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Mars Day Friday, Undercover Karaoke

As has happened many times before, and always on a Friday, this Friday is Mars Day at the National Air and Space Museum. Started in 1996 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Viking Landing on Mars on July 20th, 1976, the museum hosts a public gathering of their planetary sciences team. This means you can meet and ask questions of the people who plan the missions to Mars and other planets surrounded by the exhibits, up to and including the director of NASA’s planetary science division, Jim Green. They also have a number of special events, exhibits, and presentations on tap for all age groups, infotainment at its finest.

This isn’t very Sci-Fi or Space Cadet, but it was a wonderful stunt and I just had to include the video; Jewel doing Undercover Karaoke! Thanks to @feliciaday for the heads up on this one!

Mars Water and Mars Movie

Yes, this is a geek post; deal with it! One of the major results the various Mars orbiters and rovers have been trying to work out is whether or not the red planet has ever harbored life, and one of the preconditions of life is a water supply. At least our kind of carbon based life, and there are good reasons why two planets in the same solar system would bear the same flavor of life. The most obvious two are:

1) Our planets condensed out of the same orbital dust cloud around our condensing star, and are therefore made from the same ratio of elements at the same stellar evolution stage, and

2) High speed impacts on either planet by rocks with enough kinetic energy to blast objects beyond escape velocity will tend to include any organic building blocks. Some percentage of those ejecta will end up raining down on the other planet, thereby sharing enzymes, RNA, DNA, and other life building structures between bio-zones.

With that as a given, it is exciting to find out they now have the evidence that Mars had water, enough to completely reshape the planet and generate clay deposits, as recently as 4 billion years ago. Since life on this planet started evolving 5 billion years ago, we had a clear billion years to cross-pollinate.

But there is one more detail that gave me the biggest grin of all about this; Did you notice that in each article the scientist reporting the Mars results was named after the ERB character John Carter of Mars? Is this going to impact on the movie? I am ready for that film!

Going to the Moon

I am going to rethink the Con postings, as I have had several comments that finding out about them a few days before they happen doesn’t leave time to make arrangements and attend the event. But here is a fun site to check out: Part Time Scientists, who have decided to put a robot on the moon. No, they are not kidding; in fact they are so serious that they are registered with the Google Lunar X PRIZE as one of more than 20 teams worldwide in the competition. They are looking for volunteers in several disciplines if you want to get in on the action. Ad Astra!

Things to Do: Movies

In wide release the rather bloody Repo Men gives everyone something to think about this weekend. An excellent cast and a great premise, this one should be a favorite among the adrenalin junkies (that includes me). In more limited release, Hubble 3D is showing up at IMAX theaters in museums across the country. As more of these become available, a 3D DVD player and TV become more attractive.