Cassini Shatters Titan Theories

Dozix007 writes "The Herald reports: Cassini pierced the haze around Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, revealing details that have shattered theories about its composition. It has atmosphere and soil similar to primordial Earth and may contain the building blocks of life. Scientists believed bright patches on its surface seen earlier were pure water ice. But the first infrared images taken by Cassini revealed water ice as dark patches because it is mixed with material that may be organic, raining on to the surface."

Comments

Interesting

[dark404]

Interesting that we search far away places looking for signs of life, and there may be some in our own back yard.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

> Interesting that we search far away places
> looking for signs of life, and there may be
> some in our own back yard.

Not in my neighborhood. :-P

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

You consider Saturn's Titan our backyard? Anyhow, where further have we looked for life? Only probes further than this is Pioneers and Voyagers and they sure weren't equipped to detect signs of life.
.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny. Look at this picture.

It looks a hell of a lot like a gaussian blurred image of Mars with some photoshop effects.

Re:Interesting

[AndroidCat]

The 2001 book version was set in the Saturn system. Perhaps we'd better recheck that "All these worlds" message again? :)

Re:Interesting

[exaslash]

...and i swear i see a tilted face!

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, and the sky of Mars is definitely blue, and the Moon landing was filmed in a basement.

Re:Interesting

[oquigley]

Supposedly debris ejected from Earth in an asteroid impact could eventually whack into Mars and Venus.
Much more debris makes it from Mars to Earth (on the order of tons per year, mostly dust and small grains).

It seems possible, (although someone with a better grasp of orbital dynamics than I could say with certainty) that bacteria-laden rocks could make it all the way out to Titan.

If this is the case, then the whole solar system (more or less) would have long ago been exposed to terrestrial life. So even if we do find bacterial life (in some Martian hotspring or in the Venusian clouds, or radically less likely given the available energy, Titan) then it's quite likely that it will turn out to be based on the same old DNA as us.

So from this perspective, Finding life on Titan (or Mars, or Venus) wouldn't necessarily tell us anything about the likelyhood of finding life elsewhere in the galaxy.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that we search far away places looking for signs of life, and there may be some in our own back yard.

Where it was tragically eaten by Biff, the dog. Next time better use the radio telescope, little green ones.

Re:Interesting

[advance512]

Interesting that we search far away places looking for the origins of life, and new life (Titan, Mars) and there may be some in our own back yard (the OCEAN!).

Of course, the way we are polluting the sea, life won't be there for very long - so it doesn't really matter anyhow.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

And I thought death was more our specialty.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it has also been pointed out that life might have begun on Mars and then contaminated Earth. But as it has already been shown that life can survive in space, panspermia seems increasingly likely. A single planet with life could have contaminated its neighborhood, then a few more would have contaminated the whole galaxy...as they followed various orbits around the galaxy.

Re:Interesting

[oquigley]

Yes, but I've read that undirected panspermia (ie, just rocks diffusing out of the solar system into the galaxy at large) would take, well, forever. On the order of trillions of years.

So, it's possible that we've kicked it off already, but at this rate it's going to be a while before the galaxy's green.

Re:Interesting

[CodeMonkey4Hire]

The probability of this happening is extremely low. The amount of extra energy required for an asteroid to achieve a delta orbit from Earth all the way out to Saturn is huge. It is much more probably, though still unlikely, [if life were to exist on Titan] that a life-bearing asteroid would travel from Titan to Earth.

Re:Interesting

[BlueJay465]

Don't forget the cheese sandwich next time!

NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting that we keep cutting NASA's budget, saying there's nothing possibly interesting out there. Then we look at a space probe and it says we may learn about the origins of life. To me, that seems to be incredibly important. Why are we not giving them more funding?

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

because the majority of the money we give NASA doesn't go to projects like this... they go to the ones that fail.

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we not giving them more funding?
Easy, I'm Canadian

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

No the majority goes to projects that end up developing the new technologies we enjoy every day. All those useless missions the bush administration criticized leave the earth to preform experiments that simply cannot be done planetside leading to advances in the very knowledge bases that stimulate the development of new technologies. the value NASA gives the US far outweighs its costs.

Re:NASA Funding

[maggeth]

"Interesting" is not really enough for all the big investors out there (especially Congress). They need something they can rape, divide, and conquer, then you will see a huge increase in space funding.

Admit it, it's true.

Re:NASA Funding

[techno-vampire]

Because the un-manned exploration of space is run through JPL not directly through NASA. If you want more neat stuff like this, give the money directly to JPL rather than pouring it down the NASA rat-hole.

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we not giving them more funding?

Haven't you been paying attention? There's a war on!

Re:NASA Funding

[Hank Chinaski]

Because more money does not equal better work.

Re:NASA Funding

[blue trane]

We elect Congress. It's ultimately our fault.

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

Then we look at a space probe and it says we may learn about the origins of life. To me, that seems to be incredibly important. Why are we not giving them more funding?

Why would they need more funding? Every two dollar crack whore mother knows what the origins of life are: Lamont and his cheap-ass condoms that break too easily.

Re:NASA Funding

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Because more money does not equal better work.

Interestingly, the converse is true: Too little funding does prevent good work.

In principle you're right: throwing money at something doesn't guarantee success. But in the technical fields, throwing money does up the odds. And while there might be a point when NASA is getting so much funding that its productivity suffers as a result, no rational oberserver could state we're at or even near that point.

Re:NASA Funding

[SengirV]

You must be a Democrat. Only in the democratic party can a budget increas be seen as a cut. Check out this PDF concerning NASA Budgets. Also, The Presidents Space Initiative would increase spending for NASA as well.

http://ifmp.nasa.gov/codeb/budget2003/03-Multi-Y ea r_Budget.pdf

Re:NASA Funding

[servognome]

Why are we not giving them more funding?
Its always hard to justify givng money to pure science. Its a noble endeavour, but how can you calculate the ROI of knowing the composition of rocks on Mars? Would most people care? If Cassini didn't go to Saturn until, 30 years from now, would it make any difference.
We should always have a well funded space agency, but don't get outraged when there are cuts to the program.
NASA still gets $15.5 billion this year ($91M less than last year). And where is that money going? Well NOAA is getting a $190M increase in funding. Different scientists, but still science research, with more likely more immediate impact.

Re:NASA Funding

[cnkeller]

Because the un-manned exploration of space is run through JPL not directly through NASA.

JPL is part of NASA, it's just run by the folks from UC (yes, that's an anomaly and in this case it seems to work very well). They get their funding from the same places the rest of us do, ie the overall NASA budget which has slightly increased this year if I recall correctly.

Re:NASA Funding

[Dagonkin]

Interestingly, the converse is true: Too little funding does prevent good work.

Sorry to be pedantic but that is not the converse case, that would be "Because better work does not equal more money." It is the reversing of order rather than the reversing of logic.(usind defs from webster because i cannot be arsed to find an english dict)

Also your use of absolute rather than relative terms makes the statements very different both in terms of emotive quality(too little is not the oposite of more and better is not the same as good)

Wasn't a flame but feel free to mod it as one. Oh and i agree with what i think you were saying if not your usage of the language.

Re:NASA Funding

[Rinikusu]

Because we'd rather keep spending inordinate amounts of cash to fighting wars we cannot possibly "win" (drugs/terrorism), and we have starving people in our own country who keep having their jobs outsourced somewhere else, and because it's just not profitable in the traditional, monetary returns sense. Once someone figures out and actually implements low-cost launch solutions and someone else figures out how to do something like actually create manufacturing bases in orbit, in inter-plantetary space, and/or in the asteroid belt and shows it to be immensely profitable (billions, I tell ya, billions are in them thar rocks), then you'll see a push for space exploration that you've never seen the likes of. Look at what appears to be 90% of the payload going into space now: Communications satellites. How...exciting, right? (actually, the research that goes into building efficient, space-tolerant communications systems is a science into itself and is immensely valuable for any inter-planetary work we might ultimately undertake). But, there's profit in those satellites. Companies are raking in cash providing better services for their companies. Once someone can build a wafer fab in orbit (probably 99.9% automated with just a technician or two lifted on rotation to watch over things and do modular switchouts), and do it cheaper than the Malaysians, I'm pretty sure Intel and the others would jump right on board, eh?

However, with the short-term mentality most corporations have these days and the desire to immediately satiate stockholder desires, putting money into long-term investment (which is what orbit manufacture would require) will never happen, so it falls to the "public" sector to fund the development/launch of projects, which are constantly undermined by the need for military funding to fight wars for blood or oil or land or whatever it is we're fighting for

Re:NASA Funding

[Waffle Iron]

The only difference between Democrats and Republicans regarding budget cuts is tense. Republicans say they will cut the budget, and then they increase it. After the budget has increased, Democrats say that it has been cut.

Re:NASA Funding

[RayBender]

Because the un-manned exploration of space is run through JPL not directly through NASA.

JPL is part of NASA, it's just run by the folks from UC

Actually, JPL is run by Caltech for NASA. Funding for JPL comes from NASA.

Re:NASA Funding

[secondsun]

Yes it is partly our fault, but how can you hope to increase funding to NASA when your choices are either a group of Republicans who are fighting over the title of the most conservative (ex. the GA senate race) or Democrats who are running on the Bush is an ass hole platform without any of their own ideas or agendas being pushed to the media at large?

Re:NASA Funding

[shokk]

Because right now there are a number of conflicts going on that require our attention for fear that we may not be around to see the little pictures. We should probably sort out why humanity hates itself before we go trying to impress any galactic neighbors.

I'm amazed by how puny these pictures are after having seen what the Mars rovers can produce. Also, I was unaware of the fact that the rings are very pure water. Imagine what Saturn will look like without those rings once we mine them away to support exploration to other parts of the solar system.

Re:NASA Funding

[smurf975]

Thinking about star ship troopers?

Re:NASA Funding

[FyRE666]

It's interesting that we keep cutting NASA's budget, saying there's nothing possibly interesting out there...

I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that none of Bush's family work for NASA... Maybe if they were discovering new and interesting ways to blow planets up they might be in with a shot at extra funding...

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

We elect Congress. It's ultimately our fault.

If someone comes to murder you, and he offers you a choice of being shot or stabbed, are you committing suicide?

Of course not.

So why, when my election ballot lists only politicians, is it my fault that Congress is run by people who care more for politics than science?

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest fault lies in ordinary citizens. The average taxpayer couldn't care less about space exploration. I'm sure you've heard people ask "What good does wasting money on space probes do?" more than once. All those rockets are cool as long as they aren't funded by taxmoney. Blaming just politicians for the lack of space exploration isn't enough.

Re:NASA Funding

[blue trane]

If someone comes to murder you allowing you only to choose between being shot or stabbed, one option remaining open to you is to complain, protest, point out the injustice, talk about the situation, voice your dissent - rather than merely shut up and accept the situation and meekly choose, saying "well that's the way it is and it'll never change, that's reality, nothing we can do about it, it won't ever change in our lifetime so I might as well just make my choice and live with it because talking about it won't change anything, I'll just shut up and choose one of these methods because that's what I'm supposed to do and who am I to challenge that..."

Re:NASA Funding

[Cybrr]

You should be able to vote "None of the above" or call your representative. Would approval voting make running for congress cheaper so less well-endowed groups can have their say?

Re:NASA Funding

[mikerich]

Why are we not giving them more funding?

Because at the end of the day no politician can be photographed putting their arm round a space probe.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:NASA Funding

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

NASA will accept Canadian money.

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, if we convince Halliburton to get into the space business, I bet we'd get more space funding out there!

Re:NASA Funding

[Jahf]

Much to the dismay of the others who replied to your post, I agree.

Look at what happened to Apollo ... Apollo 11? Everyone was watching. By Apollo 14 the public was disinterested.

Similarly with the Shuttle.

The only things that got people reinterested were calamity (Apollo 13, Challenger, Columbia) or aberation (John Glenn).

Congress is only treating NASA and similar topics with the same general disdain that the majority of the public want. That's how a democracy works. Until/unless we discover -life- out there, not just the possibility, or have some new massive breakthrough that invigorates the public, these programs will continue to fight for their lives.

Let's face it, if you counted the number of people who were watching the Mars rover landings live on TV a few years ago and then subtracted everyone you had 3 degrees or less connection to, you would probably have wiped out 90% of the viewers.

If you watched live the recent Burt Rutan plane make it into space a couple of weeks ago and subtracted anyone who reads Slashdot or knows someone who does, you'd probably have wiped out 90% of -those- viewers.

We simply are not in anywhere near a majority when it comes to exploration enthusiasm.

Re:NASA Funding

[isorox]

They need something they can rape, divide, and conquer, then you will see a huge increase in space funding.

We need to liberate this primordial ooze from it's oppressive dicatorial amobea.

Re:NASA Funding

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Sorry to be pedantic but that is not the converse case, that would be "Because better work does not equal more money."

D'oh! I had this thought nagging me before I pressed Submit but I went ahead anyway.

statment: p -> q
converse: q -> p
inverse: ~p -> ~q
contrapositive: ~q -> ~p

Clearly I should have used "inverse". Now my Symbolic Logic prof is going to be disappointed in me... :)

Re:NASA Funding

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

"The Presidents Space Initiative" is worse than the President's "hydrogen economy". The hydrogen economy may help the environment SOMEDAY; right now, of course, it just lets Bush ignore gasoline efficiency standards in autos. His "Space Initiative" lets him both ignore/underfund many parts of NASA and prepare us to SOMEDAY fly to the moon so we can THEN fly to Mars (very energy efficient). (I do not know if the "Space Initiative" will funnel money to "big" Republicians but who knows?)

Re:NASA Funding

[isorox]

Might disproove the bible, and the fundies dont want that.

Re:NASA Funding

[AndroidCat]

They need something they can rape, divide, and conquer, then you will see a huge increase in space funding.

Yes but what they'll rape, divide, and conquer is the space funding! Bush's smoke and mirrors currently has a zero percent chance of getting anyone to the Moon, never mind Mars. The US system for getting men into orbit is currently called Russia.

Re:NASA Funding

[Ohreally_factor]

I think he meant he is Scottish-Canadian.

Re:NASA Funding

[TekPolitik]

We elect Congress. It's ultimately our fault.

Of course when voting you tend to have the choice between Tweedledum and Tweedle-dumber.

Re:NASA Funding

[Jugalator]

Yeah, and I guess problem is most people don't care about space.

Heck, a whole lot of people don't even know what planets we have in our solar system. That has often puzzled me -- why so little time in school is spent on learning at least the basics about space. I'm not talking about large amounts of time spent for it, but there's so much else taught in school that seems about as important or non-important to me. :-P

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking Liberal bollocks, this is about as insightful as my shit in the morning's fucktards.

Who the flying fucking gives mods points out in this fucking retarded place????

Re:NASA Funding

[rishistar]

The only previous mention I'd heard of them being made from water comes from a short story I read ages ago... plot was something along the lines of 'Mars is Short of water as earth is withholding it from the mars inhabitants, but then a martian exhibition comes back with water from Saturn and tables are turned'. Any idea which story and author? I suspect its an Asimov jobby.

Re:NASA Funding

[amRadioHed]

Hey! Do you think the politicians would give NASA more money if NASA would arrange for some photos of them flying through space clinging to the probe?

That would be awesome, everyone comes out a winner!

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. it was Asimov; "The Martian Way". If you want to read it again. try one of these references

Re:NASA Funding

[servognome]

Hmmm maybe we can justify increased NASA budget to help battle alien terrorists.
If they keep cutting NASA's budget how can they ever hope to maintain the criminal alien identification system and support alien smuggling investigations
I think the Cassini space probe shows we are taking the battle to the alien terrorists. They can't hide on this planet or on any moon billions of miles away.

Re:NASA Funding

[Pharmboy]

Until/unless we discover -life- out there, not just the possibility, or have some new massive breakthrough that invigorates the public, these programs will continue to fight for their lives.

I agree but would take it to the next level. If there was a *THREAT* from space (mean aliens, comet in our path) then you would find plenty of funding. I do think there is more enthusiasm than you may think, however, but our priorities are more toward other projects, and the economy is finally recovering. We can hope for the future of funding.

Re:NASA Funding

[Oligonicella]

How the hell can this crap be insightful. NASA has been funded for many years on the hope of information only. Recycle. That would be a good use for your tin foil.

Re:NASA Funding

[cfuse]

We elect Congress. It's ultimately our fault.

Do you know what a "Magician's choice" is?

Re:NASA Funding

[MarsDefenseMinister]

Robber: OK MISTER. You have two choices: shot or stabbed. Which is it?

Blue Trane: Well Mister Robber, what you are presenting to me is a logical fallacy known as a "false dichotomo". It is a fallacy, because in this situation there are actually several options besides the two you gave. For example, I could plead for my life, or I could...

Robber: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! (and he runs away, leaving you alive)

Hmmmm, I suppose you are right. +1 insightful.

Re:NASA Funding

[bigwang]

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Re:NASA Funding

[Salgak1]

I guess the Vision for Space Exploration doesn't count as Bush Administration interest in Space. . .

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

Robber: Your money or your life.

(time passes)

Robber: Well?
MarsDefenseMinister: I'm thinking about it.

Re:NASA Funding

[rudbek]

"The only difference between Democrats and Republicans regarding budget cuts is tense..."

I work for Congress and this is the truest statement regarding politics I have ever read on Slashdot.

Re:NASA Funding

[0111 1110]

I agree but would take it to the next level. If there was a *THREAT* from space

Maybe we should stage one then. Fooling the average Joe would be easy, but how do we fool NASA. Would another War of the Worlds broadcast and some funny looking remote controlled aircraft and weather balloons do the trick?

