Photo Credit: wohnai

Seven years ago, I was accepted into a double masters program. The first year was to be at the London School of Economics and the second year was to be at the University of Southern California. I was absolutely thrilled to be accepted; LSE has the reputation of one of the best schools in the world and I felt incredible to be accepted. I bought a one way to ticket to London just before tuition prices were raised. To be fiscally responsible, I sat down with a financial adviser to go over the rise in tuition.

I learned that with international student loan rates, a two-year masters program would cost me over $250,000 in student loan repayment. It broke my heart to walk away from LSE but I did. Shortly thereafter, I got hired at the California Academy of Sciences. Knowing what I know today, I don’t know if I would apply again for a higher education degree.

Student loans in the US are out of control. This year, student loan debt eclipsed credit card dept in the United States, a debt that is very close to one trillion dollars. Even if a person declares bankruptcy, their student loan debt cannot be expunged. Wages and disability income can be garnered in order to pay a loan that is in default. College tuition rates have also have risen exponentially, more than 900% since 1978. I know many friends who have graduated from college with more than $100,000 in loans to pay back. I graduated from University of California, Berkeley over ten years ago and I am still paying back a major portion of my loans.

So the question that I have seen often as of late – it the price tag worth the experience? I walked away from LSE because I knew I would have to take a corporate job making a six-figure salary right out of my masters program to be able to afford and justify my education. Not only is that unfeasible, it was against my intentions to go to school in the first place, as I have maintained a vested interest in the non-profit sector throughout my career. It is also frightening to look at that price tag on a larger scale. With so many young professionals flooding the work force loaded down with significant dept, their risk tolerance is very conservative. Innovation, entrepreneurship and advances in science and technology suffer because risk and money are not there to be put into business prospects; they are tied up in the debt of student loans. Poor education has been made the culprit for US lagging behind in science and technology but what if student loans have something to do with it? I tried to get dual citizenship when I lived in England because as an English citizen, my education would have been paid for.

These questions and concerns have spurned a un-college movement; which inspires students to get a college education without paying a cent. No longer does a college education determine success; un-college.org inspires students of all ages to create their education and community around their own goals and aspirations in order to gain valuable real life experience.

Looking back on my undergraduate experience, I have incredibly fond memories. Since I had Attention Deficit Disorder, I worked with my teachers to make my college experience my own. I would reject assignments, talk to my teachers after class and suggest alternative assignments. I deepened my relationship with my mentor because I didn’t accept my education on his terms. He wrote a recommendation letter to LSE lauding me as an exemplary student because I carved out my own education rather than accepting the set curriculum. I am sure that characteristic of out of the box learning got me accepted into the masters program. The un-college movement is following the beat of their own drummer as well; they are just taking it out of the classroom and making it much more affordable.

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^{A ridge of deep-sea chert sets off the Golden Gate and its signature bridge. Photos by Andrew Alden except where noted.}

Thousands of people, tourists and locals alike, come here to gaze over the Golden Gate. But if you turn your back to it, the Marin Headlands are a textbook location to see some classic rocks of the Franciscan Complex. Rocks like these set apart the landscapes that incorporate them, literally shaping San Francisco's worldview.

The Marin Headlands have such a distinctive set of Franciscan rocks that their geologic package is named the Marin Headlands terrane, a geologist's word that means a well-defined piece of land and the closely related rocks that underlie it. The Franciscan has about a dozen terranes represented in the Bay Area, and while the Marin Headlands terrane appears in several places, this is where to see it best.

The Headlands couldn't be easier to get to—the entrance is just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Head west and start on Conzelman Road, and stop at the first turnout (Battery Spencer) if you can find a parking spot; if there isn't try the next, because all display the same rocks. The roadcuts on Conzelman Road have just been renewed as the roadway is improved, so it's a great time to study them. (Road work goes on during the week; check projectheadlands.gov for updates.) Here's what you'll be looking at. Remember that no hammering or collecting is allowed in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

The reddish-brown, swirly rock is ribbon chert. This hard sedimentary stone started out in the Pacific as deep-sea clay full of the microscopic shells of radiolarians, lying on the volcanic rocks of the seafloor. It was once flat beds, but as the seafloor was subducted beneath California the chert was crumpled into a picturesque state.

