Althouse: 4K Mars.

July 23, 2020

4K Mars.

21 comments:

rehajm said...: Bleak.; 7/23/20, 7:51 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Mars...or Nevada? You decide

Actually, incredible images. I watched the whole thing. Amazing what we can do as a people, if we focus on reality and work together.; 7/23/20, 7:54 AM
Sebastian said...: So why go there?; 7/23/20, 7:56 AM
Fernandinande said...: Too bad the landscape is so boring, it's like the uninteresting parts of Utah.

BTW, you're not seeing "4K" unless your monitor can handle it. And even then you're not seeing it because the highest-resolution video is the fake, er, "marketing" 4K, which is less than 4K pixels:

Available formats for ZEyAs3NWH4A
313 webm 3840x2160 2160p 17686k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 969.48MiB

Close, but no seegar.; 7/23/20, 8:07 AM
BarrySanders20 said...: I like the Phil Hartman-esqe narration.; 7/23/20, 8:11 AM
West Texas Intermediate Crude said...: Thank you for that, Prof Althouse.
Rare for me to have the patience to spend 15 minutes on an embedded video, but that was worth it.
Maybe it's the (adopted) west Texan in me, but I found the images addicting, beautiful. Haunting background music, and interesting technical narration. Perfect.
Consider the mix of engineering and imagination that is required to design a helicopter that will fly in the Martian atmosphere, so different from ours in content and density. It has to work the first time.; 7/23/20, 8:31 AM
Temujin said...: I think I can see my new subdivision from here.; 7/23/20, 8:31 AM
ndspinelli said...: DBQ, Could be southern Utah.; 7/23/20, 8:32 AM
Fernandinande said...: Here's another gotcha - default resolution (for our kinda-slow DSL, at least) was 480p. Click the gear icon and choose 2160p to get the best resolution, assuming your monitor can display it, which it probably can't.; 7/23/20, 8:41 AM
Defenseman Emeritus said...: I like the Phil Hartman-esqe narration.

You may remember me from such space exploration videos as Comets: Vagrants of the Milky Way and What's That on Uranus?; 7/23/20, 8:52 AM
Wince said...: "Nothing scientific, it's purely personal... I feel lonely."; 7/23/20, 9:03 AM
Nichevo said...: BTW, you're not seeing "4K" unless your monitor can handle it. And even then you're not seeing it because the highest-resolution video is the fake, er, "marketing" 4K, which is less than 4K pixels:

Available formats for ZEyAs3NWH4A
313 webm 3840x2160 2160p 17686k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 969.48MiB

Close, but no seegar.

What's wrong with 2160p?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution

4K standards and terminology Edit
The term "4K" is generic and refers to any resolution with a horizontal pixel count of approximately 4,000.[5](p2) Several different 4K resolutions have been standardized by various organizations.

4K resolution refers to a horizontal display resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels.[1] Digital television and digital cinematography commonly use several different 4K resolutions. In television and consumer media, 3840 × 2160 (4K UHD) is the dominant 4K standard, whereas the movie projection industry uses 4096 × 2160 (DCI 4K).

The nitpicking thing is not a good look, Ferdy.; 7/23/20, 9:22 AM
rehajm said...: ...needs women.; 7/23/20, 9:33 AM
Krumhorn said...: I like the Phil Hartman-esqe narration.

I thought the narration was hideous. The images are spectacular!

- Krumhorn; 7/23/20, 10:12 AM
Bill Peschel said...: Beautiful. Simply beautiful. The blue landscape revealed as a topping by the tracks makes me want to learn more.

Reminds me of "Moon," a picture book of the images taken from the Apollo missions. You think they're shooting in black and white, but there's one image in which you can see a dusting of gold, and you realize they're shooting in color.

There's beauty in bleakness, too.; 7/23/20, 10:18 AM
cubanbob said...: 4K is so yesterday. I want 8k and I want it now.; 7/23/20, 11:21 AM
etbass said...: Probably the same was heard in Ferdinand's court when Columbus reported back on America.

"Why do we want to spend money to go there?"; 7/23/20, 12:14 PM
Howard said...: It's a nihilistic landscape. All the major sedimentary rock types (mudstone, siltstone, sandstone and conglomerate)are clearly visible, indicating a very watery planet in the distant past that dried up and has been long dead polished smooth by the bitter wind.; 7/23/20, 1:14 PM
cubanbob said...: etbass said...
Probably the same was heard in Ferdinand's court when Columbus reported back on America.

"Why do we want to spend money to go there?""

The Chinese did exactly that. They had a fleet with several thousand men ready to go and the emperor cancelled just before the sailing. Fortunately for us, the emperor's saving money keep North America from becoming Eastern China.; 7/23/20, 1:34 PM
ken in tx said...: There is a valley on the Copper River in Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina where a copper mine used to be. At one time, the operations there had desertified an area large enough to be seen from orbit. The combined efforts of three universities have resulted in it being reforested, except for a small demonstration area. There is a copper mine museum there. A docent in the museum grew up in the area when it was a desert and she misses it. She thought it was beautiful and there were no one with allergies, flies, mosquitoes, roaches, rats, or snakes--which there are plenty of now.

The children of the Martian settlers will come to love it.

BTW, it's copper sulfate, a natural fungicide, that killed the fungus that most plants depend on to allow their roots to absorb nutrients from the soil. That's what caused the desert. It took years to find it out.; 7/23/20, 9:32 PM
Nichevo said...: The children of the Martian settlers will come to love it.

I love it now. I wish it were possible to go there and live there.; 7/24/20, 10:03 AM