[xrp]

old news, already posted

[potlatch]

Not old news to me! That's my birthstone, but I'm not traveling there to get some, LOL.

[Joe Hadenuf]

Bump.....

[FreedomCalls]

The scientists wrote: "If the olivine was exposed shortly after the impact event, the martian surface may have been dry and cold for more than three billion years, but if the olivine was recently uncovered at the surface, then it could have been cold and dry for as little as a few thousand years."

In other words, "we don't know jack squat about what this means for Martian climatology but they wanted a quote and we had to say something."

[joesnuffy]

well now we better start genetically engineering some mutants
for mining Mars..

[TaMoDee]

Olivine and peridot are common in the Mojave Desert.

[PoorMuttly]

Oh great.

I KNEW I should't have listened to shaggy. "Don't worry...they'll never find it here. They could look a thousand years. You always worry too much. Let's get a sandwich."

Now I have to move it before Bert and his evil minions get there.

I bet I do look kind-of dashing in my little surplus Russian Dogmonaut space suit if you enlarge the picture. I'm on the right, over by the petrified Belgian Waffle stand...by the token booth for the old Gondolas...oh right, that big rock is in front of it, for the shade...since the bananna trees were all dried up after Bert and Crabby Appleton sold all the planet's water to those "Jeep" guys.

[marron]

This is good news. The thing that will bust space exploration wide open is an interesting core sample; or perhaps a few interesting core samples.

To me priority one should be getting those core samples back from the Moon, Mars, and the asteroids.

Where is Bruce Willis when you need him? Probably playing harmonica in Kabul when he should be suiting up for the big one.

[A CA Guy]

Could be olivine or the BLOB...Be CAREFUL!

[Ichneumon]

That's nothing... Since Jupiter is composed of mostly "lighter" elements, with Carbon being one of the heaviest and and most abundant, there's been speculation that due to the enormous pressures and temperatures which would be found deep in the planet, Jupiter's core might possibly be a diamond the size of the Earth.

But *reaching* it might be a bit of a problem...