Mars rover stumbled on a fantastic chunky meteorite

Originally published at: Mars rover stumbled on a fantastic chunky meteorite | Boing Boing

6 Likes

What a hunk! :heart_eyes:

9 Likes

That comment has triggered my movie Tourette’s resulting in this gif:

6 Likes

What cool find. They can get a few bucks for that from Mad Mike’s Meteorite Mega Menagerie.

9 Likes

Musk’s already adding it to the assets column on Twitter’s balance sheet.

10 Likes

International Community: You mean about a third of a meter?

American Scientists: When YOUR country builds an awesome Mars rover then YOU can measure the meteorites. This one’s ours!

11 Likes

What’s that in giraffes?

4 Likes

well, giraffe hooves are the size of dinner plates, and dinner plates are between 11 and 12 inches, so… one. one giraffe foot.

2 Likes

So about a foot?

6 Likes

Actshully… doesn’t NASA use the metric system?

4 Likes

Any thoughts on how those parallel striations were created on an uneven surface? (Perhaps made upon low angle impact on Mars? FeNi is pretty hard, though. Any metallurgists here?)

2 Likes

one big foot

image

4 Likes

I was thinking the same thing, but what about encountering similar dense objects, like passing through an asteroid belt or something?

1 Like

Both, sometimes

2 Likes

I’m imagining something similar to raindrop trails on a windshield. Only with liquid metal.

4 Likes

Snl Season 47 GIF by Saturday Night Live

2 Likes

We’re on the same wavelength. But I couldn’t imagine a case where a single scrapping impact event was likely (the impactor’s surface would have to have been configured to deliver what appears to be roughly the same width and depth for each striation. If the cause instead was multiple impacts, then that points to the meteorite running into a field of stationary (enough) objects or vice versa, and yet creating, again similar scrapes (which is what you’ve posit, I think). It’s the similarity of the striations’ width and apparent depth that baffles me. Perhaps some process involved as it heated up upon entering Mars atmosphere?

1 Like

Lucky guess on my part!!! Thx!!

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.