Pixelated Semantics

Alban Heruin and the Martian Carwash

Known to the ancient Celts as Alban Heruin ('Light of the Shore'), the summer solstice was at exactly 10.42pm (AEST) last night, (Tuesday); amazingly, the SMH chose to discuss the pagan meaning of this time of year, including a serious once-over of the Solstice's importance. And in keeping with mysterious traditions, the ABC is telling how something - "or someone" - had "regularly cleaned layers of dust from the solar panels of the Mars Opportunity vehicle" while it was shut down during the Martian night. They cite New Scientist as reporting "an unexplained phenomenon akin to a space-borne car wash" that has "boosted the performance of one of the two US rovers probing the surface of Mars". NASA is reported as labelling them as "exciting and unexplained cleaning events". There is a very significant (and definitely Fortean) outcome to this: it demonstrates that "unexplained phenomena" are not localised to Earth, and are not dependant on the presence of humans to occur or be observed.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 9:45 am ::