Visual Trivia Question

trivia questionWhat is shown in this photo?

(a) Flesh-eating microbes at a picnic.
(b) The crater on Mars named after Robert Heinlein. 
(c) A piece of Winnie-the-Pooh’s stuffing.
(d) A cross-section slide of Einstein’s brain.

The answer follows the jump.

It’s (b) — Heinlein crater on Mars.

4 thoughts on “Visual Trivia Question

  1. Good that Saint Rah has a crater on Mars. There is one closer….

    http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/lunacrater.html – Rhysling Crater

    The Apollo XV astronauts named a number of craters in their landing area after favorite science fiction stories. Near “Dune” (after the Frank Herbert novel) and “Earthlight” (Arthur C. Clarke) craters was “Rhysling” crater, named after the blind singer of the spaceways in “The Green Hills of Earth.”

    Heinlein was clearly a favorite of the astronauts, as they spent more time trying to locate “Rhysling” exactly than any other crater, and quoted from Heinlein’s story just before liftoff. They intended to read a bit of “Green Hills of Earth” when they found the crater, but the exigencies of lunar exploration kept it from happening. To squeeze it in, capcom Joe Allen told them it was “come home again to the homes of men, to the cool green hills of Earth.”

    (For a complete transcript of Apollo 15’s lunar communications, as well as more photos and video clips, see the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal.) http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/main.html

  2. Craters, clearly. They don’t look like lunar craters, or craters on Vesta, Mercury or any of the many moons we have surface photos of, so I’d guess craters on Mars is most likely. And since only one of your answers involves craters on Mars, the answer seems a tad obvious. I dare say there is a Burroughs crater too.

  3. I knew it was the Martian crater, but I had seen it very recently in the Heinlein entry in Wikipedia, so it was fresh in my mind. I don’t think I deserve any points for that.

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