Today we had a talk and a lab tour. One of the talkers was Jennifer Eigenbrode. She was excited. She brought cool rocks.
The above rock and the next rock are the closest rocks we have to Mars analogs (meaning, these are rocks from Earth that are most similar to rocks on Mars (we think)). The above rock is a metamorphized piece of... rock... that came out of a volcano.
This rock is also from a volcano and is part basalt (the black part, which is volcano-y) and part mantle (the green-y-ish stuff, which is not volcano-y)! That's cool! I drew a picture of a volcano for you:
They are having fun.
The one on the left is _____ and the one on the right is ____.
But back to the rock. Basically, the volcano explosion caused a piece of mantle to dislodge and shoot up through the volcano where the rock metamorphosisized joining the basalt and the mantle, and then the rock shot out of the top of the volcano and landed somewhere where a person can find it! I drew you a picture of the rock's journey with my left hand. IT TOOK FOREVER:
Half the picture is in focus and the other half isn't. IT'S THE BEST I COULD DO.
Here is the other side of the rock. It's pretty cool!
So, I think that Mars-analog rocks are neat. But I also just think neat things are neat. Ipso facto these rocks are neat.
Oooooohhhh!!! So I am really excited about something I just started doing at work where it feels more like I am actually contributing to something rather than running data through a program to get it ready to do actual things to.
Let me state that I am still running data through a program to get it ready to do actual things to. BUT it's cooler this time... and by "cooler" I mean HAS PRETTIER PICTURES!
LOOK!
RIGHT!?!??!?!!!!!
That orb-y looking thing is MARS!
The green thing is where I type '.reset' or 'iplanet'!!!!!
The bottom graph on the right are the profiles of the different sets we organized one night of data into!
The top graph on the right is a bunch of different curves that represent different things that I have written down somewhere else!!!
So I don't know if you can see it, but the solid green line in the top right graph is the "model" and the thick white line is the "data." What I am doing right now is to line the model up with the data. The parameters I am changing to accomplish this are basically the x- and y-positions of the white 'x' on the image of Mars. This is where our slit was located on the planet when we observed. Basically, I move the location of the slit on Mars until the model agrees more with the data. The white square on the image of Mars is the location of the Sun at highest intensity (basically, 'noon' on Mars). So from the output of the programs I was running the data through previously, we know just where we were looking on Mars!
So now, aside from writing documentation for the Automator program and the IPLANET program, I am aligning each set of data with the model.
NEATO GANG!!!!
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