The crust itself was also crumpled, sliced into ribbons and stacked up. That accounts for the look of the geologic map of the Headlands (click it to see it bigger).

_{From USGS Scientific Investigations Map 2918}

The map depicts three main rock types from the Franciscan: the oldest lava of the ancient seabed of Jurassic age (Jfv), the deep-sea chert that sifted down onto it over a period of some 100 million years (JKfc), and the sandstone that collected on top of that as the seafloor approached California during the Cretaceous Period (Kfs). Melange, as I've explained in my post about Shell Beach, is an intimate mixture of all three (and more) Franciscan rock types. Alluvium is the young sediment that lies in river valleys.

The lava that once underlay the chert now crops out next to it. At the end of Conzelman Road, at Point Bonita (south of the "Kfs" label), there's a spot where you can see spectacularly preserved pillow lava, looking as pristine as it did 150 million years ago when it erupted into the deep sea.

_{Photo courtesy Ed Bierman of Flickr under Creative Commons license}

You can see this lava close up on the south end of Rodeo Beach (northwest of "Kfs") in its mildly metamorphosed form known as greenstone.

While you're at the beach, take care NOT to resist the excellent pebbles, sourced from the whole range of the Franciscan. I'm told that Kirby Cove's pebble beach is just as good.

If you're up for some hiking, there's a lot more to see. For instance, north of Rodeo Beach the view up the coast shows off the sandstone and melange.

And if you keep your eyes on the ground, you may spot black manganese minerals coating the chert. Parts of the Headlands were exploited for this strategic mineral during World War II. The most likely source for the material is the formation of manganese nodules, back when this chert was abyssal mud. To impress your friends, be sure to call out, "Look! Psilomelane!" when you find some. That's the name of this sooty-looking mixture of manganese oxides.

If you still must admire the Golden Gate instead of the rocks, let my colleague Brian Romans show you some of the wonderful geology under that impressive strait.

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Artist concept of a balloon-borne Titan probe. Credit: NASA
JPL/Corby Waste

Since 2004, when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and the European Huygens lander started exploring Saturn’s largest satellite, Titan, layer after layer of the mysterious moon have been peeled away, revealing what has turned out to be an awesome alien world that stands apart from all other moons in the solar system–and even holds its own with the planets.

Cryovolcanoes: cool! Imagine a 3000 foot tall mountain gushing freezing water-ammonia slush, which pours down its slopes to become solid “rock ice” flows as it freezes, and spouting a plume of water vapor that quickly turns into snow. Is that really how a volcano of cold water, ice, and maybe ammonia and methane would behave? Maybe, maybe not—but now scientists have observational evidence of what might be such a process on Titan, and the similarities in patterns to Earthly lava flows is compelling. Take a look at the video….

The thought makes me want to go and explore Titan right now!

At the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in San Francisco last December, I voiced a concern to a presenter who was describing explorations of Titan by Cassini and Huygens. My concern was that, though the images returned by Huygens from the surface of that frigid smoggy world were unprecedented up-close views of a distant alien land, I fear that with the cost of space missions and budgets and economies and all, we might not return there for further exploration within my lifetime…and I’d have to make do with the images from Huygens. (Though very cool images, they were essentially from a spot on Titan that is little more than a plane of soil and pebbles; I want lakes and volcanoes!)

“Not so fast….” There may be more missions to Titan’s surface yet to come. There is certainly a lot of scientific interest in Titan because of its “hydrological” cycle—that is, the liquid hydrocarbons, not water, that rain from its atmosphere and flow and collect in rivers and lakes on its surface.

Some of the possibilities the presenter suggested for surface and atmosphere probes sounded pretty interesting. One idea is another “lander,” but deliberately targeted to splash down in one of Titan’s big methane lakes, and with a longer-life battery than what powered Huygens (Huygens’ battery lasted about 90 minutes after landing). What kind of battery? Nuclear, maybe, though there are restrictions to lobbing radioactive isotopes onto the surface of another world—especially one where the existence of indigenous life hasn’t been ruled out.

Such a “floater” could drift around the lake, transported by liquid currents, taking environmental readings, pictures, and maybe sounding the lake bottom with sonar. Eventually, lake currents might be expected to naturally deliver the floater probe to a shoreline, where it could then explore Titan where land meets lake.