Surely with the combined brainpower(tm) of all slashdotters, we should be able to come up with something. The crop circles certainly don't seem to be working. I guess that would have been too easy.

Re:NASA Funding

[Pharmboy]

Maybe we should stage one then. Fooling the average Joe would be easy, but how do we fool NASA...

Surely with the combined brainpower(tm) of all slashdotters, we should be able to come up with something.

Lets see, by combining all the brainpower of Slashdot, we have a database of hot grits, natalie portman, goatse, monty python, simpson, south park, Soviet Russia, and 3. Profit!! references, plus hundreds of trolls, thousands of single, educated men who actually own (and use) pocket protectors, and a few dozen people who simply go around correcting everyone elses grammar and spelling. Oh, and 500,000 pot smokers.

We might not be up to the task. I'm afraid half would quit, mid-task, and return to their online game and half would go back to building their "girl" robot. And the other 10% are too stoned to do basic math...

Re:NASA Funding

[Spankophile]

Ahh, the most refreshing post I've read in a while... where are my goddam mod points.

Re:NASA Funding

[syousef]

You need more funding AND correct use of that funding.

No point spending big on a car if you don't have the expertise to drive it. A car will make you go faster and further than you can on foot but not if you push it all the way or climb into the boot and hope really really hard that you'll get there.

Re:NASA Funding

[Ynazar1]

Assuming that there are more stupid people than there are smart ones, how is it that election winners are decided by majority?

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of ironic. I know many people who tell me that they wish they were smarter, but when you are smarter you become interested in things that the proles out there take no notice of and care loose interest in the things they tend to care about.

It's easier to think about yourself and care about the now than to think of others and trying to see potential.

Re:NASA Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they accept cashiers checks. Just write it out for whatever you feel you can spare.

Henning

Re:NASA Funding

[DrMrLordX]

"Less well-endowed" groups? I knew that politicians traditionally have needed to be tall to win elections(at least in the US). I didn't know that phallus size had anything to do with it.

And yes, the above is a joke. I know you're referring to economic rather than physical endowment.

Re:NASA Funding

[Mazem]

Well then why are they fighting over it ;)

Re:NASA Funding

[essreenim]

Yeah, and they have already found the first alien city - its huge! - picture here

Re:NASA Funding

[R.Caley]

because the majority of the money we give NASA doesn't go to projects like this... they go to the ones that fail.

If only...

NASA should be doing more stuff which might fail, rather than pissing away money on things like the ISS and Shuttle which never achieve anything, but stagger on, never quite dieing, for decades.

IIRC the ISS admitted cost is 100bn, Cassini is about 3.5bn. 30 Cassini type missions for a tin can in orbit which has no prospect of ever doing anything vaguely interesting unless it blows up.

Re:NASA Funding

[tgrigsby]

Because some people are looking at their ability to feed their families and saying, "Wait a minute! My future and the future of my family are bleak, and you want to throw BILLIONS at flinging an armored computer at a rock to see what it's made of? Are you SERIOUS?!"

Others are looking at the money we spend on education and saying, "Wait a minute. Our government passed a law called 'No Child Left Behind', taking all the credit for it then failing to fund it, leaving thousands of school children in poorly staffed and supplied classrooms, and you want to spend BILLIONS on putting a handful of guys back on the moon to do EXACTLY what we did 40 years ago with no hope of economic return in my lifetime or the lifetime of my children or grandchildren? Are you SERIOUS?!"

And still others are saying, "Wait a minute. I'm living every day of my life as though it may be my last hoping for an eleventh hour reprieve in the form of a treatment for my AIDS/cancer/Alzheimer's/Parkinson's/etc., and you want to spend BILLIONS sending a handful of guys to Mars when we can more efficiently and more safely send some vacuum hardened RC cars with experiments tied to them? Are you SERIOUS?!"

I'm not about to say that NASA isn't the greatest organization in the history of humanity, the technological culmination of millions of years of evolution on this planet. But if you are going to ask the question, "Why don't we give them more money," you need to be prepared to look at the bigger picture. The answers to all the mysteries of life will not be laid at your feet in this lifetime, nor the lifetimes of the next 20 generations. There is always another horizon, another mystery, another adventure. In the meantime, people must live, and we would do well to balance our ambitions with our responsibilities to one another.

The answer is not to give NASA more funding but to choose our priorities more carefully with an eye to minimal risk and greatest ROI, whether that return be scientific or economic, and economic return should not be scoffed at. Making space self-financing is the Golden Fleece, the Brass Ring, the Ultimate Prize.

Privatization is a great way to achieve that end. I'm watching SpaceShipOne with great interest. It may very well be the answer we're all waiting for. If you want space opened and explored more thoroughly, show your support for such private efforts.

And one last thing, while I'm long-winded and on a tear: Why didn't Bush direct NASA to build a space elevator instead of wasting money on a moon shot or a Mars shot? Build a foundation that will make such efforts so much more possible. In the 60's, a rocket was the only way to get off the planet. Now we have the technology within our reach to do the same job more effectively. Talk about creating a legacy!

Re:NASA Funding

[stonecypher]

Pity we don't elect the President anymore.

Re:NASA Funding

[jtev]

We never did, we elect electors and the electors elect the president. It's stupid, but the founding fathers thought political parties were a bad idea, and they had no ways of logisticaly supporting an election from the general population. No canidate could posibly get a majority of geograpicaly seperate people to agree to have him as their President. Instead the population of each state would elect a certain number of electors equal to the total of their senators and represitives, and those people would then go to the capitol and listen to the canidates say their peace, and vote for two of them, the one who received the most votes would be president and the one who received the second most votes would be vice president. After Washington left office this quicky broke down, and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson tied. Then the 12th ammendment changed the way electors vote, from simply casting two votes to casting a vote for president and a vote for vice president. This also coincided with the start of major political parties. It takes a constitutional ammendment to change the facts of the matter, but that is the way the constution works. Sorry if it's not to your liking, but it's the way it is.

Re:NASA Funding

[dswan69]

But the rest of the pot smokers will get the insight and solve the problem without further assistance.

Re:NASA Funding

[ViolentGreen]

No canidate could posibly get a majority of geograpicaly seperate people to agree to have him as their President.

I think it was more of a logistical thing then having seperate people agree on one president, though that might be what you are saying . You mentioned "geographically seperate people," I think it goes beyond that. Can you imagine the nightmare of trying to tally up a popular vote for the whole country without mass communication? It would be a bigger mess than the 2000 election.

I assume that that is the reason for having primaries at different times for different states. I think mass communication killed the the system of primaries though. Now, whoever wins the first few primaries basically ends up getting the endorsements (if those even matter) and the nomination.

I think we need a single popular primary for all canditates with x percentage of popular support. Then finish it off with a runoff of the top two.

I cannot imagine a situation where this could come into effect though. No member of either of the two dominant parties is going to introduce this ammendment for risk of losing their dominance.

I know... slightly off topic but I needed a rant.

Re:NASA Funding

[jtev]

The logistical issues are why they couldn't get the popular vote to even come close to working. You do have some good points. Oh, and there is a situation where any governmental change can come into place, it's call popular revolution. Unfortunatly those are hard to win, and even harder to keep from becoming despotisms. Perhaps some of us should pool our resources and emmigrate to the moon, set up a Republic of Luna, and write a constitution that more redily reflects the modern era, like a "less ambiguous" second ammendment. "Any member of congress who proposes a law limiting the right of free persons to keep and bear arms shall be spaced, and yes this means ALL arms, including nuclear and new arms not yet invented"

Re:NASA Funding

[stonecypher]

Oh, shut up, I was making fun of hanging chad.

Re:NASA Funding

[|/|/|||]

The only way out of the problem is election reform. If we had some sort of instant runoff system, where you could rank your top n choices for office, then the quality of candidates would improve. Pressure your representatives to improve our electoral process!

Just don't tell them why you think it's a good idea - they'll want to keep the current system in order to protect their phony baloney jobs. Harrumph!

Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this brings up huge ethical questions. If we are right, and there are the building blocks of life down there, do we have any right to interfere with that process? Undoubtably we are going to do something while "studying" this that causes the process to go all wrong (or not happen at all) like a satellite hitting the surface and contaminating the moon, causing these building blocks to not form (flash backs of the last episode of ST:TNG).

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

"do we have any right to interfere with that process?"

Nothing has stopped people dicking around in places before, you think people suddenly just got smarter?

And why not interfere, we'll made a base there ;).

Re:Ethical questions

[mikejz84]

Not really. Titan is stuck in way out in the cold of space. Everyone believes that Titan is WAY to cold for life to ever exist. This however changes in about 5 billion years when the sun goes red giant and Titan might possibly enter a period of a few 100 million years where it gets earth-like tempatures. The question of course is if titan will survive for another 5 billion years.

Re:Ethical questions

[Lispy]

Of course not. This would violate the Star Fleets Prime Directive. Now get back to business and reverse polarity. ;-)

Re:Ethical questions

[mOoZik]

There could very well be underwater vents, similar to here, that would provide warmth and chemical nourishment. We can't speculate, because there is a whole lot we still don't know. I am looking forward to the landing of the probe next year.

Re:Ethical questions

[wjsteele]

Two points. One, we're already planning on contaminating the planet, err, moon. The EU's Huygens probe will decend in a few months to study the atmosphere and surface features. (By the way... If Titan wasn't captured by Saturn, it would be considered a planet.)

Point two... you seem to think that our ethics apply to other worlds - remember, they are our believes/values. Applying them to another world doesn't make sense. What we should really do is study from afar, and if we can determine that our efforts can be non intrusive to the development of the natural processes, then we should take every opportunity to do such and learn all we can.

Bill

Re:Ethical questions

[Almost A Knave]

Our curiosity will probably get the better of us. Ask yourself: would you consciously decide to ignore life forming on Titan because of Star Trek-inspired fears of contaminating it? I know my answer is no.

Re:Ethical questions

[Shihar]

I fail to see the 'ethical' question that you point out. Let's say that there is indeed a pool on Titan where the basic building blocks of life are about to form. In order for a satellite to really screw it up it needs to both hit that pool and hit that pool at the right time. You are more likely to win the lottery three times in a row then hit such an exact spot and time with a satellite smaller then truck.

The real danger is that we crash something with bacteria on it that manages to find a way to proliferate and kill existing life. This is a danger probably with considering, but more for the purposes of making sure we don't contaminate such a bed of science. It would be nice to know if life exists somewhere else that isn't from Earth. Spreading around Earth microbes will inhibit our ability to pick out life from earth and life that originated from elsewhere.

This all leads to a much bigger ethical question. Is it our duty to spread life throughout what could potentially be a dead galaxy, or do we let it take its natural course, which might very well mean a complete lack of life. Personally, I think that it is foolish to magically exclude humans from the grand design of the galaxy simply because we are human. Suns exploding and planets forming are no more or less natural then humans jumping into space ships and spreading life around. Humans are a creation of this universe, it seems silly to exclude ourselves now that we have a chance to influence the universe.

I personally think that we should fling life to every part of the galaxy until it is teeming with life. Certainly look for life that is already there and try and avoid ruining the life that might exist, but if after a reasonable search it looks like some place is devoid of life, I think we should go spread the seed of life to that barren and dead place. A Mars or Titan teeming with life is a far more interesting place then a chemical laboratory.

Re:Ethical questions

[techno-vampire]

Just because there are some building blocks of life on Titan (if there are) doesn't mean that they're going to come to life. They've had about three billion years so far, and if they haven't managed it yet, they probably won't. It takes more than just the right chemicals. It takes energy. The main source of that is insolation, and that's pretty weak by the time you get out that far. I won't say that no form of life could ever evolve out there, but I will say that no life as we know it could. If nothing else, all indications are that life first appeared in the ocean, and there's almost certainly no liquid water there to form the background matrix. Yes, there might be a few forms of bacteria that could adapt to it, but if so, they'd have come into being somewhere more hospitable. If, as and when we start exploring Titan, I don't think we'll have to worry about native organisms, but we will (or should) worry about contaminating it with Earth evolved bacteria then mistaking them for native.

Re:Ethical questions

[AKAImBatman]

It isn't quite that easy. To date, we haven't seen a single form of life (save for microbes) that can survive that deep into the Solar System. Even Mars is downright balmy in comparison to Titan, but there is little sign that life does exist there or ever will.

The core of the problem is that life needs one thing above all else to survive: Energy. The star we call our Sun pumps terrawatts upon terrawatts of power into the Earth each day. Plants and some forms of microbes are able to take this energy and convert it into fuel stores. These fuel stores are then used to power all other life on the planet.

The problem with Titan is that it's probably lacking the energy necessary to sustain life. While the soil may be rich in "organic compounds" (i.e. the elements and minerals necessary for life as we know it) those compounds are of zero use if there isn't a sustainable energy source. And the Sun can't be that energy source since barely a few kilowatts of its energy reach Titan. That's not to say that Titan doesn't have some other energy source at its interior, but it is somewhat unlikely. In the end, it may be that Titan would make an excellent place from which to acquire raw materials as man expands into space. Difficult to find materials such as Nitrogen could be hurled from high up in the Sun's gravity well, to lower points such as Mars.

Re:Ethical questions

[Cyberhwk]

Doesn't it really depend on the fuel source of the satelite to find out if it can contaminate titan? If this has a radioactive fuel source and it gets exposed to the new life i'm sure that will damage them. Or if we just poison the water by accident so nothing can grow in there in the first place?

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Huygens won't contaminate Titan, it was sterilized.

Re:Ethical questions

[gl4ss]

huh.. why would humans spreading the life be 'unnatural'?

we're life after all, a lot of people seem to forget that.

Re:Ethical questions

[shigelojoe]

Hey, only Europa is forbidden. They didn't say *anything* about Titan.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

yea because for all we know, alien life (microbes and viruses hitching rides in rocks and ice) is being flung at us from far away

Re:Ethical questions

[bih]

Don't confuse 'morals' with ethics. The study of ethics should strive to guide human action by determining what is good, regardless of what we are acting upon, be it the state, the earth, or Titan. Whether the study of ethics is futile is another question.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

hey dude,

the US invaded Iraq on the basis of phoney allegations.
Do they have the right to interfere with the Iraqi society?
My guess: given enough national interests they undoubtedly will, without any hesitation...
Ethics don't rule the world. Spin doctors do...

Re:Ethical questions

[barakn]

There could very well be underwater vents

Ha! Would you care to bet money on that? I'm wondering where you think liquid water is on a planet whose surface is 95 degrees K, 178 degrees below the freezing point of water.

Re:Ethical questions

[Takatsuki]

this is not a new question. why do you think we take such pains to remove any biological contaminants from martian spacecraft? dont worry. we have much less chance of contaminating titan.

Re:Ethical questions

[oldwarez]

I say kill them all before they get totally out of control.

Re:Ethical questions

[Have Blue]

Those who say that we should not disturb the "natural course of life" ignore the fact that the natural course of life is to multiply and expand into its environment. If any Earth animals other than humans found themselves somehow on another planet and in a hospitable environment, they would not hesitate to "colonize" it to the best of their ability. It's what life does. The human being is simply the first organism capable of transplanting members of itself over such long distances.

Re:Ethical questions

[Jesrad]

And the Sun can't be that energy source since barely a few kilowatts of its energy reach Titan.
Bzzzt, probably wrong. Plenty of the Sun's light reaches Titan thanks to reflection over Saturn. Think of the Moon's light, multiplied by a few billions of billions of time.

Re:Ethical questions

[mindstrm]

The same place it is in the arctic, where the surface temperature is 60 degrees below the freezing point of water. Under the ice.

Re:Ethical questions

[AKAImBatman]

Bzzzt, probably wrong.

Probably?! I'm confident already.

Plenty of the Sun's light reaches Titan thanks to reflection over Saturn. Think of the Moon's light, multiplied by a few billions of billions of time.

It's not about "does light reach it or not". It's about how many watts of power is poured into it. If Titan doesn't receive enough energy, life can't grow. For example, your body burns plant and animal fuel to produce a constant 200 watts. Where are you going to get that power on Titan?

Re:Ethical questions

[NanoGator]

"Undoubtably we are going to do something while "studying" this that causes the process to go all wrong (or not happen at all) like a satellite hitting the surface and contaminating the moon, causing these building blocks to not form (flash backs of the last episode of ST:TNG)."

Chalk it up to Darwinism.

Re:Ethical questions

[Dagonkin]

Of course we can speculate, that is all we can do until we have some proper evidence(then we can begin deducing and similar fun things)

Even more offtopic - does anyone know of a cure for pedantic tendencies other than a DIY lobotomy?

Re:Ethical questions

[Stephen Samuel]

There are a couple of things to consider: The first is that Titan is far too coold for most life as we know it to survive... On the other hand, there's life in some of the most inhospitibale places found on earth, so that's no promise.

The other thint is that, because Huygens was being built for insertion on Titan I believe that some special effort was taken to minimize the possibility of contamination. This is the main reason why Galileo was ordered to deep-6 itself... it wasn't constructed with the possibility of crash-landing onto a life-capable moon, and NASA didn't want to risk it crashing someplace livable 500 years from now and accidently terraforming the place.

Of course, the xenphile's wet dream is that Huygens never makes it to the surface proper because it gets stuck in the branches of a methane-based forest.

Re:Ethical questions

[mosb1000]

Speaking of that, I could never figure out why scientists would assume such a thing. Certainly there fluids, materials and chemical reactions which can result in life like properties, but exist at very low temperatures. Why do people always assume that you need an earth like environment for life to exist. Maybe all the life-forms we've seen require an earth like environment because we've only seen life-forms on earth. I think that scientists who believe that there's no way life could exist on Titan, simply lack imagination.

