Slashdot Mirror
Titanic Saturn
barakn writes "Using the Crab Nebula as an x-ray source, scientists have observed Titan's x-ray shadow to get a preliminary estimate of the extent of its outer atmosphere. On the same page, another article discusses the possibility that the hydrocarbon seas of Titan bear waves, albeit slow-moving and widely spaced, 7 times higher than waves on Earth (additional wave links here, here, and here). And Cassini-Huygens has snapped a photo of Saturn showing "two small, faint dark spots" in the southern hemisphere (this link has convenient arrows pointing at them, or here). Cassini-Huygens will achieve Saturn orbit insertion on July 1st. Huygens will detach and enter Titan's atmosphere in January, 2005."
Inquiring minds want to know: how does Titan keep its thick atmosphere in such low (15% of Earth) gravity?
-Teckla
They'll discover icebergs up there next...
(Sorry!)
1) Titan looks like a nice place for life to grow up. We're hoping to meet friends.
2) If we do meet friends, we're hoping they're sirens. I call the redhead.
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
Related question: Do all the hydrocarbons on Titan make it a good spot for mining/drilling? Right now the cost of getting there'd be kinda high, but is there stuff out there'd that'd tempt 22rd century Exxons and Shells?
i wonder if Bush will start a campaign to liberate the Titanics now...
Right, because bringing MORE hydrocarbons to Earth is EXACTLY what we want to do. Forget about the renewable energy resources that are already here. Let's import pollutants from another PLANET!
Perhaps even less worthwile than totem-pole knowledge.
Now that it is known that there is only one place
fit for human habitation/exploitation. Can NASA just
move on to something else?
It depends on what you mean by "important".
If by "important", you mean "discovery of indicators of something I can either talk to or eat", it's not important. Almost certainly, nothing Cassini produces will be important according to that definition. You may as well stop paying attention now.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
> Would somebody please explain to me why each of these things is important?
Because it's just interesting. That's all. People want to know. Why do you read post on slashdot? Probably because of the same reason.
...i.e. *kof kof* EUROPA... why Titan?
;)
Hydrocarbon seas. Could there be interest here by the oil industry? Makes you wonder...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Huge waves! Titan is going the surfers paradise of the future!
We barely understand weather on Earth; any and every bit of information we have on storms outside of Earth helps us to understand storms, and weather, on Earth, for one.
So that means waves on Titan and spots on Saturn.
This boils down to fluid dynamics, energy exchange, and chaos.
This also means it applies to helicopters, airplanes, submarines, cars, drip irrigation systems, washing machines, tornado prediction, and the lottery!
GPL Deconstructed
While Europa is interesting for potentially having a liquid water ocean underneath its crust, I'd personally rank Titan more interesting for the liquid hydrocarbon soup, which tends to form organic things over time. I just hope that this mission is only the start of our explorations of the moon.
Yeah.. lets turn Titan into a planet sized brewery. Its got all the chemicals we need in abundance. With all that Etane, we can produce the ethanol needed for a good beer. Extraterrestrial beer!! I wanna drink!
That sure brings new meaning to "cowabunga"...
Code Of The LifeMaker, by James Hogan, is a SF novel about the first explorations of Titan--nitrogen atmosphere, methane seas, water-ice continents covered by nitrogenous-hydrocarbon soils. And, of course, its indigenous population of sentient, medieval robots, that destroy the first Terran probes and subsequently meet humans.
Hogan's a clunky, dated writer, but it's an entertaining read. And if Huygens mysteriously fails on the surface next year...
"Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible" -Jacob Bronowski
I hope I'm not the only one, but looking at those pictures made me remember how beautiful Saturn is... it has a sense of unreality about it, it just looks so perfect. The atmosphere's bands all seem to be perfect rings around its surface, one part of me asks "why," the other part thinks "who cares, it looks pretty."
I know this could prolly be considered off topic, but I was just struck by the pictures of the planet and I wonder how, when so many dazzling images of space exist, can anyone act so ambivalent about space programs? It just doesn't make sense to me.