Another possibility on Titan is a flying aircraft probe, either winged or buoyant. Due to the thickness of Titan’s nitrogen atmosphere (four times denser than Earth’s at the surface), and the relatively low gravity of Titan itself, flight there is a very different prospect from flight on Earth. Titan’s surface gravity is only 14% that of Earth’s, so what would be a 200-pound payload on Earth would weigh 28 pounds on Titan.

A balloon-borne probe, with greater buoyancy due to Titan’s thicker atmosphere, could drift around for a long time and cover a great deal of territory at very close range, perhaps even setting down on the surface temporarily. A winged-aircraft could glide at relatively low speed, again owing to the lower gravity and higher lift from the thick air.

Yeah, I want to go and see the volcano slushy! Please, can I?

Participants of the School of Rock discuss the process of science

Get a group of science educators and scientists together, ask them the question "What is science?" and see what happens. Will everyone agree exactly on each term? Maybe not, but you'll see a shared passion for the subject. On our second day of the School of Rock, our "principal" posed that question to the group. What followed was an engaging and intelligent conversation.

We started by listing components of science, which was a fairly easy task. We agreed that science includes the following: observations, generating hypotheses, data collection, reasoning from multiple lines of evidence, revisions based on new data, seeking additional evidence, peer review, and collaboration and consensus. When put all together, science is a process, although not a linear one.

We then looked at a flow diagram entitled "How Science Works," published by the University of California Museum of Paleontology. It is an updated version of the outdated linear scientific method that most of us were taught in school. Absent from this newer diagram is the idea that the scientific process must start with a question, and that a question warrants a single hypothesis. Also gone is the notion that after doing an experiment and getting results, you have an answer to your question and the process is over. Instead, the diagram shows feedback between exploration, testing, analysis and outcomes…and this process does not stop.

"How Science Works" (image credit: UCMP)

Our discussion around the diagram focused on the pathways between each of the components. One pathway demonstrates that the benefits and outcomes of science, such as problem solving and new technology, can lead back to exploration and discovery. The pathway isn't shown in reverse, but we wondered if exploration can lead directly to community benefits without first gathering and interpreting data. Also, there are pathways into the system, illustrating that the scientific process is not a closed system, but that there is input from external sources. We wondered if there should also be pathways leading out of the system that depict outreach and education.

What do you think? How would you alter this description of science?

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Gullies in wall of Hale Crater. Credit: NASA/MRO

Here's a quick status on the active ones:

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: The most recent arrival at Mars (2006), MRO's 5-year mission (hmmm—sound vaguely familiar?) is to study the history of water and climate on Mars, as well as to serve as a telecommunications relay for other spacecraft. Armed with a suite of powerful instruments to study the atmosphere, surface, and subsurface of Mars—including a camera, HiRISE, that can almost read the license plates on Martian automobiles—MRO has to date sent back more data than all other Mars missions combined. It's not been a glitchless flight, however: in 2009, MRO's computer reset itself four times for unknown reasons; the last reset, in August, was followed by a 4-month operational hiatus as Earth-side controllers performed some careful programming updates to help guard against effects of any future resets. MRO resumed operation in December.

Mars Odyssey 2001: NASA's 2001 Odyssey is still going fine after nine years—although the computer glitchiness out around Mars seems to be catching: Odyssey's computer put itself into a safe mode last November 2009 in response to a memory error. This was corrected and Odyssey has resumed doing science. Among Odyssey's major discoveries was the detection of huge expanses of water ice just under the surface of polar lowlands, and the surveying of deposits of water-related minerals in various locations around the planet.

Mars Express: Arriving at Mars in 2004, Mars Express became the European Space Agency's first mission to another planet, which was recently extended to 2012. Though the Beagle 2 lander component of the mission fell to Mars and was never heard from again, the Mars Express orbiter has sent back years of captivating images and important data, including the confirmation of methane in Mars' atmosphere (whose source is in all likelihood subsurface, and the origin of which—organic or inorganic processes—is being debated).

Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity: After six years of crawling around Meridiani Planum discovering chemical and geological evidence for past water on Mars, Opportunity is now on a long march to a large impact crater, which it will reach (if it can keep on running) in about two years. Currently, the rover has stopped to RAT out chemical and geological information from a rock called Marquette Island—the RAT is its rock abrasion tool, or rock grinder. Still going….

