From: niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid   
      
   On 2020-08-01 23:47, jacob navia wrote:   
      
      
       [snip]   
      
   > And now they send YET ANOTHER MACHINE WITH NO MICROSCOPE!   
   >   
   > Perseverance will persevere in avoiding discovering any trace of life in   
   > Mars and will ignore all the results of its instruments. They send now:   
      
      
       [snip]   
      
   > o Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics   
   > & Chemicals (SHERLOC)   
   > A spectrometer that will provide fine-scale imaging and uses an   
   > ultraviolet (UV) laser to determine fine-scale mineralogy and detect   
   > organic compounds. SHERLOC will be the first UV Raman spectrometer to   
   > fly to the surface of Mars and will provide complementary measurements   
   > with other instruments in the payload. OK that COULD give some   
   > interesting results, but not so much as a humble MICROSCOPE DAMM IT!   
      
      
   According to Wikipedia, the SHERLOC context imager has a resolution of   
   better than 30 micrometers. Not quite a microscope, depending on your   
   definition of such instruments. Chemical and mineral composition   
   measurements have a resolution better than 100 micrometers.   
      
   Terrestrial bacteria are typically a few micrometers in size, so SHERLOC   
   would not resolve single cells, but could detect clumps of some hundreds   
   of cells by their composition.   
      
   --   
   Niklas Holsti   
   niklas holsti tidorum fi   
          .      @       .   
      
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