likely lead to the wave behaving similarly to EM, perhaps with some trade offs. The only thing I could think of which might revolutionise everything without quantum effects or FTL workarounds would be if tachyons exist and could be controlled. Faster than light, and perhaps less naturally occuring. Less delay, less noise, perhaps less degradation. And since v=f*wavelength, and v is greater, and if I my thinking is anyway correct frequency can effect bandwidth, then potentially more data could be piped along. If they exist.

   It seems to me that it will be more upto us to research new technologies to enable better communication than to discover something which is naturally better than light for the job.

6. 6 Edward  Jan 7th, 2004 at 3:52 pm

   I thought that the unknown patch was the crater at the centre left of screen? Or is this another one?

7. 7 Andrew  Jan 9th, 2004 at 3:23 pm

   ummm, I think that the ground in ’sleepy hollow’ is interesting (they’re speculating it might have bounced in there and disturbed stuff), but there’s a patch closer to the lander too. ‘Sleepy Hollow’ is 12m away, and will take a day. So [quick calculations] it’d take the lander 91 years to get to the B2 landing site.

   I agree that it’s far better to push forward on existing knowledge than to await new discoveries. Nevertheless, there seems to be potential in a lot of areas. Maybe it’s just sensitivity that needs increasing?

   While I’m thinking about it, did you know that last year an electron microscope was developed with a ‘resolution’ of 1 angstrom? It can see individual atoms!

8. 8 Simon  Jan 9th, 2004 at 10:54 pm

   No i didn’t know that, but I am not particularly up to date on anything really. I do know that alpha particle microscopes are theoretically better because they have a shorter wavelength and therefore have better resolution. If I recall my particle physics correctly anyway.

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9. 9 Ian Andrews  Mar 31st, 2005 at 10:02 pm

   Congratulations you are a google wack!!!!! Microbiological Muppetry.

10. 10 Ian Andrews  Mar 31st, 2005 at 10:02 pm

    Congratulations you are a google wack!!!!! Microbiological Muppetry.

11. 11 Andrew  Mar 31st, 2005 at 10:08 pm

    That is absolutely brilliant news! I’m so proud. Oh dear, do I now have to make a goolewhack chain of 10 people?!

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