Mars Exploration Rover Spirit: Also still alive after six years—almost 25 times longer than it was planned to run—Spirit has been stuck in a sand bog for the last six months. With a couple of wheels on the fritz, Earth-side operators have been confounded in trying to free the robot—but Spirit has continued to make scientific measurements anyway…and in fact made a significant discovery in the course of trying to get unstuck.

Phoenix lander: Although it's been in the deep dark freeze of a Martian winter since November 2008, the Phoenix lander has an outside chance of survival. Now that light is returning to Phoenix's landing site, NASA is listening for the robot's radio signal, in case the return of solar power means that Phoenix will rise from the frost and live again! So far, no such signal….

Next up: The Mars Science Laboratory rover, "Curiosity."

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NASA's rover Spirit has churned up sulfate minerals in the
attempt to free itself from loose soil.
(Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell)

Has it been six years since the twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on Mars to begin their careers? Just about—next month is their landing anniversary.

Both rovers have shown signs of wear and tear, but Spirit, in its exploration range in Gusev Crater, has had the harder knocks. In fact, Spirit has driven backward for a couple of years now, due to a wheel that stopped working and which it was forced to drag through the Martian soil—a robot's form of limping.

About six months ago, Spirit became bogged down in loose soil, spinning its wheels but unable to break free of the trap—not unlike what happened to my car in Death Valley one time…and Spirit can't call upon the assistance of a National Park Ranger with an SUV and winch to help….

Over the months of entrapment, Spirit's handlers on Earth have continued to make measurements with the rover's instruments while trying to free it from its soil trap by manipulating its wheels in different ways (probably not unlike some of the strategies I tried to get my car out of the sand). But to no avail (either for Spirit or my car). Alas, is Spirit destined to remain a stationary explorer until its lifetime finally comes to an end?

Perhaps—but as it turns out, this doesn't mean Spirit can't still make significant discoveries–like a recent one it in fact made. All that wheel spinning and grinding and rocking back and forth have chewed up the soil in which Spirit sits—and has broken through a layer of soil to expose a surprise hiding beneath: a crust of sulfate minerals.

Sulfates—compounds containing sulfur—can be formed in the presence of water, like boiling water or steam escaping from a hydrothermal vent. It may be that these sulfates formed in the distant past when the area was active with volcanism and hydrothermal steam vents. That was then.

This is now: the layer of sulfate (calcium sulfate) Spirit's churning wheels broke through is crusty—a property that may point to more recent water activity than the original sulfate-forming steam vents. Scientists think that the crust may have been formed by the seasonal shifting of water from the Martian polar regions when it warms up in its summer, sending the water toward the equator–where it can even fall out as snow. Then, soil beneath the layer of snow warms the bottom layer of ice and causes it to melt. In turn, the melt water seeps down into the soil, dissolving and carrying away water soluble iron sulfate and leaving behind the crust of calcium sulfate.

In one fell swoop trying to escape sure peril, Spirit appears to have uncovered clues about the nature of Martian water action in the distant past as well as more recent times.

As serendipitous as Spirit's entrapment is to this accidental discovery, it's even better: the rover is stuck square on the edge of a small meteorite crater, allowing it to compare the sulfate concentrations in the sulfate-rich crust and the more typical soil medium, side by side.

Way to go! That's the spirit!

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Scene from the 1951 film The Thing From Another World

On Monday, November 30th, 2009, NASA/Johnson Space Center announced that a recent study strengthens the argument that chemical and structural features in a Martian meteorite—ALH84001—may be evidence of fossilized microbial life on Mars from the distant past. While not absolutely conclusive that the meteorite bears the remains of ancient Martian life, the results of the study show that alternate, non-biological explanations for some of the meteorite's properties are not consistent with new findings.

Meteorite ALH84001, discovered in Antarctica in 1984 and chemically identified as having originated on Mars, hit the news in 1996 when researchers hypothesized that microscopic features and chemical constituents in the rock could possibly be the fossilized remains of ancient Martian microbial life. The hypothesis was controversial among scientists, and alternate, non-biological processes were offered by opponents as possible explanations for the meteorite's features.

