statue – Pain In The Bud

Cats are sneaky, quiet as a ghost when they want to be and have a habit of seemingly teleporting between spots, but could they somehow use their feline superpowers to beat us to Mars?

As the Perseverance rover continues to chug along and take photos as well as samples of rock and soil, people following the rover’s progress can vote for “image of the week,” and this time around they picked an image that, when seen from a distance, appears to show a crouched cat with its behind raised, in mid butt-wiggle as it prepares to pounce on some unfortunate Martian.

marscatloaf — A Martian Desert Cat spots a rich vein of Temptatiums in a natural deposit and is ready to pounce.

This isn’t the first time Mars enthusiasts have spotted a “cat” in an image from the red planet. In 2015, some people said a group of rocks resembled a “giant cat statue” poking out from the Martian soil in a photo taken by the Curiosity rover.

I don’t really see it. YMMV:

An “enhanced” image of the same formation.

The “cat statue” on Mars as encountered by the Curiosity rover in 2015.

Perseverance is exploring the site of a former crater lake and an adjoining former river delta. The Bad Astronomy blog says it was “very clearly a lake of standing water at some point in the past.”

The blog provides a breakdown of the geography of the crater and what it can tell us about the Mars of the past. Knowing there was water on Mars makes the idea of life elsewhere in the solar system seem possible. Astronomers believe Jupiter’s moon Europa, for example, potentially hosts life. The satellite exists so far from the sun it’s in a permanent deep freeze and would normally be inhospitable to life, but the evidence strongly suggests there are oceans beneath Europa’s icy surface, and those oceans are heated by massive vents on the ocean floor.

Water, warmth, energy. The conditions for life are there. If Mars was covered with lakes at one point, what’s swimming in the oceans of Europa?

mars_jezerocrater_landingsite — Credit: NASA

So Mars had water and the entire planet was pristine litter box. If it had some prey to hunt and an atmosphere, the red planet could have been the perfect homeworld for felis sapiens, who would rival humanity in technology if not for the tragic fact that their species is only awake eight hours a day.

Now that’s a scary thought!

Chances are you’ve seen a Gundam even if the name seems unfamiliar.

Gundam are sleek androform robots piloted by humans and often seen wielding massive guns, utility-pole-size katanas and other outrageous weaponry.

The name Gundam is synonymous with “Japanese robot,” and the IP is one of the top 15 highest-grossing media properties in the world, putting it in the same company as franchises like Star Wars, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Batman/DC Comics universe and Lord of the Rings.

In other words, Gundam is serious business in Asia.

F323CEF3-FA7C-4F84-A012-DDCEE2B20C7D — A typical Gundam figurine assembled from a model kit.

The cult franchise began with a 1979 cartoon series and expanded to include movies, manga and spinoffs, but the real moneymakers are plastic model kits of the many mecha in the wider Gundam universe. Gundam mecha account for 90 percent of all model kit sales in Japan, and they’re wildly popular worldwide, including the United States.

With all of that in mind, maybe it’ll seem a little less crazy that Tokyo has a life-size Gundam standing guard over Odaiba in a major commercial plaza. The 24-meter (78-foot) statue is impressive in its own right, but at night it reaches new levels of awesomeness when the robot’s lights activate, bathing the behemoth in ambient crimson.

Life-size Gundam in Tokyo — Facing out from the complex, Unicorn Gundam seems to guard Diver City.

After spending a few hours wandering Tokyo’s incredible Digital Art Lab, it was past sundown and pouring when we reached the statue. I got soaked for my efforts, but it was worth it to see the iconic mecha with my own eyes.

To provide a sense of scale, the average adult male is about as tall as the Gundam’s ankle.

Every half hour after sundown passersby can watch the Gundam transform between “Unicorn Mode” and “Destroy Mode.” Panels and sections on the robot’s torso fold into a new, more aggressive-looking pose, while alternate lights are activated and more protective armor encases the machine’s head.