Certainly it is unlikely that life exists on Titan, and it is only reasonable that we assume there is none until we have proof to the contrary, but the possibility is still there.

Re:Ethical questions

[rworne]

FYI: Just temperature alone isn't enough to determine the freezing (or boiling) point of water or any liquid. Pressure has a lot to do with it. With a low atmospheric pressure (such as some of these moons and planets) the boiling point lowers, as well as the freezing point. Water can exist as a liquid at much lower temperatures when the pressure is low.

It is possible that liquid water cannot exist under these conditions, it depends on where the triple point is. The solid water may just sublime to a gas.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring Linux to the Desktop!
Stop supporting your friends Winboxes today!

Lose all your friends while accomplishing nothing!

Offtopic, yes, but stupid sigs need to be critiqued.

Re:Ethical questions

[Artifakt]

Don't be silly! If we start trying to influence the whole universe, we might have to grow up enough to take on the job, and you know where that would lead? Just because you have this crazy idea that we could do better than a bunch of blind natural processes, particularly If we recognize we are part of that nature ourselves and have a role to play.

Re:Ethical questions

[stephentyrone]

Actually, water can exist as a liquid at lower temperatures when the pressure is *high*, not low. Take another look at that website you referenced; the phase diagram for water is printed farther down the page. the negative slope of the solid-liquid interface shows that the freezing point increases as the pressure decreases.

Re:Ethical questions

[Oliver Defacszio]

Oh, that's just so wrong. We are one kind of life that has no right to influence any others. What if the life that would have formed without our intervention had turned out to be better than ours in any number of ways? Believe it or not, humans are not necessarily the benchmark of life overall.

It's this type of thinking that has driven the "westernize everybody" philosophy throughout the last several hundred years. Before Europeans arrived in North America, the Indians had created complex political and social structures that worked as well or better than what was forced upon them by colonists. By "taming the savages" without stopping to actually look at how they interacted with each other and, more importantly, nature, colonists damned the Indians along with themselves to the wasteful, filthy existence that has reduced this beautiful planet to a dirty brown globe.

We, as stupid humans, destroy anything we touch, especially since the idiocy of economic politics has come to outweigh any other pursuit.

I can only hope that whatever might be developing upon Titan does so in time to fight us off.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

I agreed. I really don't believe in the theory of evolution. I do not believe that there is life elsewhere except here on our planet.

Also the sooner we kill those aliens the easier for us to conquer Titan when our planet get engulfed by the SUN. Kill them before they even knew it.

And why can't my post as Anonymous Coward--now everyone know who I am.

Re:Ethical questions

[linzeal]

I agree.

The reason they do so is because they are scientists not theologians and they do not rely on faith which would be what such thinking would require. If we create said life here on this planet that can exist in such enviroments a la Astrochicken than we can begin postulating more on the viability of life in differing enviros. Until than we look for life where we know we should find it based on past observations, and we hope we do.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, Election was a good movie.

Re:Ethical questions

[Jesrad]

The Earth receives 164 Watts per squared meter of light power from the Sun, and Titan's illumination is 1/90 that of earth, so it receives 1.82 Watts per squared meters. This heat power is sufficient to sustain a methane cycle which is comparable to the water cycle on Earth, with methane evaporating in the atmosphere, condensing to form clouds then dropping back to the ground in raindrops or snowflakes. I don't think anyone can say for sure whether it's enough power to sustain or develop life.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

The radiation from Saturn is much stronger than from any RTG on these ships.

Re:Ethical questions

[BillyBlaze]

Depending on Titan's geology, some energy could also come from the heat in its core. On earth, we have life that uses only heat and chemical energy from deep-sea vents. And some theories say life started there with autocatalytic enzymes, with cell walls, DNA, and chlorophyll coming later.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a quick ethics lesson from everybody's favorite book: Go fourth and multiply.

Re:Ethical questions

[General Alcazar]

Exactly. Essentially we have only one data point (life on Earth) to help us determine what are the universal foundations of life. It is very difficult to extrapolate from one data point. For example, why couldn't there be life on the Sun? Who knows?

I think it is important to try and take as broad a view as possible about what life might actually be. I mean, what the heck IS life, anyway? I find Stuart Kauffman's thinking very interesting.

Re:Ethical questions

[opec]

The problem with Titan is that it's probably lacking the energy necessary to sustain life.

Do you realize how much radiation is being pumped out of Saturn and onto its moons at every moment of every day?

Re:Ethical questions

[jayhawk88]

I wouldn't worry, the giant black monolith will make everything OK.

Or threaten to destroy our solar system, forcing us to release computer super-viruses on it that we keep locked up in an underground vault on the moon. Either way, should be cool.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

read this
note the part about

In all living systems the building blocks of the DNA and RNA exist exclusively in the right-handed form, while the amino acids in virtually all proteins in living systems, with very rare exception, occur only in the left-handed form

also read this

There is only one life on Earth. This is one of the most profound recent discoveries of biology. All life forms on Earth have the same biochemistry. Life is based on a common set of some 20 amino acids. Both left-handed and right-handed (laevo- and dextro-rotary) isomers of these acids exist in the laboratory, but life uses only left-handed amino acids. When you die, the amino acids in your body will gradually convert to 50% left-handed and 50% right handed by quantum processes. This racemerization can be used to date organic remains. All life shares the same genetic code: RNA and DNA. Thus life shares a common ancestor.

so the amino acids to form life DONT exist naturally and never have ....but they got here somehow......................

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

It's this type of thinking that has driven the "westernize everybody" philosophy throughout the last several hundred years. Before Europeans arrived in North America, the Indians had created complex political and social structures that worked as well or better than what was forced upon them by colonists. By "taming the savages" without stopping to actually look at how they interacted with each other and, more importantly, nature, colonists damned the Indians along with themselves to the wasteful, filthy existence that has reduced this beautiful planet to a dirty brown globe.

Tell that to the natives of the south American rainforest, who I believe get rather annoyed when do-gooder environmentalist hippies come along and tell them they should be living traditional lives in harmony with nature instead of enjoying modern conveniences like, e.g., decent healthcare and a life expectancy of more than thirty years.

Most people appreciate progress, I'm sorry you don't. But I'd like to know what you're doing in front of a computer, which by anyone's standards is only contributing to the dirt, waste, and filth. Go join the Amish and leave the rest of us to appreciate the modern world.

Re:Ethical questions

[mikerich]

Not really. Titan is stuck in way out in the cold of space. Everyone believes that Titan is WAY to cold for life to ever exist. This however changes in about 5 billion years when the sun goes red giant and Titan might possibly enter a period of a few 100 million years where it gets earth-like tempatures

It's quite significant, since many of the complex organic compounds on Titan are very similar to those that would have been raining down on the primordial Earth before that began evolving. Spectroscopy has already found chemicals such as hydrogen cyanide (HCN), cyanoacetylene (HC3N) and cyanogen (C2N2) in the Titanian atmosphere - these are thought to be essential in the manufacture of amino acides.

Secondly, Titan is in a cold place, but it may not be cold - it is a sizeable body which may well have differentiated - under all of that ice there may be rock heated by radioactive decay - which would provide plenty of energy to drive chemical reactions.

I'm sure a physicist will be along shortly to say if Titan also receives energy from tidal pumping in its orbit around Saturn - that keeps Io, Europa and Ganymede hot around Jupiter, and Triton hot around Neptune.

I'm just surprised how much this composite image of Titan looks like the early images of Mars.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Ethical questions

[mikerich]

Speaking of that, I could never figure out why scientists would assume such a thing. Certainly there fluids, materials and chemical reactions which can result in life like properties, but exist at very low temperatures. Why do people always assume that you need an earth like environment for life to exist. Maybe all the life-forms we've seen require an earth like environment because we've only seen life-forms on earth. I think that scientists who believe that there's no way life could exist on Titan, simply lack imagination.

A common rule of thumb is that the rate of chemical reactions doubles for every 10C increase in temperature. Going the other way, that means they halve for every 10C decrease.

A place as bitterly cold as Titan would see chemistry taking place at a crawl - if at all. There may not have been time to assembled complex molecules at such temperatures.

Furthermore, there are precious few solvents that could dissolve complex molecules that remain liquid at Titanian temperatures. Life as we know it requires polar solvents (those that dissolve ionic compounds (such as salt) or covalent compounds that ionise in solution) - I'm trying to think of any that are liquid down there - liquid ammonia perhaps.

But you still run into the lack of energy.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Ethical questions

[gl4ss]

wrong? what's wrong about admitting that we're an animal among others? that the cities we build are nothing more than giant ant colonies and if we don't anticipate future then we'll be dead just as numerous other species before us?

humans are animals wanted you it or not, we're not the first (and most probably not the last) species to 'change' our environment either. we just happen to be quite adaptable thanks to the big chunk of brains we have.

but the point is this: for an outside observer everything man made is 'nature'.

Re:Ethical questions

[Nasarius]

that the freezing point increases as the pressure decreases.

Um, yes exactly. That means that water will become a solid at a HIGHER temperature under HIGHER pressure. Think about vacuum distillation for a minute if this is confusing you.

Re:Ethical questions

[Decaff]

There could very well be underwater vents, similar to here,

Its very unlikely. First of all, if there were any such vents they would produce heat which would be visible from infrared measurements of the surface. Secondly, the vents would not be underwater - the only thing liquid on the surface of Titan is probably ethane or methane. Thirdly, where would the heat come from? The Earth is big enough to have tectonic activity. Smaller bodies like Europa and Io are heated by tidal effects from Jupiter, but Titan is probably too far from Saturn for that effect to be significant.

Re:Ethical questions

[FleaPlus]

Not only that, but it's also thought that the impacts of comets of asteroids may create pockets of heated water for extended periods of time, where life might emerge.

Re:Ethical questions

[mikejz84]

The only problem is that Titan is quire far away from Saturn and its weaker gravity would exert only a fraction of the tidal forces as compared to Io or Europa. It seems as thought the question is how well the planet has been able to keep the heat that is generated by radioactive decay.

Re:Ethical questions

[Decaff]

I'm sure a physicist will be along shortly to say if Titan also receives energy from tidal pumping in its orbit around Saturn - that keeps Io, Europa and Ganymede hot around Jupiter, and Triton hot around Neptune.

Unfortunately not. The situation around Jupiter is unusual in the Solar system. Much of the heating of Io, Europa and other moons comes from their interaction with each other: they are all large bodies locked into resonant orbits. The situation is different at Saturn. Also, Triton certainly isn't hot - the surface temperature is around -230 celcius, with geysers of liquid nitrogen.

Re:Ethical questions

[bulchanm]

Yea right 5 billion years, like humans will still be around by then. I doubt this race will live through the next million years.

Re:Ethical questions

[Decaff]

And some theories say life started there with autocatalytic enzymes, with cell walls, DNA, and chlorophyll coming later.

Yes, but all that activity requires liquid water. Its not going to happen in pools of ethane or methane - water is pretty amazing chemically.

Re:Ethical questions

[lightknight]

Rights do not exist in nature, and nature has only one rule: survival of the fittest.

And what if that life did turn out to be (subjective) better than ours? What of it? Should we all say "Oh well, they're better, let's go kill ourselves"? What I find odd about people who make statements like these is that they hate humans. They view them as a virus, not as a natural inhabitant. Self-loathing creatures.

So humans are intelligent, that makes us special? Great. The way I view it: nature decided that it got tired of constantly going back to the drawing board (dinosaurs, whatever) to build a lifeform that could withstand extreme conditions. Nature said "Screw this, the next lifeform is going to be smart enough that I can go on vacation, and not have to worry about some stray asteroid/ice age obliterating them".

So you lose a few species along the way. Stuff happens, even with us not around (see above). Hell, we're not even responsible for the worst stuff. We change the environment to suit our needs (kill off predators, domesticate the rest). Happens with all species.

Your view seems to be: humans destroy the 'natural' environment around them, and need to be destroyed/smacked-down/whatever. My view: the surrounding environment serves as a temporary infrastructure for nature's greatest accomplishment (to date): a thinking machine: man. Everything else is expendable.

In 100 million years (or whenever our sun expands), it will be the humans that carry life (our own human lives, plus other species) forth from this planet, to show the universe what has been accomplished. Breaking down our homes, living among nature, serves no purpose when there is a higher calling.

Keep in mind I do not condone wonton destruction of our environment (or others). If Titan has life, we'll be careful there as well. But as far as nature goes, we are the benchmark. No other creature has the ability to create and destory as we do. I'm only pointing out the obvious, and as we learn more about our environment, we learn to enhance it and mitigate our effects. You'll notice that smoke stacks are less numerous these days (see Industrial Revolution). Humans learn, "Hey, we're poisoning our air, let's do something about that". We learn, we move on. Deal.

Re:Ethical questions

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

You are free to have an opinion. However, if you want anyone else to agree with your statement "We are one kind of life that has no right to influence any others.", you need to provide some information on your opinion of the nature of "rights."
Lots of societies have "messed up" (e.g. the environment, other cultures) in the past. I can ask some friends/faculty in the Anthro. Dept. for verification but I suspect the (pre-European) natives in North America caused some environmental or social damage in the past.

Re:Ethical questions

[mosb1000]

But there are still reactions that occur at decent rates even at lower temperatures (which happen instantaneously at earth temperatures) so cold on it's own is not necessarily prohibitive to life. Besides, our own bodies rely on reactions which occur prohibitively slowly. We use proteins to catalyze these reactions, causing them to occur much more quickly. Just because life as we know it requires polar solvents does not mean that life elsewhere would. I't difficult to guess what form such life would take, but as long as the energy is there the possibility exists.

Re:Ethical questions

[mosb1000]

Why did it get modded redundant? Is there a comment in this thread somewhere that says the same thing? I can't find any.

Re:Ethical questions

[rworne]

That's true. Anywhere to the left of the triple point water can only exist as a liquid or a solid. However, on Mars I doubt the pressure from the atmosphere is actually that high anywhere on the planet, in fact I am positive the pressure is considerably less than Earth's atmospheric pressure. The only (rocky) planet in the solar system with really high pressures is Venus. There's another factor in it. The recent water "slurry" found on mars was actually a brine of some sort. Salts dissolved in the water lowers the freezing point further, making liquid water possible. Pure water would probably freeze then sublime into the atmosphere as a gas in the warmer regions of the planet. Just like frozen dry ice does on Earth.

Re:Ethical questions

[mikejz84]

Well that depends on if we get off our asses and move! The Sun is getting hotter every day, and in about 100 million years will start to get to where it make life on earth a bit unconfortable.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

> I personally think that we should fling life to >every part of the galaxy until it is teeming with >life.

I agree. We've all seen the movies that say "An old race created life....", "they're gone..."...blah, blah...

What if we could actually be that advanced race that populated the galaxy?

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, does this really matter at all? After all the energy in the universe nuetralizes (according to Stephen Hawking, the total energy in the universe is 0, meaning the negative energy is equal to the positive energy). Everything in the universe will be dead. Granted, this wont be for an almost uncountable amount of time, but it does raise the question: If we are going to end up the same no matter what, then what does it matter how we get there?

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

You take your "prime directive" and shove it up your ass! That fucking rule ruined more star trek episodes than Jake Cisco ever could.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

"there's almost certainly no liquid water there to form the background matrix"

Why can't life evolve with liquid methane for blood?

Re:Ethical questions

[nmos]

They've had about three billion years so far, and if they haven't managed it yet, they probably won't.

Even Earth (as far as we know) has only had life for a small fraction of it's existance.

I won't say that no form of life could ever evolve out there, but I will say that no life as we know it could.

Agreed, but life very different from what we are familiar with might be even a bigger discovery than life just like us. It's also possible that there once was life like what we are familiar with but it's all dead now. Even that would be well worth looking for.

Re:Ethical questions

[blue trane]

Rights do not exist in nature, and nature has only one rule: survival of the fittest.

I think the idea is that the concept of rights, of justice, of fairness, of liberty helps increase our survival fitness.

In other words, other systems may contain knowledge that can help us. There is a good chance we may benefit from a policy based on Star Trek's "Prime Directive"; it may actually help us to survive better.

Knowledge is good for survival. The more we know the better we can predict and prepare for sudden catastrophic environmental changes. If we can gain knowledge by observing untouched systems on other worlds, the "survival of the fittest" concept would dictate that that is what we should do.

Of course if after observing for a time and giving a foreign system a chance to develop we determine that it would be in both their and our best interests to intervene, then we should do that. But once again that intervention should take into account the ideas of justice and right, because those concepts allow for more rapid accumulation of knowledge than when they are ignored...

Re:Ethical questions

[stephentyrone]

Actually, no. The freezing point of water decreases as the pressure increases. This is a rather odd characteristic of water, not shared by most other materials, related to the fact that ice floats in water. I'm not confused. Are you?

Re:Ethical questions

[stephentyrone]

Yes, pure water would freeze and sublime on Mars, just as you say. The low pressure raises the freezing point, but the salts more than make up for it, allowing the liquid slurry you describe.

Re:Ethical questions

[Dachannien]

And here I thought Genesis was planet forbidden.

Re:Ethical questions

[niktemadur]

It's about microbe contamination. Huygens was put together under the most antiseptic conditions possible, but no method is foolproof, and anyway, Cassini-Huygens came in contact with our dirty athmosphere between the lab and the launching pad. Who knows what type of microbes are piggybacking on it. Remember "The Andromeda Strain?"

Re:Ethical questions

[barakn]

For my information? I have a degree in physics. FYI, Titan's atmosphere is actually thicker than ours and the pressure is one and a half times higher. While you were at it, why didn't you mention that solutes such as salts can affect freezing and boiling points? Probably because with a 178 degree difference, pressure and solutes hardly matter.