The recent reexamination of the meteorite was focused on one of the leading non-biological explanations for the existence of magnetite crystals in the sample. Magnetite is an iron-bearing, magnetic mineral that can be produced both biologically and through inorganic processes. Some forms of life on Earth—including microbes–produce magnetite crystals in their cells that help them orient to Earth's magnetic field.

The NASA/JSC team that performed the new analysis of ALH84001 concluded that new data on the magnetite crystals, obtained with more powerful analytic instrumentation than used in the 1996 study, are not consistent with the leading non-biological explanations. This, they argue, strengthens the biological explanation for the origin of the magnetite.

The new analysis also obtained scanning electron microscope data that yielded more detail on shapes within the alleged microbe fossils. The new shapes that emerged from the data closely resemble shapes within Earthly microbe fossils—further strengthening the hypothesis that the meteorite contains fossils of life, and thus that life at one time existed on Mars.

The evidence for the possibility of life on Mars, past or present, has been growing over the past decade, or longer—evidence that Mars was once much warmer and wetter than it is now, and that it had rivers, lakes, and possibly oceans of water, making it an environment possibly conducive to the formation of life. We have also detected methane rising out of the soil of Mars, which some suggest could be a byproduct of current biological activity, underground.

NASA will continue to examine the Martian meteorite, focusing their study on further detailing the structures of alleged microbe fossils and possible chemical signatures of life that remain in the rock.

So, we're still waiting for the day—but with all the tantalizing clues emerging from our exploration of Mars and the Martian meteorite, it feels very much like that day is somewhere on the horizon. But, wouldn't it be ironic if we were to make the first definitive detection of extraterrestrial life right here on Earth, with evidence that's been just laying around since before the beginning of human civilization?

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It is especially hard to understand when there is ample evidence that there are plenty of innocents in prison. And when a DNA test can prove so conclusive in showing their innocence.

A case I use in a high school activity (and which will be highlighted in the new Technology Benefiting Humanity exhibition at The Tech) involves Marvin Anderson. He is an African American who was convicted of rape by an all white jury in the South.

Court TV produced a great documentary that details all of the mistakes that sent Marvin to prison. And how the Virginia state government, much like our current Supreme Court, fought the simple DNA test that eventually proved his innocence.

Marvin was a suspect because he had a white girlfriend and the rapist had said that he had a white girlfriend during the attack. In a photo line up, Marvin’s was the only picture in color. Then, in the real line up, Marvin was the only man who had been shown in the photo line up.

Marvin’s lawyer represented the man who had really committed the crime. The trial lasted one day and as I said, Marvin was sent to jail by an all white jury. And while Marvin languished in prison, the real rapist confessed but the judge threw out the confession.

This is when the Innocence Project took up the case. The Innocence Project uses genetic testing to free innocent men and women. After hearing the details of Marvin’s case, they decided to help him clear his name. And it was not easy!

First off, they had to find the evidence from the case. This is often hard to do because evidence gets thrown away after a certain amount of time.

But, by a miraculous fluke, the Virginia government found the evidence from the rape kit… it had been saved in a lab notebook. So all that needed to be done was to see if the DNA from the crime scene matched Marvin's. If it didn’t, then Marvin most likely was innocent.

But the Virginia government would not allow the evidence to be tested. Apparently, just like the Supreme Court, procedure mattered more than innocence to the bureaucrats involved.

How many people like Marvin Anderson are waiting for the justice system to do the right thing?
Finally, in 2001, after Marvin had been in jail for 15 years and spent four years on parole, Virginia passed an Innocence Project backed statute that allowed DNA evidence to be tested in some cases. Marvin’s was the first evidence tested under the new statute. He was found to be innocent and the police were able to use the evidence to catch the real rapist.

If the Virginia government had not done the right thing, the real rapist would be free to continue committing crimes. And everyone would still see Marvin as a rapist.

There are undoubtedly Marvins rotting in jail in the three states that don’t allow for genetic testing after a conviction (Alaska, Oklahoma, and Massachusetts). And other Marvins are probably in those other states that only allow genetic testing in certain situations.

The Supreme Court could have given all of these innocent people the chance that Marvin finally got after 19 years. But five justices decided against doing that.

Now I suppose there is probably some legalese reason why the Supreme Court ruled that innocent people should stay locked up. But I am not lawyer enough to understand it. And neither are the Marvins still out there, waiting for justice.

