#curiosity

#curiosity

NASA Curiosity Rover Spotted a "Flower" on MarsA flower-shaped object was spotted by NASA’s curiosity rover during its traversal of the Martian surface. The delicate formation resembled a branching piece of an ocean coral. The formation invites comparisons with Earth objects. Kevin Gill posted the photo on Twitter, describing the object as a “Martian flower.” The Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (Mahli) instrument, the device that serves as the “magnifying hand lens” of the rover, took the photo, hence the image’s small resolution.The “Martian flower” is a reminder of the waters that once inhabited the planet, an area of study that scientists are undertaking to figure out if the planet was once capable of hosting microbial life. Image credit: Kevin M. Gill/ NASA #Mars #Curiosity #rovers #NASA #space #photographs #formation

Drifting Clouds Across the Skies of Mars Captured by NASA Rover CuriosityOn December 12, 2021, the navigation camera aboard NASA's Curiosity rover took two 1-second-8-frame images of the Red Planet's atmosphere. Unlike clouds here on Earth, clouds on Mars are very faint in the atmosphere, so it took special imaging techniques to see them. The clouds are also very high, some 80 km (about 50 miles) above the surface. It is extremely cold at this height, which suggests that these are carbon dioxide ice clouds and not water ice clouds (which can be found at lower altitudes). Literally cool.(Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/York University)#Mars #Clouds #Curiosity #NASA

Uncertainty Increases People's Curiosity but Decreases HappinessIn this intriguing new study published in Nature, researchers from Radboud University, the Netherlands, demonstrated that uncertainty increases curiosity but decreases happiness:Curiosity might correspond to an appetitive drive elicited by the state of uncertainty, because we like that state, or rather it might correspond to an aversive drive to reduce the state of uncertainty, because we don’t like it.To investigate this, we obtained both subjective valence (happiness) and curiosity ratings from subjects who performed a lottery task that elicits uncertainty-dependent curiosity.We replicated a strong main effect of outcome uncertainty on curiosity: Curiosity increased with outcome uncertainty, irrespective of whether the outcome represented a monetary gain or loss.By contrast, happiness decreased with higher outcome uncertainty. This indicates that people were more curious, but less happy about lotteries with higher outcome uncertainty. These findings raise the hypothesis, to be tested in future work, that curiosity reflects an aversive drive to reduce the unpleasant state of uncertainty.Image: Lieke L.F. van Lieshout et al.#psychology #happiness #curiosity #uncertainty