There it is! A lonely log!: It's on the left side of the picture, underneath the image of a distant Martian YMCA.
Courtesy NASAOh my goodness! It's not my favorite Lil', but that lil' Mars rover has gotten some good shots of the red planet. There were those Yeti prints that turned out to be made by the rover itself, and then there was that rocky little person sitting on a rock.
And now there's this: the rover has discovered a log on Mars. Blogging experts the world over are claiming that this is finally proof of forests on Mars, forests that NASA and the US government have been keeping from us.
Meanwhile, killjoys and critical thinkers are pointing out that it isn't so much a log as it is a rock, and that there are similar rocks all around.
Normally I'm all for finding logs and footprints on Mars, but getting excited about a Martian log that isn't actually a log is sort of missing the point: it's a freaking Mars-rock, and it doesn't have to be a log to be interesting. An unusual looking rock on another planet might tell us something about the planet's geological processes... but only if we accept that it is, in fact, a rock.
Plus, there are probably other, real-er logs lying just outside of the camera frame. I'm content with those.
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Maybe it's Captain Kirk's missing "Captain's Log". That would make sense.
I seem to remember that he had many logs, so maybe they just tossed out some of the junkier ones.
Sounds like these log-like rocks are quite common on the Mars surface. I wonder what geological forces helped produce their familiar shape?
I found this explanation from an astronomy professor at Cornell:
"What you're seeing is a piece of flat, platy, layered sulfur-rich outcrop rock ... Sometimes, like in this case, those flat, platy rocks have been tilted or dislodged, this one probably from the forces associated with the huge impact crater that formed nearby.
"And this one's being viewed edge-on. That edge-on view, combined with the layered nature of these rocks in general gives the surface a sort of grainy texture. So, indeed, it looks like a wooden plank on Mars."
To his credit, he also said that he wished it were a log.
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