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Interview With Bill Nye
Aired January 05, 2004 - 14:31 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Getting into the spirit on Mars. NASA calls its Rover mission to the Red Planet better than fantasy. The craft landed this weekend and sent these pictures of the Martian surface. Where's also awaiting some new photos.
CNN's Miles O'Brien live from Pasadena, California. Is it a fantasy, Miles?
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: This is pretty good. This is one of the assignment that you could hope for. Kyra, you remember four years ago I was sitting right in this spot when the last opportunity to land their cratered completely. It was a real disaster. And I know there are some folks in the control room who remember all too well, those excruciating moments as the team stared in front of those monitors at what essentially was a flat line from the Mars Polar Lander.
Well this time around, they -- talk about night and day. They did swimmingly well. About 36 hours ago, encased in a giant air bag system, the Spirit Rover bounced on to the surface of Mars, came to a stop and came outside of its cocoon and has begun the process of giving scientists here the lay of the land, as well as telling them exactly how well its instruments are doing. So far, so good.
Let's take a look at some pictures. This is a 360-degree image. There is a 3-D version of this on the web. Go to the Jet Propulsion Lab Web site. You can download it, get some of those funny glasses and you'll be able to sort of put yourself on Mars from the comfort of your home.
But as I move around, this is the back side of Spirit looking off in the general direction of which had bounced in. This is the area they're focusing on a lot of attention right now. It's a little depression in the land there.
And one of the interesting things about that is there might be a kind of rock outcropping there. So when it comes time to move off the landing pad, and that's a good eight days away, it's very likely they're going to head in that direction, you know, checking out some rocks all along the way. But focusing in on that spot there.
Scientists here -- little bit of a sense of humor -- call it Sleepy Hollow, mostly because they are all incredibly sleep deprived.
Now what's interesting about this in addition to the fact it has that outcropping, check out these dark spots here. The likelihood is that those are spots where the Rover bounced as it came in. That might clear away some of the dust, might -- who knows? -- there might be some revelation that was created by the bouncing air bag as it came in.
One thing I want to point out here as you look down here. These are the solar rays which provide all the energy. That's one of the antennas.
But what's really interest is this think right here. That is a sun dial. That's the first sun dial ever to leave the planet Earth. How did this happen? Well, Bill Nye the Science Guy has something to do with this.
Interesting little piece of history here. His father was taken prisoner of World War II, became fascinated with sun dials while he was in captivity in the South Pacific. And when Bill Nye heard they wanted to cast a shadow over colors in order to calibrate their instruments on the Rover, he said, Hey, let's make it a sun dial.
And so he is encouraging people all around the world to build their own sun dials and upload all these images to the web so that as he puts it, you have two worlds and one sky. Let's listen to him explain the concept because who can do it better than him?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL NYE, THE SCIENCE GUY: So here is the trick. I encourage everyone to go outside and make a shadow on to an especially white piece of paper -- or a white shirt.
And you'll see that the shadow isn't just gray. It's a little bit blue from our blue sky. Well, on Mars, the shadows are a little bit pink or orange.
So they had this device that was going to cast a shadow on to these gray rubber rings on Mars, on purpose. I mean this thing, it ads weight to the spacecraft, rubber rings and a metal stick.
I said, Hey, that's got to and sun dial. Come on! And they were all like, bill, it's the space program. You know? We have a lot of really good clocks. You know?
In fact, the watch that I'm wearing costs a fraction -- a tiny amount of the first clocks built in the 1700s. And it is 100,000, maybe 1 million times more accurate. We don't really need the sun dial, dude.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: But, they -- Bill Nye prevailed. And there's a sun dial now on Mars. And go to the site. You'll be able to see how that sun dial as well as all the others doing. And don't forget, Kyra, get these glasses out and check out Mars in 3-D.
PHILLIPS: I'll able to see my sun dial.
