Walt is looking for oil. he’s been gone for six or seven months. Occasionally he has posted from his travel while on the road. (Personally, don’t know what his problem is, I found some Olive Oil in aisle 5 the last time I went to the Grocery store, but he’s from Texas, so he might have to make it harder just to prove his manhood. Apparently everything is difficult bigger in Texas.

Anyway, he has beamed some pics back to us, as his travels have brought him to all sorts of, well, out of this world places.

Well, as it turns out, in his epic search for oil, he accidentally not only discovered water on Mars:
Images Suggest Water Once Covered Mars

WASHINGTON (July 16) - Minerals in the soil of Mars show it was covered once by lakes, rivers and other bodies of water that could have supported life, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

Last month the Mars Phoenix Lander found ice on the surface of the planet, but it is frozen hard and covered by red dust. Writing in the journal Nature, a team of scientists shows that the ice is left over from warmer, wetter times.

“This is really exciting because we’re finding dozens of sites where future missions can land to understand if Mars was ever habitable and if so, to look for signs of past life,” said John Mustard of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who worked on the study.

(Via AOL News)

Then, well, he went just a bit further out and located an entire (mini) planet:

Dwarf Planet Near Pluto Gets a Name

WASHINGTON (July 20) - A dwarf planet orbiting beyond Neptune has been designated the third plutoid in the solar system and given the name Makemake, the International Astronomical Union said on Saturday.

The red methane-covered dwarf planet formerly known as 2005 FY9 or “Easterbunny” is named after a Polynesian creator of humanity and god of fertility.

(Via AOL News)

No, no, I’m not talking about the area between Walt’s ears, but rather the area that is not on the Green Hills of Earth. We are once again returning to out in space. Today we bring you a couple of interesting (well, interesting to us) unEarthly stories. The first one is a story regarding a 30-year-old mystery regarding Mercury, the planet nearest to the Sun. Apparently to people who think about this sort of stuff, volcanism has long been thought to be a major force in shaping the rocky, terrestrial planets.

Obviously, there are still volcanoes that run hot here on Earth, while on Mars, there is more of a subdued volcanism that may or may not still be alive. Then there is Venus which is riddled with old volcanoes. Well, scientists may now have more info on the subject, due to MESSENGER (short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) which made its debut flyby of Mercury on Jan. 14, passing about 124 miles (200 kilometers) over the planet’s surface.

Images of Mercury from the Mariner 10 mission showed areas of smooth plains covering parts of the planet’s surface. Scientists speculated that these could be volcanic deposits, similar to the basaltic maria (seas) on the Moon. But unlike the maria, these plains were lighter, not darker, than the surrounding landscape, and Apollo 16 astronauts had just discovered that similarly light plains on the Moon were actually impact breccia, or rock that was smashed apart and then re-welded together again.

(via Space.com)

Next up; ever wonder what has become of all of those moon rock that came back from all of those Apollo missions. Well, truth to tell, neither have we, but apparently they are still around, and are revealing something of our celestial past:

HOUSTON — In the lab, the Moon rocks look nondescript — dark gray basalt, a whitish mineral called anorthosite and mixtures of the two with crystals thrown in. Yet nearly 40 years after the Apollo astronauts brought the first rocks back to Earth, these pieces of the Moon are still providing scientists with new secrets from another world.

(via NY Times)

Well, that’s it for now, perhaps tomorrow we’ll be able to find something interesting here on Earth.

The Perfessor

No, I’m neither being paranoid, nor am I being Chicken Little. I happened across this very cool slide show yesterday, and I figured that I’d share it with you all.

It seems that we here on Earth are in this great big space ship, traveling through the great vastness of space and, well, so too are other stuff — and, well, sometimes they hit us. No, really, check it out. Just watching it might make films like Armageddon and Deep Impact, not so much fun entertainment, as a harbinger of a deadly reality.

Go ahead, laugh now.

The Perfessor

Here is (yet another) Mars post, apparently a few million years in our past, our nearest neighbor in space (the Red Planet) was bitch-slapped by a cosmic event, causing a deep gash in the planet. You see, according to Scientists (who should know this sort of thing, apparently) there is some evidence that a huge object struck Mars at some point in its distant past, leaving behind what may be the largest gash on any heavenly body in the solar system.

Below is an artist’s rendition of what that impact could possibly could have looked like:

LOS ANGELES (June 25) - Why is Mars two-faced? Scientists say fresh evidence supports the theory that a monster impact punched the red planet, leaving behind perhaps the largest gash on any heavenly body in the solar system.

Today, the Martian surface has a split personality. The southern hemisphere of Mars is pockmarked and filled with ancient rugged highlands. By contrast, the northern hemisphere is smoother and covered by low-lying plains.

Via AP

I’m posting this because, well, as we all know Walt’s screwy for this sort of stuff, and I figure if I keep posting crap stuff like this, he’ll come back and let me go back to doing stuff that pays.

The Perfessor