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January 5, 2005
the rusty planet
• The Romans named Mars after their god of war. The planet has two moons : Phobos (Greek for "fear") and Deimos (Greek for "panic"). The moons are named for the horses that pulled the chariot of Ares, the Greek god of war.
• Many scientists believe that Phobos and Deimos are in fact captured asteroids - asteroids that flew into Mars's orbit and never quite shook free.
• A Martian day is nearly the same length as an Earth day—24 hours and 37 minutes. The Martian year, however, lasts nearly twice as long one of ours, spanning 687 Earth days.
• Valles Marineris, or Mariner Valley, is an enormous Martian canyon system nearly as long as the continental United States. The 2,500-mile-long (4,000km long) system reaches depths of up to 4 miles (7 km) and stretches along one-fifth of the Martian equator. The canyon was likely caused by tectonic "cracking" of the red planet's crust.
• The average temperature on Mars is a frigid minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 63 degrees Celsius), but the planet does experience seasonal changes. From Earth the most noticeable seasonal events are enormous dust storms, which occur during the southern Martian spring and summer. The storms can encompass nearly the entire planet.
• Mars currently has no running water but does have clouds of water vapor and carbon dioxide.
• Thousands of Earthlings became alarmed by news of a Martian attack during a 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. The Orson Welles broadcast of a four-decade-old H.G. Wells novel was so convincing that horrified listeners peered skyward for glimpses of tentacled invaders arriving in their war machines. Many people even evacuated their homes.
• Soil and dust give the red planet its color. Both are rich in iron oxide, commonly called rust.
• At least two dozen Martian meteorites have been found on Earth. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Allan Hills meteorite, which was discovered in Antarctica in 1984 and may be 4.5 billion years old.
• The rover Opportunity found geological and chemical evidence of an extinct salty body of water that might have once held favorable conditions for life. Scientists now conclude that Mars once had abundant water.
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posted by nyx at January 5, 2005 1:18 PM
Comments
Do one on Saturn la.
Posted by: BawangMerah at January 6, 2005 1:45 AM
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