Re:Ethical questions

[Oligonicella]

Please *try* to make an intelligent statement, instead of an anti-human skreed.

1) We can't influence the while universe.
2) Grow up? Take on the job? No meaning there.
3) Where would it lead? You don't even give your reasoning.
4) There is no "do better", except inna you head.
5) What role? Your opinion only.

Three crappy sentences and at least five major flaws. Get real.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

huh.. why would humans spreading the life be 'unnatural'?

If we include human actions under what we consider "natural" then the word has no meaning whatsoever.

In judging the ethics of human actions, it is necessary to compare their effects with what would transpire had humans done nothing at all.

Re:Ethical questions

[blue trane]

If we are questioning the utility of blindly colonizing another world, then that very questioning is also, by definition, "what life does". Have you considered that our notions of right and wrong may have developed precisely because they are favorable to survival? If by doing what is right we can accumulate knowledge at a more rapid pace than otherwise, we can better prepare for and adapt to sudden environmental changes that might otherwise wipe us out. So the very fact that we have developed beyond unthinking (or less thinking) life forms, and are able to consider such notions as "right" and "wrong", shows that we have evolved more than those other forms; the source of our enhanced survival fitness may be that we don't behave as they do...

Re:Ethical questions

[barakn]

So you're hoping that there's some magical heat source there, huh? I hate to break it to you, but that's not likely. Titan is composed of lighter elements, and so probably doesn't have much of the radioactive isotopes that have kept the Earth's interior warm for so long. Titan is much smaller than Earth and was born much further away from the Sun, so it has likely lost much of what little heat it had. Titan's revolution period is fairly well locked to the rotation period so tidal bulges will remain relatively stationary. Also, Titan is twice as far from Saturn as Europa is from Jupiter (tidal force is proportional to the inverse cube of the distance), Saturn is half the mass of Jupiter, and Saturn doesn't have any other moons anywhere as large. Thus it doesn't seem likely that there's any tidal heating going on. Feel free to post an alternative heat source. I could always use a good laugh.

Re:Ethical questions

[Artifakt]

If you're going to totally lack a sense of humor, you are hearby barred from using the phrase "inna you head".
Seriously, what you read as an anti-human screed was a strongly pro-human screed with included ironic tones parodying some of the "Oh humans are evil" crap already posted. I'm sorry you missed that, so please feel free to mod me un-funny until I give up trying to use any subtler methods and confine all humor to various In Sovier Russia..., ??? Profit!, and Imagine a Beowolf cluster of.. jokes.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

The terracentrism of the Slashdot crowd is disgusting and disheartening to me.
Slashdot is supposed to be the nexus, the singularity, the haven of geekdom. Where thoughts and ideas are as open as the source you constantly support with your contributions and hours.
Heat? Who says that life needs heat? Have you taken part in an extended tour of the solar system and all points beyond making a survey of all life from the humblest single celled organism to the most fantastic species of methane-breathing halophiles?
Life comes in many shapes, sizes and forms living in environments which are just as or more diverse. From reading this thread I'm under the assumption that you're expecting to dig a few feet under the soot and ice of Titan in hopes of finding pixies living in communes. Would it be so bad if humanity's first contact is with creatures who live on a timescale that is slower than our own, creatures who live in an environment hostile to earthly life?
Viva la difference!

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Right! And I'm sure the 7 huge batteries on Huygens are totally biodegradable, so no, no chance of any contamination!

Re:Ethical questions

[cjellibebi]

>A common rule of thumb is that the rate of chemical reactions doubles for every 10C increase in temperature. Going the other way, that means they halve for every 10C decrease. A place as bitterly cold as Titan would see chemistry taking place at a crawl - if at all. There may not have been time to assembled complex molecules at such temperatures.

Titan does not have a magnetic field, and is outside of Saturn's, so that means that the Solar wind does not get deflected like it does on Earth. This stream of charged particles from the Solar wind could provide energy to compensate for the slowdown in the rate of chemical reactions at Titan's frigid temperatures. As Titan is much farther from the Sun than Earth, it does not get as much Solar radiation, but because of the lack of magtnetic field, there are several more types of Solar radiation and charged particles that make it to the surface.

Re:Ethical questions

[aardvaark]

I don't think so. Titan has no active tectonics. No tectonics, no geothermal vents. No geothermal vents, butt ass cold.

Re:Ethical questions

[nutznboltz]

By the way... If Titan wasn't captured by Saturn, it would be considered a planet.

If Io was in a cardboard box it would be considered a pizza.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

"A common rule of thumb is that the rate of chemical reactions doubles for every 10C increase in temperature. Going the other way, that means they halve for every 10C decrease.

A place as bitterly cold as Titan would see chemistry taking place at a crawl - if at all. There may not have been time to assembled complex molecules at such temperatures. "

For any given set of molecules and their interactions, the temperature is key to the speed of their reactions - even tho catalyts (enzymes) complicate the picture.

But the key to the possibility of life evolving on non-Earth-like places is the possibility of non-carbon based life with stable compounds in cold places (that are unstable in Earth like temperatures) or unstable compounds (to cyclicly make/break) (that are too stable in earth like tempertures). Isaac Asimov has a very good short piece on the possibilities of silicon for example.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

You question our right to follow our natural drives to explore our universe; to "go where no one has gone" (star trek) and "pursue happiness" (Thomas Jefferson in the American Decaration of Independence).

I think the next to last verse of the Desiderata says it best:

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Re:Ethical questions

[techno-vampire]

It's also possible that there once was life like what we are familiar with but it's all dead now.

I'd like to see that happen, but I highly doubt it. It's very unlikely that Titan has ever been warm enough for that to happen, although with tidal effects, it just might be possible.

Re:Ethical questions

[niktemadur]

"Rights do not exist in nature, and nature has only one rule: survival of the fittest".

I believe that this statement is true, until the emergence of consciousness (enlightement), Homo Sapiens Sapiens, throws a screwball into the strike zone of conventional wisdom.

William Blake said something to this effect: "You cannot go against nature, for if you do, it is part of nature too".

We can finally feel an inkling that something that "has always been" may be wrong. Furthermore, we can CHOOSE.

Could this inkling be a beacon towards the next level, whatever it may be? Consciousness, civilization, wisdom, take your pick (or pick all of them and more).

The "Survival of the fittest" dogma has been of utmost necessity for billions of years, but may already be obsolete in terms of true human necessity.

"Survival of the fittest" may be a barrier in human growth, as well as an excuse, in the worst place at the worst time, for all kinds of needless (and eventually self-destructive) atrocities.

Re:Ethical questions

[dasunt]

Heat? Who says that life needs heat?

Life as we know it is based on chemical reactions. Life as we know it also is based on water and hydrocarbons. At very low temperatures, these chemical reactions don't work. At low temperatures, these reactions work slowly. At relatively high temperatures, these reactions take place quickly.

Now, it may be possible to have some sort of system for life that works at 40 Kelvin[1], but this is unlikely.

Life appears to need long chemical chains (at least for encoding its own data). Hydrocarbons are rather adept at this. Life also needs a fluid that will dissolve most compounds. Water is rather adept at this. So, most of us expect to find life where there are plenty of long-chain hydrocarbons in warm water.

Of course, the above explanation is rather simplified, and I encourage you to do further research.

[1] Robert Forward wrote a fictional book about this.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

The human being is simply the first organism capable of transplanting members of itself over such long distances.

Whales, Tuna, Salmon, Salt-water Eeels, Passenger Pigeons, Hummingbirds, Storks, Monarch Butterflies....

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other ways to generate heat, not just radiation. Io is hot by any measure, and the heat comes from tidal forces squishing the moon creating lots of friction.

Re:Ethical questions

[ceoyoyo]

The grandparent raises a good point. You say "life as we know it." That's a sample of 1. I think it would be much more interesting to discover life that is not as we know it. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Re:Ethical questions

[barakn]

Yeah, which is why I provided some convincing arguments that tidal heating is virtually non-existent on Titan. You should have read my entire post.

Re:Ethical questions

[AKAImBatman]

Your facts are slightly off. The Earth gets about 1.3 kilowatts per sqaure meter from space. On a clear, sunny day, about 300 watts of that power is lost penetrating the atmosphere. Thus about 1 kw/m2 reaches the ground.

Now your calculation of the light fall-off rate pretty much agrees with my own. Titan is 9.55x the distance from the Sun as Earth. Given 1/r^2 falloff rate, Titan gets 1/91 the energy of the the Earth. That gives us a grand total of ~14 watts per square meter from space for Titan. Unfortunately, we don't know how much of that power reaches the surface. (That's one of the things Cassini is supposed to answer.) However, we do know that Titan's atmosphere is thicker than Earth, and that the visible light spectrum does not penetrate. Thus it is something of a forgone conclusion that very little of that 14 watts ever reaches Titan's surface.

In short, there simply isn't enough energy from the Sun to power life. If any life were to exist on Titan, it would have to receive its sustinance via geothermal energy. But how much geothermal energy is there? Even on Earth, a planet with a highly active core, there is insufficient heat to keep the surface from freezing. Without the Sun's power, Earth would be a dead planet. Titan's only hope is that its core is extremely high in materials like U235. This could cause a tremendous amount of heat from fission fires in its core.

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually if it already has the beginnings of life, then in it will have adapted to whatever conditions it is currently in. It may take longer to evolve into something higher than bacteria, but it can still get there.

Re:Ethical questions

[Jesrad]

On a clear sunny day ? I suppose you mean at noon and not at dawn or dusk (and certainly not at night !). My figure of 164 W is an average on the whole surface at any time, not the peak power one can get by sitting right under the Sun at a moderate latitude ;)

Re:Ethical questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Kurt Vonnegut once wrote that wanting every inhabitable planet to have life is like wanting everyone in the world to have athlete's foot.

2001

[dirtmerchant]

Does anyone else find it interesting that in the original draft of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the craft is bound for one of the moons of Saturn as opposed to Europa as was portrayed in the movie. Now after some preliminary exploring Europa we find that Europa's a dud and the easy-bake life mix is in fact on Titan.

Re:2001

[Lispy]

Well, I wouldn't count Europa out to fast.
It might well hold some surprises.

Re:2001

[itwerx]

...and the easy-bake life mix is in fact on Titan.


How is the parent Offtopic?!?
Moderators on crack again...

Re:2001

[ResidntGeek]

Saturn is pretty boring-looking. It doesn't have those cool bands of color Jupiter has. The movie needed cool shots of colorful planets and Saturn couldn't deliver.

Re:2001

[ROOK*CA]

Where do you get your information ? we're still at the point where's there is NO WAY to determine if life is viable on Europa or not, we have no idea if a liquid water ocean exists under its solid ice surface and won't until we have a lander capable of drilling (or melting) through the surface ice(a LONG ways a way). BTW the Huygens probe's primary mission is NOT to look for life on Titan, rather it's to study the chemistry and geology of that moon. It's HIGHLY, HIGHLY unlikely that any life exists there (as we understand life that is) since the surface temperatures hover at near absolute ZERO (-178 DegC or so), and the atmospheric chemistry is all wrong to support life. Perhaps deep within Titan, but's that's a long shot.

Re:2001

[Anonymous Coward]

Europa's a dud? Which planet have you been on for the past few years? Europa is one of the most likely places outside of earth to find life in the whole solar system. It has a liquid ocean that appears to be full of organic matter that burps upwards every now and then. If you don't know anything about a subject, you really shouldn't post such nonsense.

Re:2001

[Jeremy Erwin]

Europa's a dud? Where did you get that idea? Sure, a number of astronomers have hypothesized that Europa's ocean is acidic, but confirmation of this hypothesis will rest on the observations of a as yet undesigned mission. Besides, low pH is not an absolute barrier to life, as evidenced by the variety of extremophile bacteria here on earth.

As for the "Easy Bake Oven Mix" theory, what you Nomeites don't seem to realize is that most terrestrial style life prefers a slightly warmer climate. Nasa elides over this small matter, though, as mentioning the word "life' seems to be a good way of attracting favourable media attention and its attendant appropriations.

Re:2001

[norite]

Europa a dud? Oh come off it!

Re:2001

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Saturn is pretty boring-looking. It doesn't have those cool bands of color Jupiter has.

Hello? Rings? A good deal more spectacular than Jupiter, in my opinion.

Re:2001

[ResidntGeek]

Ok, maybe I lied. According to an article in August's Discover, there weren't enough pictures to build a convincing model of Saturn.

Re:2001

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to be pedantic:

http://www.pa.msu.edu/~sciencet/ask_st/012992.ht ml

Absolute zero = -273 C = -459 F

Re:2001

[Jugalator]

Hmm, so you know nothing interesting is below this ice layer?

Yeah, it should be awfully cold there, but at the same time, if it consists of lots of fluid, wouldn't Jupiter's gravitation cause some massive tidal forces and giving it heat energy from the movement?

Re:2001

[ReciprocityProject]

Does anyone else find it interesting that in the original draft of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the craft is bound for one of the moons of Saturn as opposed to Europa as was portrayed in the movie. Now after some preliminary exploring Europa we find that Europa's a dud and the easy-bake life mix is in fact on Titan.

In the book of 2001: A Space Odyssey, they do go to Saturn. The plot is more or less the same as the movie, with Arthur C. Clarke's bonus technical details, except that the monolith is located on the surface of mysterious Iapetus, which the book clearly indicated was an artificial satellite built for the purpose of housing the monolith. When Dave Bowman emerged from the other side, there was an identical moon with an identical monolith.

You might want to read it.

I, for the record, predict that past or present life exists on every massive body in the solar system that has or ever had a reasonably dense atmosphere and geological activity. I wouldn't be surprised if self-replicating molecules inhabit most comets, although I guess they freeze to death pretty quickly after leaving the inner solar system.

Re:2001

[Anonymous Coward]

I did read 2001, but I never really remembered that they went to Saturn, because the second book definitely has them going to Jupiter, and even references the original ship with HAL as being in orbit around one of Jupiter's moons. Confusing!

Re:2001

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that the film makers couldn't do a convincing image of Saturn because of the rings, so switched it to Jupiter. But the book still says Saturn.

Re:2001

[Anonymous Coward]

2010 is a sequel to the *movie*, not the 2001 book!

Re:2001

[Anonymous Coward]

Saturn is pretty boring-looking. It doesn't have those cool bands of color Jupiter has.

Hello? Rings? A good deal more spectacular than Jupiter, in my opinion.

So Saturn's got rings, big deal. Tell you what ringboy, why don't you check out the rings around Uranus.

*rimshot*

holy crap!!!!

[the_2nd_coming]

all it needs is a strong source of energy and it can start turning into a nice place for life to evolve.

Re:holy crap!!!!

[linzeal]

I say we send them a huge nuclear powered fruitcake, for like a, "Hello Neighbor" thing.

Hello Neighbor!

Re:holy crap!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, while the cassini orbiter uses nuclear power as its electricity source, the huygens probe that will descend into titan does not contain nuclear material.

Re:holy crap!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

And there's no better way to say Happy Birthday than a nice little 200 megaton nuclear weapon payload.

Re:holy crap!!!!

[AndroidCat]

Besides, we've never had any success setting the Earth's atmosphere on fire with nuclear weapons--maybe we'll have better luck with Titan?

building blocks of life.... again...

[Doppler00]

Here we go again with NASA concetrating on trying to find "life" on other planets. What ever happened to the science of simply exploring and learning about our solar system and how it formed instead of this quest of focusing on trying to find life on other planets. There is more to space exploration than finding life.

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[Bowling Moses]

"The Cassini space probe, launched nearly seven years ago by an international team, became the first craft to orbit Saturn and its rings and moons on Wednesday."

Cassini's in the process of accomplishing a big list of firsts in the exploration of our solar system--exactly what you wanted, right?

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[howlatthemoon]

Why? Because of the imperfection of the funding model. To get the funding even basic science, pure knowing for knowing sake, needs to do something that captures the imaginations of the congress people and the press. Saying that they might be finding the building blocks gets publicity, and publicity equals dollars.

BTW, oversight is a good thing, but it just goes to show what a bad job we are doing in science education that research agencies need to do flashy publicity to keep the public's and congress' interest.

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[Sven-Erik]

Nobody is expecting to find life on Titan! The search is not as much a search for life, but how life started here on Earth. The conditions on Titan is thought to be similar to how it was here on Earth just after it was created. And since the temperature out there is so low, most of the chemical and bio-chemical conditions is still intact and will provide valuable knowledge about the conditions in the newly created solarsystem, aand on how life started back home on Earth.

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[mOoZik]

I think we have learned quite a bit about the solar system. Besides, why do you think that in the process of trying to find life, we simply brush aside every new thing that we learn? Once life is found, or the conditions for it, any previous assumption of life's inability to take root such distances away from the sun, etc., may very well be shattered, rendering any previous theory useless. These missions teach us a lot and I would like to see many more in the future, even at their current costs of billions.

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[Esion Modnar]

There is more to space exploration than finding life.

I agree. But finding life on another planet will finally let us "get over it." It's as important as (well, maybe not quite as) finding and verifying an extra-solar Earth-like planet.

It'll shut up all those people trying to say there's nothing out there worth the trip.

As for interstellar exploration, we need a financial incentive, much like the X-Prize. Only, in this case, first company sponsoring a colonization mission to an Earth-like planet, claims it. Besides obvious objections from the natives, are there any international treaties which would bar such a claim, assuming that someone who has just traveled 700 light-years will give a flying rip about international treaties of a planet he left umpteen hundred years ago?

