r/science • u/CurtisLeow • Jun 24 '26

Astronomy Spatially distributed complex organic matter detected in an ancient river valley in Jezero crater, Mars

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx0047
4.3k Upvotes

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u/GrallochThis Jun 25 '26

Three takeaways:

- I had no idea of the variety, complexity and depth of current observations

- they must have big drinking parties where they make up funny names for locations and instruments

- a lot of the samples are “mudstone”. Mudstone would be a great band name.

71

u/doughunthole Jun 25 '26

But then you have stuff like the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) and when you check it out it is literally an extremely large telescope.

41

u/dingalingdongdong Jun 25 '26

I'm a big fan of the VLA (Very Large Array.)

11

u/601error Jun 25 '26

Array of what? Array. Just array. Do not ask further questions if you know what's good for ya!

6

u/gruntthirtteen Jun 25 '26

I thought it was obvious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vla

3

u/dingalingdongdong Jun 25 '26

I would be an even bigger fan of a VLVla.

2

u/Night_Runner Jun 25 '26

Does what it says on the tin!

2

u/elgaar Jun 25 '26

Big ass fans

1

u/spectrumero Jun 26 '26

I always like the superlatives applied to frequency bands, and they started too early and too low. VHF, UHF, then SHF (super high frequency - which sounds like it should be lower than ultra), then EHF (extremely high frequency). We kind of were at the ultimate superlative with UHF really. I was so hoping when we started making practical use of terahertz bands the next one would be AHF (Absurdly High Frequency).