Oh and was I the only one who pictures a bizzare version of The Perfect Storm when reading about those waves, a more boring movie with less waves and it takes longer to climb each one. I think Hollywood should begin pre-production in May.
Yup...
I really believe thatss what Bush administration wants from space program - American domination of the future resources of the world. Oil reserves may be exhausted by 2050. But if they are correct about the composition of Titan's atmosphere, then thats probably the place to focus on.
Physicists are interested in planets like Jupiter, chemists can leaarn allot from planets like Titan. Mars has plenty to keep geologists, and physical geographers happy. And they all have plenty to amuse meteorologists, SETI buffs, and space historian types....
I see your point though. They all pale in comparison to the incredible diversity found on terra firma - Earth.
If ET ever does want to visit this solar system, you can be pretty sure he'll go straight for Earth!!
In other news:
Exxon announced a plan today to send a barrage of hydrogen nuclear bombs at Saturn's moon Titon. They believe Titon might pocess the proper conditions for the formation of crude oil. "Their is the possibility that our future markets could be saturated with extraterrestrial oil." says the president of Exxon. He goes on to say, "President Bush has given us 100% support with our plans."
The only resource that would make mining Titan economically viable would be pure, contained antimatter.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
The dots are not important!
The arrows are because they prove that there is an intelligent life on Saturn.
4 big arrows like those can't be caused by a natural phenomenom.
There are lots of celestial bodies with "potential" in Sol, why play favorites at this point?
And when we're technologically mature enough to get down to the nitty-gritty, IMO Ganymede is a better candidate for both life-searching and terraforming.
It's got all the 'interesting' features of Europa - e.g. a bunch of ice, probable salt water and an atmosphere with oxygen in it. Its tectonic activity is the most similar to Earth's out of all of the celestial bodies in Sol. It lies fully within Jupiter's magnetosphere (unlike Europa, which passes in and out), AND has its own magnetic field which is 4x stronger than Europa's intrinsic one. Also it's huge, the biggest moon in Sol.
Discovering black spots on gas giants is never good, just look what happened to Jupiter!
Anyway, IIRC there are some future missions on the drawing board intended exclusively for Europa.
How the fuck is that offtopic?
Not really. The energy it would take to bring a pound of hydrocarbons back to Earth from Titan is likely much more than you'd get from burning it.
(30 km/sec is equivalent to 450 MJ/kg; burning gives about 10 MJ/kg).
It's to get images to the support the multi-trillion dollar Windows desktop wallpaper industry.
Didn't you know that a Halliburton subcontractor designed Windows XP's 'Bliss' wallpaper for Microsoft? Dick Cheney himself designed 'River Sumida' for Windows NT.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
ESA's 'shipping forecast' - from Titan!
The Cassini probe has his own blog.
Anthropomorphized space probe's blogs started in January, and got more popular last month when some JPL'ers started ones for the GOES and FUSE satellites.
Here is a list of 14 active space probe's blogs.
I agree! We should start building more nuclear power plants at once!
(I know they aren't really storms, but "prolonged atmosphereic distrubances" doesn't fit in the title box.)
Why are Saturn's dark spot, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, El Nino, etc., all in the southern hemishperes of their respective planets? It really dosn't make sense.
If not for burning, hydrocarbons are still very useful for making plastics and a host of other chemicals. Perhaps we will find that useful when we have more advanced spacecrafts (that doesn't depend on fossil fuels)?
Why get all uppity about it: Because it is cool
-Sean
I bet Halliburton and half a dozen other petroleum companies are already busy making plans to bring those Hidrocarbons (petroleum, Natural Gas) back to earth maybe by oleoduct ;-)
And I have prayed unto You, O Lord U**X in the time of the Will of Linux.
Oil reserves may be exhausted by 2050. But if they are correct about the composition of Titan's atmosphere, then thats probably the place to focus on.
