“Odd Rock” on Mars Exhibits (Almost) Magic Square - Cleve Moler on Mathematics and Computing

[poster]

A news story released yesterday, March 31,by c|net has the headline

NASA Perseverance Mars rover investigates 'odd' rockMarkings etched into the rock attempt to describe a magic square. The discovery is a reminder of the Chinese legend of the Lo Shu square on the back of a turtle three thousand years ago.



The ancient Chinese Lo Shu is 3-by-3 and is generated in MATLAB by

LoShu = magic(3)LoShu = 8 1 6 3 5 7 4 9 2All the row sums, column sum and diagonal sums are 15.

However, the number grid on the Martian rock is only 2-by-2. For n = 2, MATLAB produces a similar array.

Mars = magic(2)Mars = 1 3 4 2The column sums are both 5, but the row sums and the diagonal sums do not cooperate.

Magic



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