IMS_Blog

We really need to get that Mars programme rolling to go and bring the poor little rover home^*. Seriously though; given it was supposed to last 90 days, it’s been one hell of a successful mission!

It’s just possible that my youth may have been overly influenced by such things as Short Circuit, Doctor Who’s K9, and friendly robots like Twiki. I think that Spirit deserves to be brought home, or at least have a museum built around it so the nasty Martian dust won’t bother its solar cells.

This was going to be a post about something completely different but I’m still writing that one. In the meantime, like some amazing bonus from Sunday afternoons of yester year when there were TV schedules to fill, here are a couple of cartoons (hat tip Doug Natelson who’s blog I found in my recommended list from Google Reader).

I’m pretty sure this Tom Swanson cartoon could be inserted as the abstract to most surface physics PhD theses (actually, I suspect more science theses but I only have experience in the on area—and it shows a vacuum chamber)

The other comic linked to, Cectic, is pretty funny in general too. Go read it!

These dragons, they keep eating things. Or something.

I’ve caught a cold, so probably won’t be up watching myself, but it’s the last chance to 2010 or something to see a total lunar eclipse, so worth mentioning. Totality begins 03:01 GMT on the 21st and end 03:51. The Moon will likely turn to blood (thanks to light refracted by the Earth’s atmosphere). That’s all if there isn’t too much cloud to see it which, let’s face it, there probably will be.

Image blatantly stolen from Shadow & Substance

It’s for orignal research don’t you know (note the last panel especially) :-) Oh, and my thesis.