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[jabberjaw]

I suggest that you read more about the Cassini-Huygens mission. The mission objective is to study Saturn as a whole. Searching for life is not the mission's purpose.

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[servognome]

There is more to space exploration than finding life.
Most people are happy to live their lives without caring about the "deep science" of space exploration. Which do you think is easier to sell to the public
1. $2 billion to study the atmosphere and weather on the moon of another planet
2. $2 billion dollars to study how life began and maybe find alien life.
It's harder for people, who are not science minded to grasp the value of the first, but it's easier to grasp the value of the second.

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[Have Blue]

Finding life was not the objective of this mission, or the Mars missions. This is simply a result of the execution of a more general "investigate Mars|Saturn" mission.

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[Rageon]

Just a thought. Perhaps the attempt to prove Christians and other religious types wrong is good business? Maybe the phrase "attempting to support evolution" is a buzzword that results in funding bumps?

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[mad_cow]

Here we go again with NASA concetrating on trying to find "life" on other planets. What ever happened to the science of simply exploring and learning about our solar system and how it formed instead of this quest of focusing on trying to find life on other planets. There is more to space exploration than finding life.

But finding life is sexy. People get all excited at the thought of actually finding extra-terrestrial life, and that enthusiasm probably translates to budget increases for NASA.

Also, it's not like that's the only stuff that NASA's got on the go... this is just the sort of stuff that gets lots of attention from the media and public.

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[Fearless Freep]

I keep hearing this said for almost any place we send a probe..

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Finding life on other planet is a cover story for the public and i think NASA has some other motives. I don't know what it is, but saying that we are trying to find life is much easier than trying to study the planet and so on. People are more interested and would like to know if life exist outside or that are we alone?

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I keep hearing this said for almost any place we send a probe.."

Maybe that means that life is pretty common in the universe, if nearly everywhere we send a probe, most of the conditions are right that could produce life.

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually it means the speaker(s) making such a claim have no idea what they are talking about.

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[kirkjobsluder]

Here we go again with NASA concetrating on trying to find "life" on other planets. What ever happened to the science of simply exploring and learning about our solar system and how it formed instead of this quest of focusing on trying to find life on other planets. There is more to space exploration than finding life.

Um, where does this statement come from? The post uses the phrase "building blocks of life" which is the only phrase used in the article its self (unusual for a science news article given that journalists are more obsessed with the "life" question than planetary astronomers.)

Of course there is more to space exploration than finding life. However, one of the more interesting aspects about the outer solar system appears to be an abundance of organics. Understanding the distribution, formation and chemestry of organics in the outer solar system can help us improve our theories about how organic compounds came to dominate the chemistry of Earth.

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[Jugalator]

What ever happened to the science of simply exploring and learning about our solar system and how it formed instead of this quest of focusing on trying to find life on other planets

What are you talking about??

NASA have the capacity to run more than one mission at once. :-P

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[Jugalator]

A quote of the mission purpose, by the way:

"Scientists will be able to compare the compositions of these samples with known compositions of the planets and help in the effort to understand how our solar system and its planets formed."

It wasn't right in your face but last question in their FAQ. :-S

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[Anonymous Coward]

As for interstellar exploration, we need a financial incentive, much like the X-Prize. Only, in this case, first company sponsoring a colonization mission to an Earth-like planet, claims it. Besides obvious objections from the natives, are there any international treaties which would bar such a claim, assuming that someone who has just traveled 700 light-years will give a flying rip about international treaties of a planet he left umpteen hundred years ago?

Assuming all technical difficulties are solved, I bet the invasion army would try to terraform the new earth, so that it resembles the original earth as they knew it. How many colonist would arrive? Not only one ship but an entire fleet would be needed, so that in case of any collision, the rest can get there unharmed. But how many would survive a 700 humdred years trip? I bet only 10% of the ships would make it, because the rest would have so many problems and would be used as spare parts for the ships that do not have that many problems.

There would be no place to extract raw materials nor food. This means that first and foremost project Biosfera 3 should be a success, whenever that occurs. And even when that science fiction becomes real science, using ships as spare parts is the only option. I can only imagine how difficult that travel would be. Colombus travel would be a piece of cake in comparison.

Then we see that compatively primitive planet and when we arrive 700 years later, a civilization in there may consider our weapons primitive. Sure we can carry several nukes, but would them be efficient against animals? Supposedly cro magnon beated neanderthal because cro magnon domesticated wolves. What if ET domesticated tigers?

I would say that the chance of survival for such an expedition is very dim. Even if it makes it there and colonizes the whole planet, how can you be sure they won't grow into a large empire and colonize back?

I mean, 10% of 10,000 arrive in 700 years, that's just a 1,000. They colonize the planet in a few hundred years because they have all this technology available + robots. Then in a thousand years they are ready to come back and in 1,700 years they are back trying to make us their slaves. They would be so pissed off because all the suffering in the first trip. In the second trip they do it right of course, and they have several new weapons developed in ET home.

Would they find something when they arrive back? Probably just roaches.

Temperature to Support Life?

[artlu]

What type of organisms can sustain life under such low tempartures? What would be the mean temperature of Saturn's surrounding neighborhood? It seems that if organisms truly are found on Saturn, the space race is going to really pick up speed within the next few years.

Damn, we need "warp drives."

GroupShares Inc.

Re:Temperature to Support Life?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think life can probably exist where there are liquid organics and decent temperature differential.

Re:Temperature to Support Life?

[kfg]

What type of organisms can sustain life under such low tempartures?

Sapmelas.

KFG

Re:Temperature to Support Life?

[CrazyDuke]

Cryobacteria. (Surprisingly there isn't much on the net on this)

Bacteria that can survive under extreme cold. If I remember correctly, some Cyanobacteria (bacteria with chlorophyll) made a living under a few inches of water ice near the polls of this planet.

Any preliminaries on the temperature of that ice on Titan? You can also add chemicals to water to keep it liquid (a la natural antifreeze some antarctic species use.)

Another thing to consider is volcanics. If Titan has Volcanic activity for whatever reason there may be life there similar to the chemical based life at the deep see vents on this planet.

Just a few ideas...

Re:Temperature to Support Life?

[xigxag]

if organisms truly are found on Saturn, the space race is going to really pick up speed within the next few years.

Three possible beneficiaries of Titanian space race:

1) Big Pharma - Think of the patents, man!
2) Defense Industry - There must be some way to "weaponize" a microbe that survives at -180C.
3) Big Oil -- Excuse me, did you just say hydrocarbons ?

Of course, your tax dollars will bankroll any exploration. Don't expect to see any of the profits, though.

Re:Temperature to Support Life?

[NanoGator]

"What type of organisms can sustain life under such low tempartures? "

I had an ex girlfriend that sustained running at icy temperatures.

Re:Temperature to Support Life?

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Oil -- Excuse me, did you just say hydrocarbons ?

On Titan, the energy market is already in the stranglehold of Titan's Big Oxygen companies.

Re:Temperature to Support Life?

[Ohreally_factor]

If I remember correctly, some Cyanobacteria (bacteria with chlorophyll) made a living under a few inches of water ice near the polls of this planet.

Cyanobacteria doesn't have the right to vote, you insensitive clod!

Re:Temperature to Support Life?

[Schwarzchild]

You said:

Damn, we need "warp drives."

Got news for ya. They're already working on it.

Alcubierre Warp Drive

Re:Temperature to Support Life?

[Oligonicella]

"Don't expect to see any of the profits, though."

Puhlease. Just think of the day-to-day things that incorporate advances already made by the space program.

You *will* see profits.

Re:Temperature to Support Life?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Of course, your tax dollars will bankroll any exploration. Don't expect to see any of the profits, though."

Sure you can. Just buy stock in those companies.

Re:Temperature to Support Life?

[Alsee]

There must be some way to "weaponize" a microbe that survives at -180C.

Yep! It would be perfect for attacking any enemy bases below about -150C. And the best part is that all of our bases would be immune! All of our bases are a hundred or more degrees above -150C, which would would kill it instantly!

-

Re:Temperature to Support Life?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just buy stock in those companies.

The government (aka The People) should get stock in the companies in return for funding their r&d.

Send organic matter for company

[Cyberhwk]

I suggest we send our own organic matter down there and see what becomes of it. Ok everyone who is the head of a political office raise their hand! Now everyone working for these people raise your hand. Every who has your hand raised get on a rocket cause we're shipping you out! I know we are starting low but consider it even we grew from one celled organisms so what we can send isn't much lower is it? Well at least we'd get rid of a few problem individuals.

Re:Send organic matter for company

[Anonymous Coward]

Have we learned nothing from the sad demise of the planet Golgafrincham?! Though it's a tempting plan, we need to carefully think it through.

"rain down liquid methane"

[zeropointentity]

oh dear god! It's raining farts!

Re:"rain down liquid methane"

[kunudo]

Yes, funny boy. It wouldn't be so bad though, the thing that causes the smell is the sulphur, not the methane.

Of course, you're still being hit by flying methane, not very pleasant, I suppose. Probably not so healthy either...

Re:Fastest malmoderation ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

I did not know that! nifty.

Not just life, understanding planetary environment

[TrevorB]

Actually I think the big question is the next question: "Why didn't live evolve like it did on Earth".

Suppose we find evidence of fossilized life on Mars, and that Mars was once a warm, wet world. What went wrong? Was it simply that Mars was colder, or is something more subtle going on?

On worlds where "life may once have been", we also have an excellent opportunity to examine worlds in many ways like Earth that failed to produce life. Mars, Venus, Titan... These could potentially be what Earth looks like millions of years from now. Exactly what nudges a world in that direction? Carbon Dioxide? Hydrocarbons in the air? Something else we don't even know about yet?

I believe that examining the chemosystems and environments of non-Earths is immensely valuable. And in my opinion, the knowledge gained far outweighs the (negligable) risk of using nuclear RTG for the trip, something we've all happily forgotten after Cassini passed Earth for the last time. If understanding Titan gives us a better knowledge of our own environment, we need to use this argument next time someone protests using an RTG on a launch vehicle.

Cassini Shatters Titan Theories

[kfg]

Damn, I hope NASA remembered to keep up with its insurance premiums.

KFG

There is no prime directive...

[John Seminal]

I think we have every right to determine who/what we are, and if that means examining every corner of the universe for our history then I say do it. For those who have not noticed, it is a cold cruel world out there. And nobody is in agrement like the fabled Federation of Planets (look at the UN where power varies by country might; it is not a division of power where every voice is equally important). The USA founding fathers conquered the indians. Are we better off for it, or should we never have left europe and stayed under the rule of Kings?? The logic which says to not disturb/influance others natural rights does not exsist in nature, where animals eat one another. Why should we act in an un-natural way, personifying some amino acid?

Second, was there a big bang? How did it all happen? These questions are relevent in how we think about our life and morality. Did life form on earth based on what was on earth, or was there some comet which had a fragment with the building blocks of life fall down to earth? What does it mean in terms of our religious beliefs? Perhaps science can bring all people together.

Re:There is no prime directive...

[blue trane]

The USA founding fathers conquered the indians. Are we better off for it, or should we never have left europe and stayed under the rule of Kings??

Why only a binary choice? We could have come here and treated the American Indian more fairly, humanely: honoring treaties, treating them as equal human beings, etc.

On Titan if we are careful we can observe, measure, analyze without significantly changing the overall environment...then later we could make more informed decisions about its possibilities for colonization...

Re:There is no prime directive...

[anshil]

Europe should in the first place never have colonized America, killing the american natives and the culture they were developing.

Re:There is no prime directive...

[TheGavster]

look at the UN where power varies by country might; it is not a division of power where every voice is equally important
Um ... if you think that the people of a tiny nation like Lesotho should have just as much sway over things as a populous nation such as Russia or Canada, I'm not sure what you're thinking. When the UN decides something, the effort to make it happen is going to come from global powers, not minor republics.

Re:There is no prime directive...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you agree with "Might makes right," then...

Re:There is no prime directive...

[haruchai]

Population doesn't tell the whole story. Canada has far more sway than any number of countries in Africa or Asia that have an equal or greater population.
Canada is HUGE in area but relatively sparsely populated.

Re:There is no prime directive...

[TheGavster]

No, I'm saying that the people who pay the bills make the rules.

high-temperature pre-flight sterilization

[hoferbr]

I don't think that is a issue. Nasa is worried about ruining any "ecossistem".
I remember that the Mars exploration rovers have undergone a high-temperature pre-flight sterilization to get rid of any Earth microbes before sending any probe.

Glad the material in the water is organic

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't want anything artificial in my water.

Re:Glad the material in the water is organic

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH, fish fuck in your water...

Maybe the people at Nasa are lonely.

[Cyberhwk]

Maybe the people at Nasa are lonely. Aww thats so sad I think everyone at slash dot should chip in and send them a puppy! We can continue to let SETI search for life but they can only search for life that can send out signals of some sort.

Re:Fastest malmoderation ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence the existence of frist post, frist psot, frist ps0t, frost piss, etc.

Errors in the Herald Sun quote

[Anonymous Coward]

- Cassini was launched by Americans (Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 15, 1997), not by an international team.
- Cassini won't orbit any moon of Saturn.

Hey isn't that one step closer to..

[Cyberhwk]

oh dear god! It's raining farts!

Hey isn't liquid methane one step closer to freezing cold concentrated highly flamable farts? I think someone needs a zippo.

subsurface life

[Gothmolly]

If there's water, and carbon, and heat (hello molten core of Titan, I'm Saturn, I'll be your tidal gravity generator today), then there's probably life. This could be VERY much like the 2001 series, where isolated pockets of extremophiles lived in the sea under Europa while it was frozen.
If we bacteria living in 100+ C, H2S environments, or in liquid brine solutions at the bottom of the ocean, or in outer space (fungus on Mir), then there's no reason that they COULDN'T be living on Titan.
I wonder if Winston Niles Rumfoord lives there?

Re:subsurface life

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, if there is life out there then how come they havent evolved like life on earth? I mean they are still living under the surface and are not even space faring species!

Re:subsurface life

[Anonymous Coward]

This could be VERY much like the 2001 series

People and their movies. Movies are sometimes based on some threads of scientific evidence, but when you start getting your facts back from the movies then you know you're in deep shit. Reality check people!

Re:subsurface life

[Jesrad]

or in outer space (fungus on Mir)
The fungus was actually growing inside the space station, not outside in the nether voids. It was a combination of Aspergillus, Penicillium and Fusarium species of fungi and bacteria.

Re:subsurface life

[Anonymous Coward]

Over three billion years of evolution on Earth and a spacefaring species only popped up once - what kind of odds do you think those are?

Re:subsurface life

[secondsun]

WInston Niles Rumfoord was a character in the book Sirens of Titan for any and all of those interested in knowing what he was talking about.

It was written by Kirt Vonnecut who also wrote galapagos and the sunscreen song.

Re:subsurface life

[Oliver Defacszio]

Ay-freaking-men. The realities of nature are stunning even in comparison to the overblown stool that flows from movie studios worldwide.

But, because reality doesn't necessarily include a set of silicone-enhanced breasts, endless car chases, or the dry-cool wit of action heros, virtually no one can stay awake long enough to pay attention. And that is very sad.

Re:subsurface life

[Ohreally_factor]

I think you mean Berk Honeycutt.

Or was it Dirk Bunnyguts?

Or maybe Kirk Jamestibericut?

No wait, it was Kurt Vonnegut!

Re:subsurface life

[secondsun]

Which goes to show, never reply to slashdot when you are drunk.

Re:subsurface life

[Richthofen80]

Kurt Vonnegut didn't write the sunscreen song.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/featu re s/daily/march99/sunscreen0318.htm

most people know him for his novels which often contain insane or delusional characters. see 'Slaughterhouse Five' and 'Breakfast of Champions'

He's also a rabid anti-capitalist and believes that the US terror problems stem from our 'technology' which oppresses other nations. He's certifiable.

Glib saying alert.

[Anonymous Coward]

and may contain the building blocks of life

Wow! Deja-Vue. Where have I heard that kind of speculation before.

If there IS life out there...

[BlackErtai]

I wonder what language they'd write "hello world!" in?

Re:If there IS life out there...

[forkazoo]

Java, naturally. Run anywhere, and all that... Of course, if their brains are completely different from the brain of a human, they might use perl...

Re:If there IS life out there...

[Biogenesis]

Or maybe they are super-inteligent and have generated computers that don't *need* programming. The computers simply exist, interacting with the alien life by a method so natural to them that they don't know it happens...

Re:If there IS life out there...

[forkazoo]

You mean toggle switches on the front of the case? Ahh, the good old days, when men were men, and programmers couldn't be outsourced because they had to manually set the toggle switches for the bootloader! Surely, any truly advanced civilisation would do it without evil "abstraction!"

Please drop the human == BAD viewpoint

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you consider humanity's potential efforts "interference" and "contaminating"? Humanity is just as much part of this universe as a supernova that desstroys the solar system would be.

Re:Please drop the human == BAD viewpoint

[orangesquid]

Oh, it's just that... Humans are just notorious for causing a LOT of radical change very quickly. Native Americans are typically considered to have lived in harmony with the planet. Does that mean they never killed anything?

What, are you kidding? A man's gotta eat, and you can't just walk around letting whomever and whatever take advantage of you and/or get in your way.

Consider this analysis of the Wiccan Rede. You can't get too much accomplished if you never break any rules (like the Prime Directive, or the local ordinances of your town, or social mores), but minimizing any "harm" that is done is always wise. (written in quotes because what is "harmful" is very subject to interpretation!)

The point is, it's never good to set in stone what you should or should not do. Many have tried to write a "complete code of ethics" that covers every situation, but such a thing will never exist, because there are new twists to every situation, and nobody can think of every possibility.

