Among many other appealing qualities, Mars is 100 percent wingnut-free, and it won’t go easy on those who prefer fantasy over reality. But landing on Mars is damn tricky. The video above gives an idea of just how tricky. A lot can go wrong:

Scientists on Earth have a hard enough time predicting Earth weather, and it’s all the more difficult to predict weather on a planet millions of miles away. Mars is notorious for long, cold winters and dust storms that can blanket the entire planet. While the mission is scheduled to land during a good weather period, anything can happen.

Come August, I’ll be right here, live blogging the Rube Goldberg Mars reentry and landing technique.

• If this new technique for analysing the exotic atmospheres of planets light-years away pans out, it could be huge for science. It could even yield benefits in our search for life in the cosmos.
• We all know dinosaurs are way cool. New evidence suggests they were also hot.
• I don’t know what all they might do or not do, but I want a pair of Google Glasses anyway!
• And last but certainly not least, Aron-Ra’s wife does battle with a silly presuppositonalist, and PZ joins in on the ass kicking:
  

  Presuppositionalism is basically a false equivalency. They argue that there is merely a difference in the foundation of the creationist and scientific views: the creationist builds on their presupposition that the Bible is true, while the scientist builds on the presupposition that the Bible is false and that atheism is true.

   

Daily Kos