1
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this is a very strange pair of images

2
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these are two images

3
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they were taken 12 days apart and this

4
00:00:09,830 --> 00:00:07,839
just happened i mean this is going on

5
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right now this is where opportunity is

6
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currently parked and you can see

7
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12 days apart

8
00:00:19,269 --> 00:00:16,880
a rock just simply appeared in front of

9
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us in fact we've we've narrowed down the

10
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date of its appearance to about a four

11
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day period

12
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this is strange

13
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now we don't think that anything

14
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particularly exotic happened here the

15
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most likely scenario

16
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just uphill

17
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from this location as we were driving on

18
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some bedrock the opportunity to over did

19
00:00:40,709 --> 00:00:37,680
a kind of a pirouette we call it a turn

20
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in place but but drove in such a fashion

21
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that it would drag the right front wheel

22
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kind of chattering across the ground

23
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and we think that in the process of that

24
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wheel moving across the ground again

25
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this is speculation at this point that

26
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we kind of flicked it kind of tiddly

27
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winked it out of the ground and that it

28
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moved to the location there where we see

29
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it

30
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we have not found

31
00:01:04,789 --> 00:01:03,600
the divot the hole from which this thing

32
00:01:06,630 --> 00:01:04,799
popped out

33
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but the reason for that we think is

34
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because the place where we believe it

35
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came from is currently blocked by the

36
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solar arrays we can't actually see that

37
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spot so soon we're going to maneuver so

38
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we can go searching for that spot but

39
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what's interesting about this rock is a

40
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couple of things

41
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it appears that it may have

42
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flipped itself upside down and if that's

43
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the case what we're seeing is we're

44
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seeing a surface the underside

45
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of the rock in its original

46
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configuration that hasn't seen the

47
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martian atmosphere for perhaps billions

48
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of years and so we're seeing stuff that

49
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we don't normally get to see

50
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the rock is small

51
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um

52
00:01:41,910 --> 00:01:40,400
it is sort of white around the edge

53
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outside and it's got kind of a weird

54
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deep red color not a martian kind of red

55
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but but more

56
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a deep deep red color uh in the interior

57
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it looks like a jelly doughnut white

58
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around the outside red in the middle

59
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we've looked at it with our microscope

60
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it's clearly a rock

61
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uh we've looked at it with our

62
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compositional spectrometer and we're

63
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seeing a strange composition different

64
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from anything we've seen before there's

65
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a lot of sulfur in it suggesting a lot

66
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of sulfate salts which might have

67
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precipitated out beneath the surface and

68
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very high concentrations of manganese

69
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more manganese than we've ever seen in a

70
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martian rock high concentration of

71
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magnesium we're still working this out

72
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we're making measurements right now so

73
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this is an ongoing story of discovery as

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i said mars

75
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keeps throwing new stuff at us and it's

76
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these kind of unexpected discoveries