Should we interfere with developing life in the Universe? Well, quite possibly, yes! Wouldn't you be disappointed if the SETI project failed for no other reason than all the other life out there had decided not to fuck with us because, well, maybe we were still "developing?"

But then again, nobody should go aronud stomping blindly where they might be important developments occuring underfoot.

Humans are powerful creatures, in the sense that we have the capability to do an awful lot of change very quickly, if we so desire. With great power comes great responsibility, to quote a recent blockbuster release...

Re:Please drop the human == BAD viewpoint

[Anonymous Coward]

Native Americans are typically considered to have lived in harmony with the planet. Does that mean they never killed anything?

"Typically considered"? By a bunch of ideologically driven myth-makers, I suppose.

Native Americans (those immigrants from Asia) drove entire herds of buffalo off cliffs when they wanted something to eat. Why not? There were millions of 'em. And no, they didn't "use every part of the buffalo" -- they left piles of them at the bottom of the cliffs to rot.

Mammoths and mastodons went extinct in North America, just about the time the hunters showed up. Coincidence? Also entire species of beaver, bison, tapirs, camels, horses, bears, and moose were wiped out.

Native Americans set fire to most of the continent, by intent or by accident.

So extensive were the cumulative effects of these modifications that it may be said that the general consequence of the Indian occupation of the New World was to replace forested land with grassland or savannah, or, where the forest persisted, to open it up and free it from underbrush. Most of the impenetrable woods encountered by explorers were in bogs or swamps from which fire was excluded; naturally drained landscape was nearly everywhere burned. Conversely, almost wherever the European went, forests followed. The Great American Forest may be more a product of settlement than a victim of it."
-- Stephen Pyne, 1982. Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. 79-80

This whole "harmony with nature" nonsense is just a romantic myth. The Native Americans simply lacked the technology to make more of an impact than they did.

Re:Please drop the human == BAD viewpoint

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything to make yourself feel better.

Re:Please drop the human == BAD viewpoint

[LGEKoji]

I would point out that Native Americans caused the extinction of various species through over hunting, and that the myth of them living in harmony with nature is quite false.

Re:Please drop the human == BAD viewpoint

[Sgt York]

The point is, it's never good to set in stone what you should or should not do. Many have tried to write a "complete code of ethics" that covers every situation, but such a thing will never exist, because there are new twists to every situation, and nobody can think of every possibility.

Just wanted to interject a late, offtopic comment here. When trying top define a universal code of ethics, one thing many people overlook is the idea that there may not be an ethical response to every situation.

The classic question about stealing the medicine that will save your kid's life, provided that there is no other way to get it is an example. According to the code of ethics of most people, stealing is wrong and allowing death or suffering is wrong. The fact that you must break your code of ethics does not invalidate it. The proper response to the question (IMHO) is that it is impossible to remain ethical in that circumstance. You must sin, so to speak.

Just because you add a few new twists does not suddenly make something that was unethical become ethical. Going back to the example, stealing is still wrong. In that case, it is still unethical, but necessary.

What type of life under such low termperatures?

[Anonymous Coward]

Penguins.

There won't be a single bit from a Microsoft product on the whole damn planet.

:-)

Re:What type of life under such low termperatures?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get lost.

Europa vs Titan

[Delta Vel]

Can someone explain why NASA was so concerned about contaminating Europa that they smashed a spacecraft into Jupiter that could otherwise have lasted a lot longer, but where Titan is concerned no one seems to think about contamination?

Re:Europa vs Titan

[Larthallor]

All these worlds are yours
except Europa.
Attempt no landings there.

What part of this confuses you? :)

Re:Europa vs Titan

[Decaff]

but where Titan is concerned no one seems to think about contamination?

Because the surface temperature on Titan is way below freezing. When the Titan probe cools down after its batteries run out, any Earth life is going to be killed pretty quickly.

Re:Europa vs Titan

[SengirV]

Galileo spacecraft was nuclear powered. The thinking was that we didn't want Galileo to suddenly succome to old age and then spew radiation all over as it crashed into Europa. On the other hand, the Huygens probe(I'm pretty sure) is not nuclear powered and will just simply run out of juice and freeze on Titan's surface.

Re:Europa vs Titan

[Anonymous Coward]

The Illuminati didn't want us to learn about their testing of antimatter bombs on Jupiter and its satellites.

Re:Europa vs Titan

[NanoGator]

"Can someone explain why NASA was so concerned about contaminating Europa that they smashed a spacecraft into Jupiter that could otherwise have lasted a lot longer, but where Titan is concerned no one seems to think about contamination?"

The mission isn't over?

Re:Europa vs Titan

[CDS]

it's because they sterilized the probe they are sending to Titan, but the spacecraft they sent into Jupiter was NOT fully sterilized -- they couldn't guarantee there would be no contamination, so they took the safe approach.

With Huygens, they can be much more confident they will not accidentally contaminate anything.

Re:Europa vs Titan

[nmos]

The Sun is likely spewing far more radiation on Europa than a single spacecraft ever could.

Re:Europa vs Titan

[smash]

You know there's different forms of radiation, right?

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but i'm pretty sure gamma radiation doesn't get spewed out by the sun, at least not to that distance...

smash.

Re:Europa vs Titan

[mlyle]

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but i'm pretty sure gamma radiation doesn't get spewed out by the sun

The sun produces a TON of gamma radiation

at least not to that distance...

Sure, the inverse square law applies and all, but what else does distance have to do with it? Do you think the gamma radiation gets tired after awhile and decides to turn around and go home?

Re:Europa vs Titan

[deglr6328]

no, I'm afraid Huygens is totaly unsterilized as well. It is clean but not sterile by any means. From ESA "The European Space Agency-built probe was not sterilized to a high standard". We are relying on the cryogenic temperatures of it's final resting place on the surface to do the sterilizing.

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/lifesigns_spots _020103.html

Re:Europa vs Titan

[Anonymous Coward]

you should have added:
-- DAVID BOWMAN
"2010: Odyssey Two"

Re:Europa vs Titan

[Teancum]

Why should I care one little bit about the political philosophies of Sir Aurthr C. Clarke?

I like his stories, and he has inspired litterally millions of people to go beyond this world we live on, including coming up with the original idea of geo-sync communications satellites. Still, if I want to go there why should I care one little bit about his feeling in this area.

Yes, I know this was a joke, and I'll try to take it as such. I just want to make sure that it stays the joke and not something that is unfortunately taken seriously, like Al Gore's inventor status over the Internet. Now that really is a good joke.

Re:Europa vs Titan

[Teancum]

There is one and only one reason I can come up with for crashing Gallileo into Jupiter (well, two reasons):

1) Perhaps, by some long shot, some form of life is actually found on Europa. We need to find out if that life originated on Europa or if it came from Earth. With Martian rocks being found in Antarctica, I don't see any reason that rocks from the Earth havn't made it to Jupiter, with a few "passengers" along for the ride (like when the K-T incident asteroid hit the Earth). Even that would be an interesting discovery though, so until a good very well sterilized space probe can be built, let's try to keep the variables down. That is called science.

2) They wanted to see what it would be like to plunge into a gas giant. In some ways I wish that it would have been built to do this rather than simply plunge into the depth. A few pictures of Jupiter from inside the atmosphere would have been incredible. I hope some space probe in the near (> 100 years) future actually gets around to doing something like that.

Re:Europa vs Titan

[CDS]

VERY interesting. Thank you for the correction - I could have SWORN I had read it was sterilized and I cannot believe they didn't do that!!!

We don't know enough about the constraints for life to make the assumption "it's too cold there." Life has been found to thrive here on Earth in all kinds of places that should not be able to sustain it (the black smokers in the ocean's depths, on the sides of radiation pools, etc) and has also been proven to be able to survive a trip through space (which is the whole reason for the concern about sterilization of these probes. If the trip through space would perform the sterilization for us, this would not be an issue!)

IMHO designing a problem to land on another body and not sterlizing it is a GROSS breach of ethics. I am very upset / disappointed by the ESA's decision. Yes, sterilization is very expensive. Yes, sterilization is potentially damaging to the probe itself. Yes, it's important!

a quibble and some other comments

[barakn]

But the first infrared images taken by Cassini revealed water ice as dark patches because it is mixed with material that may be organic, raining on to the surface.

These certainly are not the first infrared images taken by Cassini, not even the first of Titan, which were taken in mid April.

It was the earlier images, earth-based images, and the errant idea that the dark areas were ethane oceans which convinced the Cassini-huygens team to choose this landing ellipse. Now that they know different, one wonders whether they'll modify the plan.

Re:a quibble and some other comments

[WormholeFiend]

can they re-aim the probe at another target site?

Re:a quibble and some other comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a quibble, but that "first of Titan" image is NOT an infrared image. It's an actual map of the surface of Titan using special filters on its lenses that can peer through the opaque haze around the moon. What you're seeing in that image is surface brightness.

From previous observations of this surface brightness it was believed that the highly reflective bright patches were ice. However, and hence the headline of this article, the first infrared images of the surface showed the ice to be in the darker regions -- completely the opposite of what was previously believed.

And no, the landing site will probably not be changed based on this new information. The real science of the Huygens probe is its descent through the atmosphere and not data retrieved from the surface (although that would be considered a bonus).

Re:a quibble and some other comments

[barakn]

Didn't bother to read past the first few paragraphs, eh? FYI, "The images were taken through a narrow filter centered at 938 nanometers." This is most certainly in the infrared (most folks would call it near infrared). All images of Titan's surface will have to be of the surface brightness in several infrared bands or combinations thereof (until the probe penetrates the haze).

You are also quite mistaken about the probe. The Surface Science Package is entirely devoted to studying the surface. Other Huygens instrument packages also contain devices for the study of the surface, such as a lamp for spectral study, infrared and vis imagers, and instruments for measuring the conductivity and permittivity. The gas chromatograph will be specially heated right before landing to vaporize and analyze surface material.

Your second paragraph is true, but doesn't conflict with anything I've said. I'm not certain why you included it.

Because

[PhysicsGenius]

We are already funding the possibility of life in Africa (cf starvation).

Re:Because

[Anonymous Coward]

And due to HIV it's becoming an increasingly remote possibility with each passing day. The more we try to reproduce the more we die. How clever.

More and more "life in the Universe" ...

[ThomasCR]

But it's more and more sterile, when you go closer. Remember Mars! Not even a drop of water has been found there, not to mention evaporated Marsians.

Re:More and more "life in the Universe" ...

[Decaff]

Not even a drop of water has been found there

http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/ SE MYKEX5WRD_0.html

"Water at Martian south pole."

Re:More and more "life in the Universe" ...

[ThomasCR]

I am glad, you are so blind people. Every few months, there is a news about "potential life in the Universe is more abundant ... blah, blah, blah". Every such news just fades away.

Re:More and more "life in the Universe" ...

[Decaff]

I am glad, you are so blind people. Every few months, there is a news about "potential life in the Universe is more abundant ... blah, blah, blah". Every such news just fades away.

Unlike the water, which you said did not exist, and has been there for millions of years.

It's an ethical question we've already answered

[taxman_10m]

The questions surrounding the "process of life" and the "building blocks of life" have already been hashed out in the abortion debate. The answer is that the mere process or the mere existance of building blocks is not life itself, and does not have to be treated as such.

Re:It's an ethical question we've already answered

[beakburke]

Actually if you want to really get nitpicky, Roe V Wade didn't really settle the question that definitely. The ruling didn't establish an absolute right to an abortion, in fact their decision codified some sort of compromise on medical privacy versus rights of a fetus. According to the ruling states could still ban third trimester abortions and place some restrictions on 2nd trimester ones. Only in the first trimester did the court say that abortions were to remain unrestricted by the state.

Mines of Titan (mars saga remake)

[Veramocor]

Anyone ever play the CRPG game Mines of Titan. 1989 by westwood studios.

That game kicked ass.

The best part was learning how to use computers so you could hack yourself free tickets, clean up your criminal record and stuff.

Anyone else beat it besides me?

Re:Mines of Titan (mars saga remake)

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. And it was a good game indeed.

Re:Mines of Titan (mars saga remake)

[dabigpaybackski]

I wasted a lot of adolescent hours playing that game, but I did beat it.

No liquids on Titan

[Anonymous Coward]

So the methane or whatever it is must be hailing down rather than raining down.

Imagine that .. a piece of methane hale coming down at you on titan.

Re:No liquids on Titan

[cjameshuff]

The dark areas thought to be ethane oceans turned out to be water ice discolored by organic impurities...this does not mean there is no liquid on Titan. In fact, the article specifically refers to liquid rain, though I don't see any references to this on the nasa.gov site.

However, if you do see hail on Titan...the surface gravity is just 0.14 times that of Earth, and the atmosphere 1.6 times as thick. Unless methane ice is much more dense than water ice, hail would fall much more slowly. It would look like slow-motion, and unless the hailstones grow very slowly, the hail could get quite big. Sounds like something that would be very interesting to see...

Re:No liquids on Titan

[PrimeNumber]

Unless methane ice is much more dense than water ice, hail would fall much more slowly.

If a frozen methane ball and a ice ball were release at the same time from the same height in the atmosphere wouldnt they hit the surface of the planet simultaneously? Hasn't Galileo proven this already?

Re:No liquids on Titan

[ROOK*CA]

Well actually one theory suggests that Methane in Titans atmosphere is broken down by radiation (from both the sun and Cosmic Rays trapped in Saturns Magnetic Field) into Ethane. Since Ethane boils at -89 Deg C, and freezes at about -183 Deg C, it would be quite feasible for liquid Ethane to both exist on the surface and "rain" (or snow) down from the sky. So basically Titan could be the richest natural gas find in history ;-) (and if there was free oxygen it would surely hold the record as the "most flammable world around").

Re:No liquids on Titan

[Anonymous Coward]

wind resistance

Re:No liquids on Titan

[Junior J. Junior III]

Wind resistance trumps gravity. Drop a sheet of paper and a paper clip which weighs the same as the sheet of paper. In an atmosphere, the paper will be slowed down due to wind resistance. In a vacuum, both will fall at the same speed, and hit ground at the same time.

Re:Not just life, understanding planetary environm

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I think it is clear that Mars was once a warm wet place, teeming with life, but then the pan galactic united catholic religion of the true Twin Gods - Phobos and Deimos - of the northern hemisphere nuked the heretics in the southern hemisphere, causing the planet to crack into deep canions, the water to evaporate and leaving enormous craters...

Just wanted to extend my appreciation, Cassini...

[tizzyD]

for taking me to a place that sadly I will never be able to go. Growing up on sci-fi, Star Trek, and Space 1999, I dreampt of standing on Titan's shores. Now I know a bit more about what is really there. So, from one explorer born about 500 years too early, I just extend my thanks to the Cassini team. Congratulations, and keep the science coming!

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

Awesome! Now we can start making games and movies about evil aliens from Titan!

Put a NASA Donation box on the Tax Forms

[Vandil X]

I've been saying for years that the IRS needs to replace the "Contribution to the Presidential Campaign Fund" box on tax forms with a "Write in your desired donation to NASA" box.

If this were made possible I'm sure thousands of people would gladly donate money every year.

Clouds vs Surface

[slinted]

The image linked to in the main story as "bright patches" does show the bright surface features (bright, diffuse background), but the sharply defined bright feature at the bottom of the image is a cloud. There is a 4 frame image of the cloud, as it moved across the surface over the duration of the flyby.

This 3 frame image prepared by the Cassini team, for their press conference yesterday, shows the surface definition through visual and infrared spectra, defining the areas of surface features, ices, and possible hydrocarbons.

Haiku for Cyberhwk

[Anonymous Coward]

Your website is gay You should work on your writing Your grammar is poor

Re:Haiku for Cyberhwk

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Hiaku teh sux
You should have clicked on preview
Or at least on "Code"

Re:Haiku for Cyberhwk

[Cyberhwk]

if you have a problem tell me what needs to be fixed on it. I do not have an editor and I've been busy in school so I have been unable to go through and check things.

MOD THIS GUY UP

[Anonymous Coward]

He speaks quite insightfully.

Wrong.

[mark-t]

Finding life on another planet will not let "get over it".

The search for intelligent life elsewhere will remain. Granted, the proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life of any nature increases the chances that intelligent life exists out there somewhere (by, IMO, several orders of magnitude) but it still doesn't constitute a proof.

Cassini Imaging Team Homepage

[Koensayr]

One again, I just like to point on a link to the Cassini Imageing Team's Homepage located here

LOL!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

On Titan if we are careful we can observe, measure, analyze without significantly changing the overall environment...then later we could make more informed decisions about its possibilities for colonization...

Spoken like a true intellectual. I never scored too well on the emotional IQ test, I always grabbed and inhaled whatever m&m's or candies the psychologists put in front of me, and then I threw the damn bell at them for judging me.

October Surprise! Take the poll!

[ArsenneLupin]

Which rabbit will Bush pull out of his hat in order to score an unlikely victory? Take the poll!

Who owns it?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

As space travel become privitised and travel cheaper, inevitably old treaties will be revised by corperate interests, in favour of the private ownership of other planets.

Titan _Will_ eventually become privatly owned by some rich tycoons/corperations/religions looking to make money off it, and whatever life is there will be subject to their bulldozing mercy.

Might be far fetched, but remember you can buy plots of land on mars here

Re:Who owns it?

[Teun]

Too bad there is no valid legal entity (international/global like the United Nations) that sanctions these 'contracts'.

In other words; a total waste of time & money.

Re:Who owns it?

[localman]

Too bad there is no valid legal entity (international/global like the United Nations) that sanctions these 'contracts'.

