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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."
GNAA is proud to be part of it!
w00t
Also, once the dodo bird is dead, we can use the newly-empty continent to store our garbage and nuclear waste. It's a win-win situation.
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Would somebody please explain to me why each of these things is important?
It seems they have already discovered the "hydrocarbon" liquid on the surface, so that's nothing new. Waves? Ok, why should I care?
New dark spots. I guessing something to do with storms? We get them all the time here. What significance do they provide on the surface of Saturn?
The only thing I could see as being important is the atmosphere around Titan, given that Titan is one of the few chunks of rock believed to be able to support life as we currently understand it.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
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!)
So does this mean Michael _isn't_ a domain-thieving, censoring shithead? Oh, wait, it doesn't mean that at all.
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.
i wonder if Bush will start a campaign to liberate the Titanics now...
Cassini-Huygens will achieve Saturn orbit insertion on July 1st.
im still waiting for uranus insertion.
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?
Try again next time :)
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...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
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
As one poster indicates - not much value, and for all that, we put 63lbs of radioactive plutonium into space . . . to be space junk later.
The irresponsibility of NASA to do such is on par with Bush telling the public after 9-11 to go out and spend.
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.
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!!
The only resource that would make mining Titan economically viable would be pure, contained antimatter.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
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?
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 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.
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.
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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.
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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?
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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?
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. :)
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