O'BRIEN: Yes, there you go. In 3-D. PHILLIPS: Outstanding. Thank you, Miles.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired January 5, 2004 - 14:31 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Getting into the spirit on Mars. NASA calls its Rover mission to the Red Planet better than fantasy. The craft landed this weekend and sent these pictures of the Martian surface. Where's also awaiting some new photos.
CNN's Miles O'Brien live from Pasadena, California. Is it a fantasy, Miles?
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: This is pretty good. This is one of the assignment that you could hope for. Kyra, you remember four years ago I was sitting right in this spot when the last opportunity to land their cratered completely. It was a real disaster. And I know there are some folks in the control room who remember all too well, those excruciating moments as the team stared in front of those monitors at what essentially was a flat line from the Mars Polar Lander.
Well this time around, they -- talk about night and day. They did swimmingly well. About 36 hours ago, encased in a giant air bag system, the Spirit Rover bounced on to the surface of Mars, came to a stop and came outside of its cocoon and has begun the process of giving scientists here the lay of the land, as well as telling them exactly how well its instruments are doing. So far, so good.
Let's take a look at some pictures. This is a 360-degree image. There is a 3-D version of this on the web. Go to the Jet Propulsion Lab Web site. You can download it, get some of those funny glasses and you'll be able to sort of put yourself on Mars from the comfort of your home.
But as I move around, this is the back side of Spirit looking off in the general direction of which had bounced in. This is the area they're focusing on a lot of attention right now. It's a little depression in the land there.
And one of the interesting things about that is there might be a kind of rock outcropping there. So when it comes time to move off the landing pad, and that's a good eight days away, it's very likely they're going to head in that direction, you know, checking out some rocks all along the way. But focusing in on that spot there.
Scientists here -- little bit of a sense of humor -- call it Sleepy Hollow, mostly because they are all incredibly sleep deprived.
Now what's interesting about this in addition to the fact it has that outcropping, check out these dark spots here. The likelihood is that those are spots where the Rover bounced as it came in. That might clear away some of the dust, might -- who knows? -- there might be some revelation that was created by the bouncing air bag as it came in.
One thing I want to point out here as you look down here. These are the solar rays which provide all the energy. That's one of the antennas.
But what's really interest is this think right here. That is a sun dial. That's the first sun dial ever to leave the planet Earth. How did this happen? Well, Bill Nye the Science Guy has something to do with this.
Interesting little piece of history here. His father was taken prisoner of World War II, became fascinated with sun dials while he was in captivity in the South Pacific. And when Bill Nye heard they wanted to cast a shadow over colors in order to calibrate their instruments on the Rover, he said, Hey, let's make it a sun dial.
And so he is encouraging people all around the world to build their own sun dials and upload all these images to the web so that as he puts it, you have two worlds and one sky. Let's listen to him explain the concept because who can do it better than him?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL NYE, THE SCIENCE GUY: So here is the trick. I encourage everyone to go outside and make a shadow on to an especially white piece of paper -- or a white shirt.
And you'll see that the shadow isn't just gray. It's a little bit blue from our blue sky. Well, on Mars, the shadows are a little bit pink or orange.
So they had this device that was going to cast a shadow on to these gray rubber rings on Mars, on purpose. I mean this thing, it ads weight to the spacecraft, rubber rings and a metal stick.
I said, Hey, that's got to and sun dial. Come on! And they were all like, bill, it's the space program. You know? We have a lot of really good clocks. You know?
In fact, the watch that I'm wearing costs a fraction -- a tiny amount of the first clocks built in the 1700s. And it is 100,000, maybe 1 million times more accurate. We don't really need the sun dial, dude.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: But, they -- Bill Nye prevailed. And there's a sun dial now on Mars. And go to the site. You'll be able to see how that sun dial as well as all the others doing. And don't forget, Kyra, get these glasses out and check out Mars in 3-D.
PHILLIPS: I'll able to see my sun dial.
O'BRIEN: Yes, there you go. In 3-D. PHILLIPS: Outstanding. Thank you, Miles.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