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What is it about new beginnings that gets people all stirred up? We're not sure, but we’re definitely feeling the excitement as we launched our shiny, new 2009-2010 QUEST Science Education Institute on Saturday, May 30 at the Oakland Zoo.

For those of you who just tuned in, the QUEST Science Education Institute is KQED Education Network's year-long professional development program for Bay Area school districts. The QUEST Institute was created to provide an accessible, hands-on approach to understanding new media and technology and how it can be used in classroom teaching. Over the course of the year-long Institute, we work with teams of science educators and educational technologists from school districts to provide training and resources on using QUEST multimedia to enhance science education. The Institute is part of our commitment to enhancing 21st century skills in the science classroom and enables us to work directly with Bay Area school districts to support learning plans and align our resources with district technology integration goals.

Of course, none of these lofty goals could be achieved without a corresponding amount of enthusiasm and commitment from the Institute participants. This year's participating teams come from the Acalanes UHSD, Antioch USD, San Ramon Valley USD, Mt. Diablo USD, and Fairfield-Suisun USD. Over the course of the next year, they will be attending workshops on technology tools and resources such as Google Maps, podcasts, and Flickr. The teams will also have the opportunity to design a media and technology implementation plan that works for their district and receive ongoing support with implementing their plans.

This year's participants begin the Institute with a keen awareness of the pervasiveness of technology and the need to connect with students in new and surprising ways. As learners change the way they receive information, they must learn to communicate what they have learned more effectively in order to succeed. As QUEST Series Producer, Amy Miller, a guest speaker at the launch event described it, "We find ourselves confronted with scientific and technological changes every day, and, as media professionals, we struggle to make sense of it and present it to our audience in relevant ways. Science teachers, therefore, have a pivotal role to play in nurturing future scientists who understand the importance of communicating with audiences both within and outside their field – a skill that is just as important in the scientific profession as in any other."

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Mars as seen through Chabot Space & Science Center’s 20-inch telescope near the 2003 close encounter. Credit: Conrad Jung/Chabot Space & Science Center

As August approaches, the ghost of Mars returns to haunt us, in the form of emails and phone calls from people asking if it's true that Mars is about to get closer to Earth than it has been in a gazillion years—so close that it will look as big as the Full Moon.

I say "ghost" because it simply isn't true, here in 2009. I say "haunt" because, six years ago, it was true—at least, partly.

The time: August 27, 2003. The scene: Earth and Mars. The event: Mars is coming into opposition—the time when Earth passes directly between Mars and the Sun, and consequently Mars is closest to us and at the opposite point in the sky from the Sun—hence "opposition." A routine encounter, one that happens about every 2.2 years. But what's different with this Mars opposition is the distance between Earth and Mars at closest approach: the two planets are closer together than they have been in a very long time: a bit less than 35 million miles.

This was a very big deal, you may recall. We remember it very well at Chabot: On one of the evenings that weekend, we had 2000 people who came up to see Mars through our telescopes…. A close opposition is the best time to see a planet, and this was closer than average for Mars by maybe 10 million miles. (It was at another very close opposition of Mars when Percival Lowell made his famous "Martian canals" observations and Martian civilization hypothesis, back in 1894.)

At the time of the 2003 opposition, there were a lot of reports—emails, websites, blogs—flying around describing the event, in some cases with exaggeration. One exaggeration is the amount of time since the previous closest encounter with Earth. Different accounts suggested a thousand years, ten thousand years, even one hundred thousand years. Technically this may have been true, if one were calculating down to the inch. Practically speaking, however, the opposition in 1924 was almost as close, by a difference of only 12,000 miles (one and a half Earth diameters).

The other (gross) exaggeration was a statement made that at opposition Mars would appear as large as the Full Moon. That would be spectacular! However, at some point a piece of information was lost from the original message: the part about needing to look at Mars through a telescope to achieve the advertised view.

The final piece of information missing from that message—which gave birth to the annual Mars Hoax –was the year, 2003, omitted along the way and making every August 27th a day to view the splendor of Mars in all its glory. But, alas, the ghost of Mars.

For the record, the next extra-close opposition of Mars will occur on August 15th, 2050, when it will be only 200,000 miles farther than the 2003 near-miss….

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