That's never stopped people from claiming ownership of unclaimed places before. Or even places that were claimed, but not by anyone who could fully defend themselves.

Rule seems to be if you can take it and nobody can stop you, it's yours.

Cheers.

Re:Who owns it?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Titan _Will_ eventually become privatly owned by some rich tycoons/corperations/religions looking to make money off it, and whatever life is there will be subject to their bulldozing mercy.

As there is no government on Titan, a corporation cannot be said to own it until such time as they can defend it. Put simply, property rights are enforced through force and threat of force - if you can't bring that to bear, you can't own something.

What good would that do?

[ArsSineArtificio]

If this were made possible I'm sure thousands of people would gladly donate money every year.

Supposing "thousands" did donate money every year... let's be amazingly optimistic and say that 10,000 people donated $100 apiece (which is probably an order of magnitude too high).

That would raise $1,000,000 for NASA. Which is absolutely peanuts. That's enough to replace a few space shuttle tiles, or complete half of a small mission feasibility study.

NASA is a government agency. Government agencies waste a titanic amount of money in bureaucratic overhead. Donating money to a government agency is a waste of money.

Re:What good would that do?

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA is a government agency. Government agencies waste a titanic amount of money in bureaucratic overhead. Donating money to a government agency is a waste of money.

Charities also waste money in beaurocratic overhead, fundraising campaigns, paying retained staff, and the like. So presumably I shouldn't be giving to charity either?

Re:What good would that do?

[astar]

Let's not forget the money the government wastes in other ways. Bremer's people spent all the Iraqi oil money in the last few days of the occupation. They are hidding the meeting minutes too. Want to bet some Republicans did not get richer?

I think it would be a good idea if we could individually allocate most of our tax money to specific programs we support. Since my ballot does not much count, maybe I could influence "my" government with my tax return. I might be a little happier come tax time.

Re:What good would that do?

[ziggy_zero]

Why not just give money directly to those in need of it?

Re:What good would that do?

[ArsSineArtificio]

I think it would be a good idea if we could individually allocate most of our tax money to specific programs we support. Since my ballot does not much count, maybe I could influence "my" government with my tax return. I might be a little happier come tax time.

The problem with that idea, unfortunately, is that NASA, NPR, and childhood immunization programs would be overfunded, and that nobody would remember to pay for slaughterhouse inspectors, air traffic control radar, or NOAA.

Re:What good would that do?

[astar]

I am aware of your point, which why I said *most* of my tax money. Even beyond your point, you might occasionally get some decent vision things out of the congress critters and they would need some money to play with their idea.

But look beyond the inconvenience of your point and consider how the money is allocated now, and with what unseemly all the way to criminal influences. If our congress critters were in Europe and pulled these stunts, most of them would be in jail. In that light, my idea does not look quite so bad.

The Libertarians would probably advocate funding on a voluntary basis! Sort of a anarchist subscription program. Maybe instead of an income tax form selection process, we should just give tax credits for voluntary donations to government.

Oh well, its July 4th, might as well get weird ideas about how to run the government. It is after all the traditional day for it.

Re:What good would that do?

[ArsSineArtificio]

If our congress critters were in Europe and pulled these stunts, most of them would be in jail.

I am forced to assume that you don't know anything about European governments. Legislative corruption is much more common and a much more severe problem there.

Re:What good would that do?

[bezuwork's friend]

How about letting people pick what programs their tax money will not be used for?

This would likely not force any budget changes unless a really popular movement got underway to unfund some project or other. Of course, groups would be calling for this all the time (Jessie Jackson comes to mind as someone who would likely be quite vocal about suggestions I would think).

But it would let people feel good about stiffing their pet peeve projects and would give government new data they could use to track citizen concerns.

It would be quite easy, have a list of all government projects, agencies, etc. with unique identification numbers. Post it on the Internet and at public schools and libraries. Let people write in as many as they wish.

While I don't think this would ever make any proposed budget invalid, vetting a proposed budget against the wishes of the taxpayers would likely be incredible computation.

Re:What good would that do?

[fucksl4shd0t]

Do it like Mandrake does, with a core budget that goes to take care of core services, and then let the taxpayers choose the rest on their tax return.

At least, that's how Mandrake *says* their voting works. I don't think they'd want to include KDE by popular demand and then leave out an X server because nobody remembered to vote for an X server...

Re:What good would that do?

[astar]

I based my remark on a Belgium parlimentarian who said something similiar to what I did. Perhaps the resolution is that the behavior here that is legal is criminal in Belgium, and the Belgium's have the grace to try to hide it.

However, I still think my crooks trump your crooks.:-)

Re:What good would that do?

[rishistar]

Aaaah, but we have a wide range of crooks here, and the French ones take some beating not that Inspector Clouseau is not hunting them down.

Oh. I see you have Dick Cheney.

Re:What good would that do?

[astar]

giggle

Yah, Cheney is my favorite too.

I am thinking about a bumber sticker

Re:What good would that do?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean to the Titanians?

Re:What good would that do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's time NASA was torn apart and restructured then, I can't help but feel they aren't being as efficient as possible with free money.

Re:What good would that do?

[essreenim]

I use Mandrake 9.2 at the moment. I like it.

I also llike Chocolate ; )
I play the song at work sometimes. Please dont change the song much Its great the way it is ..

Re:What good would that do?

[fucksl4shd0t]

Thank yoU! I'm actually very happy with it, the only problem is that after I lost all of my current work and had to restore from backup I found that chocolate was one of the ones that lost data. ;( So I haven't decided whether or not to re-record it, but if I do I'll actually be trying to keep it the same (except maybe tighten up a couple of spots in the solos, but those are personal performance issues).

Re:What good would that do?

[killjoe]

The problem is that nobody wants to help the hungry and everybody wants their potholes patched. If you did that people would be starving but your streets would be smooth.

Haiku for Cyberhwk

[Anonymous Coward]

A website funded
With his parental coffers
A prodigal son!

Stupid metric system

[ojg]

What does this mean? "clouds the size of Victoria and Tasmania"?

Are these units part of the metric system?

Can somebody please translate into more familiar units such as size of Texas or Volkswagen bugs?

Re:Stupid metric system

[onosendai]

Hmm, of course, Victoria and Tasmania are the two most southern states of Australia. Wikipedia tells me that Victoria is 227,416 km2 and Tasmania is 90,758 km2 so in total, 291,817km2. Texas is 696,241 km2.

So it's about half the size of Texas

VW Bugs, now that's for someone else to work out ..

Re:Stupid metric system

[Anonymous Coward]

That's 4.5153898x10^10 Beetles. Or, for younger folks, 4.13755564x10^10 New Beetles.

Cheers,

-Trev

all this talk about methane on Titan

[WormholeFiend]

If there is so much methane, why hasnt it ignited yet, from a hot meteor for example?

Can it ignite in the future, from the probe we're about to drop on it?

Re:all this talk about methane on Titan

[Teun]

Sure it can ignite.
But first we have to add a whole lot of Oxygen...

Re:all this talk about methane on Titan

[rebelcool]

Probably for the same reason all the oxygen on earth hasn't.

Newspaper site Slashdotted! Text of article below:

[Chris Tucker]

Print this page
Flash on the Titan

05jul04

A PROBE has pierced the haze around Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, revealing details that have shattered theories about its composition.

The Cassini space probe, launched nearly seven years ago by an international team, became the first craft to orbit Saturn and its rings and moons on Wednesday.

It performed so flawlessly on its 3.5 billion kilometre trek to Saturn that scientists scrapped an orbit correction.

On its first trip past Titan on Thursday, the robot probe snapped infrared images that left scientists puzzled.

"This is the best view of the surface yet and we don't know what to make of it," scientist Elizabeth Turtle said at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Photos taken at 340,000km above Titan show a murky landscape with fuzzy linear structures, which could be mountains, rivers or faults.

They will get a better shot at Titan in October, when Cassini descends to 1200km to snap close-ups of the moon.

It has atmosphere and soil similar to primordial Earth and may contain the building blocks of life.

Scientists believed bright patches on its surface seen earlier were pure water ice.

But the first infrared images taken by Cassini revealed water ice as dark patches because it is mixed with material that may be organic, raining on to the surface.

The infrared map showed a mass of clouds the size of Victoria and Tasmania in the southern hemisphere, which may rain down liquid methane and be linked to storms or an upthrust on its surface.

Cassini also mapped inter action between the huge magnetic bubble that surrounds the Saturn system, and Titan's dynamic atmosphere.

The 80,000km-wide gas cloud follows Titan and is evidence the moon's upper atmosphere is breaking down.

Reuters

privacy © Herald and Weekly Times

Because...

[IWantMyNickBack]

The RIAA needs it to combat filesharing! Filesharing is the death of the music industry! Didnt you know that when you download a song, you hurt the industry? We should be sending them back!

Lets try realistic numbers.

[WindBourne]

There are more than 300 million in the states. If 1% donated, that would be 3 million. If the average was $10 each, that would be 30 Million. It would help

The real issue is that the current admin (and probably other ones) will fight this. They want total control of how money is spent.

We have a similar check-off here in colorado for a number of things as well as we have passed bills that says that the state is to put x dollars into education (we were once one of the tops, now in 7 years we have slid to a level == to Texas; Pretty bad). Now that Owens can not put the money where he wants to, he is upset and try to get the bill repealed, but the citizens are fighting him.

Re:Lets try realistic numbers.

[ArsSineArtificio]

There are more than 300 million in the states. If 1% donated, that would be 3 million. If the average was $10 each, that would be 30 Million. It would help

To start with, the population of the United States of America is approximately 293 million as of July 2004. The number of individual taxpayers is significantly less, because large portions of that 293 million do not file a federal personal income tax return (because they are minors, because they have no income, or for some other reason). Your figure of 300 million potential donors is thus unrealistically high.

But, let us say for the sake of argument that your figures are correct, and that this donations campaign raised $30 million. How much would that "help"?

Well, it would fund 1% of the annual cost of the Shuttle program. Or about 0.92% of the Cassini mission. Or about 0.3% of a space elevator. As I said, peanuts.

The real issue is that the current admin (and probably other ones) will fight this. They want total control of how money is spent.

I would earnestly hope that this or any other Presidential administration would have 'total control' over how its employees were spending their budgets. Wouldn't you?

Re:Lets try realistic numbers.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would earnestly hope that this or any other Presidential administration would have 'total control' over how its employees were spending their budgets. Wouldn't you?

The President is not in charge of NASA's budget, Congress is.

Re:Lets try realistic numbers.

[ArsSineArtificio]

The President is not in charge of NASA's budget, Congress is.

Congress is in charge of allocating NASA's budget. The President is in charge of overseeing its expenditure. That's the difference between the legislative and the executive functions.

Re:Lets try realistic numbers.

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be well over 300 million if you include illegal immigrants. But yes, they don't pay tax, so your point still stands.

Re:Lets try realistic numbers.

[gingerTabs]

I would earnestly hope that this or any other Presidential administration would have 'total control' over how its employees were spending their budgets. Wouldn't you?

Yeah, all except the ones right at the top of course.

Re:Lets try realistic numbers.

[Clith]

I would earnestly hope that this or any other Presidential administration would have 'total control' over how its employees were spending their budgets. Wouldn't you?

Don't you want some control over how your employees -- the President, Congress and Senate -- are spending their budgets?

This just in

[bgeer]

Cassini has picked up an unusual radio transmission from the surface of Titan, message follows:

that's such BS man. first off, do you have ANY idea how close earth is to the sun?? it's HOT there, we know life cant survive above 10C and it gets as high as 40C there!!! even if it has so-called clouds they're much too thin to protect from the UV rays of the sun. so your 'space probe' theory is a lot of bull, the metal thing heading toward saturn is just a meteor. next thing you'll be telling us is space aliens from earth are giving you anal probes.

Re:This just in

[Anonymous Coward]

That reminds me... did we pack any anal probes in the robotic lander, just in case we find life down there?

what is life anyway?

[BigGerman]

We define it today, simply, as sometings that is made of complex organics (proteins), eats, poops and (optionally) moves. But this is definition of just one form of life we know of today.
When arguing about life on Titan we must first remember what we know about life in general. The only thing that comes to mind - life is omni-present, once it takes hold there is no stopping to what it evolves.
I am always sceptical reading about possible ET life as bunch of miserable bacteria somewhere under the ice of Europa or rocks of Titan. Make no mistake - if there is life on Titan, it will be teaming with it.
And it is very possible. I would be very surprised if Titan is life-less. It would be a major "for" argument for the Creationism.
Titan is the most Earth-like place in the Solar system. Titan has complex organic muleculae, heat from tectonics and athmosperic electricity. They talked about surface features not caused by meteoric bombardment. It means: mountains, rivers, erosion (soil),etc.
How much we would learn about life on Earth by taking couple of hazy pics from 300000 km out? Keep your eyes open and I think we will be in for a big surprise come October (flyby) and January (probe).

Re:what is life anyway?

[ChrisMaple]

"it will be teaming with it."

teeming. Unless, perhaps, you think it will be engaging in sports.

Re:what is life anyway?

[Jonas the Bold]

Well, maybe. While I agree with you mostly, just because there is life doesn't mean it will be teeming with it. After all, Antartica has life but isn't teeming with it. Nothing's been able to get much more than a foothold there, and from space it would look pretty sterile.

No it doesn't

[geekoid]

I checked, they're still Tall humanoid magic using creatures. Sure, there have been some changing since AD&D, but I wouldn't say Titans have been shattered.
Sheese.

Re:No it doesn't

[WWWWolf]

Bah. The Titans were destroyed by the Avatar in Pagan. And the weird thing is, even when the Avatar thus became a Titan, he immediately lost those powers when returning to Earth and Britannia. (Ultima IX, as far as I understood, pretty much ignored its predecessors. Well, actually, Pagan might best be ignored as such as well.) So yes, the Titans were shattered. No one really seems to know how that really happened though.

Does that mean no oil extraction?

[tyroneking]

I mean - we wouldn't want to hurt some primordial life - would we?

But I did think that was one of the reasons for going to that big blob of methane in the first place.

Oh well ...

Re:Does that mean no oil extraction?

[BrokenStructure]

I think it'd cost a bit more than it's worth to send a probe all the way to titan just to bring back some oil. Then again, if that were the case, maybe NASA would devote a little more money to finding a green energy solution to get the probe there... Of course, a green energy solution would defeat the whole purpose of going to another planet to get oil in the first place....

Could you imagine gas prices if we had to go to titan to get oil??

close

[geekoid]

Rule seems to be if you can take it and nobody can stop you,and you can defend it it's yours.

Re:close

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like Iraq?

Re:Not just life, understanding planetary environm

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you may have it backwards in Titan's case. From the information available, it appears as though Titan is primordial version of Earth. It may be possible that Titan is still in its infancy and has not had a chance to produce life. But the building blocks are certainly there.

The government listens to money

[Vandil X]

Even if the "Donate money to NASA" box raised only $20 million, it would send a strong signal to the government that people are willing to support space exploration above and beyond what already is spent by Congress with their tax dollars.

Besides, I wouldn't underestimate the power of a few million dollars. Just look what SpaceShipOne accomplished for $20 million.

Re:The government listens to money

[|/|/|||]

...and then Congress could cut NASA funding accordingly (by at least $20 million).

Seriously, that's what would happen. I like the idea of having more of a say in what gets funded, but I'm not sure how we can make it work.

Right now the process is extremely indirect - I write a letter to my representative who then *maybe* takes my opinion into consideration when voting on something that indirectly affects whatever it is I'm concerned about. How could this process be improved? What is the most direct way for US citizens to cut military spending by 10% and use that money to increase education funding by 100% (based on the current 50% of our budget going to defense, and 5% going to education)? I don't know. The real trick is not breaking everything in the process. If military spending were suddenly cut by 70%, it would probably be a disaster. Plus, there *are* unpopular/uninteresting things that must be funded.

hello Titan Masters

[tommeke100]

I, for one, welcome our Titan Masters!

Re:Not just life, understanding planetary environm

[Anonymous Coward]

"Suppose we find evidence of fossilized life on Mars, and that Mars was once a warm, wet world. What went wrong? Was it simply that Mars was colder, or is something more subtle going on?"

Easy:

"And God said, 'LET THERE BE LIFE.'
"And then God said 'NO, NO. A LITTLE TO YOUR LEFT.'

Re:Newspaper site Slashdotted! Text of article bel

[Anonymous Coward]

fucking karma whore.

your on my 'mod-down' list now. enjoy a stream of -1's.

RTFA: "may" contain building blocks of life

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn it, people. An article gets posted that says scientists are "puzzled" about Titan, and then it goes on to offer bunch of speculation about what MIGHT be there (rivers, mountains, water), including that it "may contain the building blocks of life," and people here just go NUTS talking about what this is telling us about the origins of life on Earth?? Get a grip. I for one would have enjoyed a bit more (read: any) information about what the probe ACTUALLY found, because (IAA Scientist) maybe it might be interesting in its own right, apart from the "religious" furvor some people have about hoping to find life in outer space.

The probe can't tell the difference between mountains and rivers, and yet you want to believe it's found the "building blocks of life" --- what are "building blocks of life" to mean? The savvy science-journalist doesn't say, because even atoms (heck, even protons and electrons) are "building blocks of life". Think about it, if they found amino acids, they'd just say so. Get a grip, people.

Re:RTFA: "may" contain building blocks of life

[Blethrow]

It seems everything NASA does these days involves 'building blocks of life' or 'prerequisites for life'. Why? To evoke the response that you comment on here, because that sort of knee-jerk enthusiasm is good for funding. And what do they do with that funding? They pour most of it into that useless orbiting housing project, rather than the sorts of projects that invoked such enthusiasm to begin with.

