{"id":11650,"date":"2012-08-21T06:41:50","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T10:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=11650"},"modified":"2012-08-21T06:41:50","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T10:41:50","slug":"i-am-curious-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/i-am-curious-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am Curious… Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you probably know, the Mars rover Curiosity includes, among its impressive onboard chemical-analysis instruments, a powerful laser. The idea<\/a> is to focus in on small pebbles here and there on the Red Planet’s surface; from a distance of a few meters, the laser can zap a spot on a pebble very briefly, but strongly enough that it heats up, emitting gases and tiny particles whose chemical spectra can then be analyzed.<\/p>\n

The JPL\/NASA team announced early this past weekend that they’d singled out the first target for testing, a tiny little pyramid of basalt at first simply numbered N165… and, shortly,\u00a0re<\/em>named Coronation. The scheduled moment of zapping was Sunday.<\/p>\n

Of course, as with any public event, this one brought the Internet wags out in force. Of particular interest at the moment is the Twitter feed<\/a> of a user named\u00a0N165 aka Coronation<\/strong>. The first few tweets went up on Saturday (read from the bottom up):<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The one-sided public conversation between rock and robot unwound in entertaining fashion from that point forward, climaxing\u00a0on Sunday in this fashion (again, read bottom to top):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not to worry! As of today, N165 has continued to tweet from time to time, infinitesimally more lightweight and maybe just a shade more (other)worldly-wise.<\/p>\n

(Interested in non-fictional, well-informed but highly accessible news about the\u00a0Curiosity rover’s mission? You could do much worse than to periodically check the\u00a0Bad Astronomy<\/em> blog’s ongoing posts on the subject<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you probably know, the Mars rover Curiosity includes, among its impressive onboard chemical-analysis instruments, a powerful laser. The idea is to focus in on small pebbles here and there on the Red Planet’s surface; from a distance of a few meters, the laser can zap a spot on a pebble very briefly, but strongly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,95,426,37,713],"tags":[977,3152,3153,3154],"class_list":{"0":"post-11650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-02_in-the-news","7":"category-science-medicine","8":"category-celebrities","9":"category-onlineworld","10":"category-humor-writing_cat","11":"tag-twitter","12":"tag-mars-curiosity","13":"tag-n165","14":"tag-the-clash-of-cultures","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-31U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11650"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11655,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11650\/revisions\/11655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}