Dude, do you have any idea what you're talking about? If we could import oil from the outer solar system at anything resembling a reasonable price, we wouldn't need oil.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
If not for burning, hydrocarbons are still very useful for making plastics and a host of other chemicals.
I suspect we'll genetically engineer organisms that produce hydrocarbons long before it becomes cheap enough to import it from off-planet.
Perhaps we will find that useful when we have more advanced spacecrafts (that doesn't depend on fossil fuels)?
And just exactly how do modern spacecraft depend on fossil fuels?
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Back in the 80's, JPL changed the course of Voyager I to go behind Titan. The distance at which the signal started to drop, and the rate it dropped at gave us very good measurements of the atmosphere's depth and density. In fact, if the probe's distance from the center of Titan had been cut in half, it would have crashed. That's right, it was less than two radii out! I know, because I worked with the man who wrote the navagation system they used back then (The late Daniel J. Alderson.) and stll know, slightly, the man who used it for this, Bob Ceserone.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
two small, faint dark spots" in the southern hemisphere All I can make out is a tiny 4 pixel smudge at about 40 degrees south latitude. Since when do 4 pixels make the news?
Repeal the DMCA!
Of course, few of us define "important" the way you do in your post. Most of us understand that there's nothing more likely to be profitable in the long run than basic research into the way the universe works, and what's out there. Just because we can't point to an immediate way to profit from it doesn't mean there never will be.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Ssh! better not tell the Americans! THey might decide to go there to look for Weapons of Mass Distraction
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Of course, the surfer would freeze instantly in the liquid methane the first time they wipe out. But man, if the dude can ride that wave for just a few seconds, then what a way to die!
This sounds like just some leet astrophysicist's way of showing off.
Has anyone ever tried doing Extended Xray Absorbtion Fine Structure studies on the interstellar dust around supernova remnants?
The only resource that would make mining Titan economically viable would be pure, contained antimatter.
Now that you mention it, I happen to have some right here, in my ass.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
I agree! Actually, I have always found Saturn to be absolutely beautiful -- I have a tattoo of it on my right arm.
On an unrelated topic, I know the guy who did the X-ray shadow observations. If you asked me who among the people I know is least likely to wind up on the front page of /., I would have guessed Koji.
C'mon, I'm sure there are one or two texans who would be game!
Store with salt
In a related story, NASA was busy trying to figure an efficient method for charging the newly dicovered inhabitants of Titan for the x-rays we now have of them.
A spokesperson from the Chandra X-Ray Telescope team said "The folks on Titan are remarkable similiar in general construction, to human beings, except the have 5 arms, are 10 feet tall, and seem to sit around drinking a hydrocarbon beverage." The spokeperson went on to say that we here on Earth, may well have the interplanetary X-Ray market sewn up. This could be a huge source of revenue for NASA. The crab nebula was unavailable for comment.
Genda
Click! It's a Celestia link to a similar distance as Cassini when that picture was taken (and with a zoom of about 60x). You should see Saturn and it's moons as Cassini did. Maybe. :)
Obviously, it's because the entire Nasa budget depends on Bush's personal oil fortune doing well.
One dip in the market, and it's "Cancel that Space stuff, we all gotta go invade some other country in the name of God and more oil! "
Hey, how hard can it be to fudge the cassini data to show significant crude oil reserves? That's get the space program the funding it deserves !
-- You can't give it, you can't even buy it, and you just don't get it!
It would not surprise me if some "modern" rockets also use kerosine.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
But pretty soon, the surface of the ocean would be covered with the bodies of frozen surfers, making it difficult to navigate.
Imagine: You're surfing the perfect wave, then your board hits a frozen body.
In you go, adding to the problem.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Apparently a variety of infrared images of Titan at different wavelengths have been taken from the European Southern Observatory. These different wavelengths allow features at different depths in the atmosphere to be visualized, revealing dynamic and asymmetric atmospheric features, one dubbed the Southern Smile.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show