FWIW, IAA Scientist as well, and it really annoys me the way NASA mostly squanders their budget on congressional pork projects while manipulating public sentiment with breathless suggestions of finding 'building blocks of life'.

Re:RTFA: "may" contain building blocks of life

[Anonymous Coward]

useless orbiting housing project

LOL. I seem to remember someone (probably on /.) commenting that the rationale behind much of what goes on in the space station is "Yea, but let's see what happens if we try it [whatever] IN SPACE ..."

Re:RTFA: "may" contain building blocks of life

[Alsee]

what are "building blocks of life" to mean?

It pretty much means any molecule with more than one carbon atom.

The thing is that carbon is like the fundamental connector in tinker toys. Even with *just* two carbon atoms in a molecule you have 6 open slots, and all of those slots must be filled somehow with other basic random stiff in the enviornment. A slot can be fileld with a hydrogen atom, or with an oxygen-hydrogen radical, or with an ammonia radical, or with some sulfur group, or one oxygen can fill a pair of slots, or whatever else happens to be floating around. If you have plenty of two-carbon molecules floating around then basic random jostling rapidly results in hundreds or thousands of different variations.

And once you have plently of two-carbon molecules, well, they also like to fill those slots by binding to each other. Just like tinkertoys. If you have two-carbon chains then random jostling rapidly gives you chains of all lengths. You get a random sludge of complex organic molecules, including the amino acids. And a random sludge of complex organic molecules is the perfect breeding ground for life.

In the absence of two-carbon links, you only get a handful of individually identifiable molecules. Water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, H2, O2, N2, maybe some ozone, carbon monoxide, or traces of hydrogen peroxide. Those and a handful of others are all you get. But once you have two-carbon molecules you can an unidentifiable sluge of thousands or millions of different molecules. There just isn't enough of any one varient to detect. That's why it goes under the vague title "building blocks of life".

-

Wouldn't it be embarassing if...

[Billy the Mountain]

Cassini-Huygens were to somehow act as a catalyist and cause a chain reaction in Saturn's rings causing them to spontaneously combust and destroy themselves? People all over the world would be calling the U.S. "ring wreckers"!

BTM

Re:Wouldn't it be embarassing if...

[Anonymous Coward]

All asteroids must avoid the rings on George B. Jr.'s order! Otherwise they would terrorists! If bigger is better, does that account also for idiosynchracies?

Only if you're Valid...

[theendlessnow]

For those hoping to visit Titan someday.. remember, only Valids need apply.

Sincerely,
Jerome
Navigator

Re:Only if you're Valid...

[Anonymous Coward]

heh... could someone explain this?

Re:Only if you're Valid...

[Anonymous Coward]

There now, that wasn't so difficult--was it?

Re:Only if you're Valid...

[lucifer_666]

From the story Gattaca, also a pretty cool sci-fi movie.

Valids are those with perfectly engineered DNA who would be much more suitable for space travel than those with normal DNA.

Sirens of Titan

[wwi]

An early Kurt Vonnegut book, and
possibly one of his best. Read it.
The issues he exposes are as appropriate
today as in 1959.

Re:Sirens of Titan

[niktemadur]

Oh yeah? Well how about: The Game Players Of Titan! Philip K. Dick No, seriously, anything Vonnegut has ever written remains relevant today, for, after all, Vonnegut is a humanist. Humanists are a commodity we never seem to have enough of.

Error in headline ...

[Eru-sama]

Should read: "Cassini Shatters Titan; Theories."

You mean...

[wirelessbuzzers]

grass?

Re:You mean...

[froschmann]

You mean grass? It's for medicinal use, right?

Re:Not just life, understanding planetary environm

[Jafafa Hots]

Excellent point. Most people are unaware that NASA mission have had a direct impact on our understanding of Earth. The theory of global warming came about in part because of our Mariner and Pioneer missions to Venus. We had to figure out how to explain what happened there, and from that we started to realize what could happen HERE.

Which is why it always drives me nuts when people cry "We should fix things here on earth before wasting money on space exploration."

If it turns out that global warming is true, and we have had enough of a heads-up to try to stop at least some of the negative effects from it, then those missions have been some of the best investments humans will have ever made.

Comparative planetology is very valuable.

ALL THESE WORLDS...

[blakespot]

All these worlds are yours except Europa.

ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

blakespot

Hate to break it to you, but...

[Max Threshold]

Big money elects Congress. If it weren't so, regular folks from around the block would represent us at all levels of government.

Lucky they didn't measure it in MCGs

[ynotds]

The Melbourne Herald-Sun is so provincial that in the only issue I've had in my hands for yonks (needed to check a death notice) you had to get to page 25 for a single page of "World News" and blessedly only a solitary story on Iraq.

The real question is what inspired them to suddenly think of running something from the other side of the asteroid belt. Must have been the ultimate slow news day.

here's a better phase diagram

[barakn]

water phase diagram. It shows more of the different types of ices, and the axes have scales. It is quite evident that pure water is a solid at Titan's surface (95 K, ~1.5 8 10^5 Pa) . In fact it's probably Ice Ic instead of the familiar Ice Ih.

That hotspot of clouds on Titan's Southern side

[theolein]

I imagine it's a volcano. I think that would account for the large amounts of Methane in the atmosphere. Have there been any Thermal images of Titan's surface yet? The gravitational tides of saturn could account for the volcanic activity, I think.

Titan's kinda doomed

[Brettt_Maverick]

Titan may not survive another 5 billion years. Well, maybe, but the point is, Titan has a retrograde orbit, and is losing energy to tidal forces w/ Neptune. Someday, well, a messy end for Titan.

And to think I thought I was wasting that week spent playing with Celestia!

relevancy?

[barakn]

We're discussing Titan, not Mars.

Re:relevancy?

[rworne]

Mars was an example. Titan's atmosphere is about 1.6 bars at -178C. I'm surprised it's denser than the Earth's. Nothing I've read talks about liquid water at that temperature or pressure. It's just a solid at that temp and pressure.

Re:relevancy?

[karstux]

Going off topic a bit, this fact has boggled my mind quite a bit. How can Titan have such a dense atmosphere? After all, it is gravitational forces which hold the atmosphere together, and Titan doesn't even have twice the mass of (Earth's) Moon.

To put it in relation some more: it has about 21% the mass of Mars, and 2% the mass of Earth! So how the heck does it manage to keep its atmosphere?

Tilted face? How about a tilted valley?

[leonbrooks]

Compare this picture of Titan with this picture of Mars. You might need to spin Titan 120 degrees counterclockwise and then mirror it vertically if you're not spatially adept.

If you still can't see a match, wait until the high-res Titan images arrive with the feature dead-centered instead of offset, and I'll do a side-by-side in The GIMP.

Emily Litella Moment.

[Brettt_Maverick]

erm, whoops, shoulda spent that week sober, too. Got Titan mixed up with Triton. Nevermind. I'm such a spaz.

Not your fault

[zoney_ie]

It's not your fault.

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work" - Kent Brockman

What ethical questions?

[ChrisMaple]

How could someone not have the right to change the development of life on some alien moon? Whose rights could possibly be violated?

A better question is "Who the hell do you think you are, trying to violate my right to explore this nifty place?"

Cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

To the best of my knowledge, probes that are sent to planets (or moons) are thoroughly sterilized to prevent (or minimize) the possibility of contamination. I have no idea if this is accurate information or if it applies to Huygens, although I'm almost positive I read about that Europa satellite being intentionally crashed due to the fact that it wasn't sterilized like other spacecraft intended for planetary descent. I doubt this degree of sterilization is cheap, and sometimes you've got to weigh potential benefits against costs.

money for education is useless

[r00t]

You'd be tossing money down a hole. Schools have
a truly amazing ability to absorb money without
improving education.

If you want to fix your schools, you need to fight
the teacher's union. Improvement-based pay would
help greatly: students that are above-average in
a class should cause the previous year's teacher
to get a bonus. (this being fair to poor areas)
You need to fight the use of computers to babysit
the students. You need to fight the teaching of
junk (Powerpoint usage, gay awareness, French...)
that displaces important stuff (Calculus, Statistics,
Chemistry, Physics, Economics, Business Law...).
You need to grant teachers to right to effectively
discipline their students. (Texas allows spanking)
Reduce the length of a school day so that students
can get more sleep -- again, by eliminating junk.
Reduce classroom noise from air conditioning and
echoes. (hint: hard 90-degree walls are bad)
Get the bullies out of the regular schools by
sending the worst 30% to reform school, starting
right in the 1st grade.

While some of this may require money, note that
simply adding money to the existing system will
not lead to any of this. The laws must change.

Re:money for education is useless

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to fix your schools, you need to fight the teacher's union.

Colorado elects to work with them, not against them.

Improvement-based pay would help greatly: students that are above-average in a class should cause the previous year's teacher to get a bonus. (this being fair to poor areas)

Colorado implemented it 15 years ago. It was one of the first states to do so. In addition, each year, one teacher from each district is bought out. The lowest performer is offered a chance at early retirement.

You need to fight the teaching of junk (... French...)

Let me guess, you are from Texas. French and many other languages are important subjects for us. We would do well to teach not only Frnech and Spanish, but also Chinese, Arabic, etc.

that displaces important stuff (Calculus, Statistics, Chemistry, Physics, Economics, Business Law...).

You would teach Business Law in high school BEFORE teaching a langauge. I think not.

You need to grant teachers to right to effectively discipline their students. (Texas allows spanking)

Have you seen the test scores and trash coming from texas these days?

Reduce classroom noise from air conditioning and echoes. (hint: hard 90-degree walls are bad) Get the bullies out of the regular schools by sending the worst 30% to reform school, starting right in the 1st grade.

This has merit. Good Suggestion.

Colorado is a state that once had good funding and a great educational system. Over the last 7 years, it has been run by a Texan Republican who has run it into the gound. Fortunately, that changes in the next election.

Re:money for education is useless

[r00t]

You "work with" the teacher's union? How innocent
and clueless you are!

You buy out the lowest performing teacher? Oh my.
That's an incentive to be low performing. You need
to fire this person, but the union prevents that.

French is junk because it displaces Calculus and
other good stuff. It's all relative. The problem
with French, and any other language, is that one
never knows what language will be needed later in
life. My uncle needed Japanese and Russian. My
father needed German. Who'd have guessed correctly?

If a student could learn Chinese and Arabic and
Russian and Spanish and Japanese and Korean and
Portuguese and French without taking time away
from math and such, then sure... but this is the
real world. You'd have to give up something else
to teach a language. Typically, some math is lost.
You don't like math? It's hard? Go shopping?

I sure would teach Business Law before a language,
because it is 100% sure to be useful. It's also
something you kind of need for signing a lease
or buying a house. I took a language in school,
and I've never used it in the 13 years since.
My father hasn't been using his Greek either.

Texas had been doing very well when I was there.
Perhaps they no longer allow spanking... but of
course that isn't the sole determining factor of
test scores!

Re:money for education is useless

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, learning to speak another language isn't all about the other language. By learning a new language, you learn more about your own, you learn about linguistics, you learn about cultures around the world.

You seem obsessed with mathematics and business law - why the hell would you want to force all the children in your nation to learn business law? What use is that to someone who wants to go on and become a truck driver, or a train driver? What use is business law to someone who wants to go to France and work as a porter in a hotel? What about someone who's a driving instructor? Or a race car driver? A computer programmer? An electronic technician? Business law has no meaning for most of those people!

Could it possibly be that business law isn't the all-pervasive "gift" that you believe it to be? US business law doesn't apply in Australia, or England. It certainly doesn't apply in Japan or China. Why teach something that's limited to just one nation? Why not teach something that might change the outlook of the children in schools, like philosophy, or poetry, or writing? (I can picture a possible reply here - "How many authors do YOU know?" I personally know a couple of people who are authors - not newspaper columnists, but people who write books. I'm sure business skills and law would have done them a lot of good, except that they both hate the topic, with a passion.)

Or we could talk about my new boss. He's starting up a company, and has an American as a partner. What use would business law be for either of them? One is in charge of the technical side of things, and your damned business law would just hold him up from learning what he really wants to learn. The other is the creative artistic side of the business, and business law would just impinge on her talents - not to mention that this business law would just be plain WORTHLESS, since we aren't even in the US.

Beyond all of the philosophical arguments here, there's a plain fact of biology: not everybody is talented in the same area. I am unable to learn topics such as law, because I have a very specific disability - nothing like dyslexia, I should add, I have trouble learning long lists of information, particularly something as idiotically and needlessly complicated as law. My talents naturally lend themselves to learning languages. I would be terrible at learning business law, so my scores would drag the averages down drastically.

You spent two messages saying how worthless it was, learning languages, because nobody could ever know what language is going to be needed, yet you espouse the need to learn a business law that applies to one country only. Languages are international. Business law isn't, and it logically follows that that your quote " I sure would teach Business Law before a language, because it is 100% sure to be useful " is just so much rubbish.

I've never taken a business law class in my life, and I've found myself quite capable, in spite of my learning disability, of understanding my rights and obligations with respect to tenancy agreements. On top of that, we also have these experts, called lawyers who translate the complexities of various forms of law for us.

Re:money for education is useless

[r00t]

I never said it had to be USA Business Law. It would be, for a student in the USA. I assume that someone in England would want to know English, UK, and EU law. The vast majority of people will remain in the country they were educated in.

There is of course one language you must learn. That's the language of your own government. If this is relatively obscure in the world, then you might have justification for learning whatever other language is commonly used in your part of the world. (a Brazilian might learn Spanish, an Iranian might learn Arabic, and so on...)

To grab one of your many examples, a driving instructor sure would benefit from Business Law. He'll need to get a lease, and will most likely want to incorporate. Even if he gets a lawyer, he'll save time and money if the lawyer doesn't need to explain all the basics.

I myself am also terrible at learning stuff like Business Law. That doesn't mean I should skip it. Lots of kids would skip everything but Gym if they were given the chance.

Finally, I do agree that it is nice to learn about other cultures and linguistics in general. It would be lovely if we all had time to study every topic that might be of interest. There are only 24 hours in a day though, some of which must be devoted to sleeping and eating. Unless you will spend your life being babied by rich family members, you'd better give priority to the more useful subjects.

Re:money for education is useless

[Anonymous Coward]

There is of course one language you must learn. That's the language of your own government. If this is relatively obscure in the world, then you might have justification for learning whatever other language is commonly used in your part of the world. (a Brazilian might learn Spanish, an Iranian might learn Arabic, and so on...)

Brazil was settled by Portugal, not Spain. So it is really no suprise that they speak portugese not spanish (granted the two are related but they are still distinct languages). As a product of a public school in Missiouri, I learned this middle school. Did they teach you this in Texas, or did you simply not pay attention?

Re:money for education is useless

[Anonymous Coward]

After seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 this weekend, I do agree with you. I think that Texans need to learn about Business Law and how to do business. Apparently Ken Lay and Bush never had classes in these.

Red Giant = No Atmosphere

[ink]

Except for the fact that Titan's atmosphere will be destroyed by the sun when it becomes a red giant. Titan doesn't have enough mass to sustain an Earth-like atmosphere at Earth-like temperatures; the only reason it has one now is becuase of the extremely low temperatures keep the kinetic engery under control.

I knew it!

[cjellibebi]

Now we know that Mars is the location of NASA's top-secrtet film-studio. Every time those middle-managers at NASA want to pocket those government grants for themselves (or occasionally to show that the Americans are better than the Soviets), instead of spendiung billions on sending spacecraft out to deep-spcae, they just spend millions on sending spacecraft to Mars, take some photos, and Photoshop them to look like any other celestial body they chose. In fact, I even suspect that the Apollo Moon landings were filmed on Mars.

Re:I knew it!

[Alsee]

All of the US's supposed "smart bomb" footage was faked in the secret martian studios as well.

-

MINES OF TITAN

[Anonymous Coward]

also known as "mars saga". http://www.mobygames.com/game/sheet/p,2/gameId,124 2/

it's 1.2kW per square meter

[Anonymous Coward]

NT.

Life as we don't know it.

[cjellibebi]

>Why do people always assume that you need an earth like environment for life to exist.

With "Life as we know it" - ie. life that exists in an Earthlike environment, we know excactly what we're looking for, and if we detect DNA/RNA molecules, amino-acids, etc, we can point out to it and say "AHA - we've found it!" (either that, or one of the technicians sneezed all over Huygens).

With "Life as we don't know it", we have no idea what to look for. If this 'life' has evolved sufficiently, it will be noticable by complex-looking structures on the surface (and if it's really advanced, it will move). If not, it will be at the equivalent evolutionary stage to Bacteria and Amoebas, and without a frame of reference, we would not know that this really is a lifeform or just some random chemical.

Huygens is supposed to have a mass-spectrometer that can be used to identify any molecules it comes accross. If it finds really complex molecules on Titan that have previously been unknown to science (especially if they were in the form of an irregular polymer), then it would be reasonable to speculate that it might be a life-form. From what I know, the chemicals that meke up Terran life-forms are some of the most complex known to science. A strand of DNA is a polymer consisting of thousands (if not millions) of atoms.

But even a mass-spectrometer cannot answer the question of 'Is it alive'? Does it have a conciousness? In fact, I don't even think we've answered the question about Bacteria here on Earth. Are Bacteria alive, or just a complex self-replicating chemical reaction?

Re:Life as we don't know it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Are Bacteria alive, or just a complex self-replicating chemical reaction? "

What is life other than a complex self-replicating chemical reaction? I think the more interesting question is what is consciousness and where/when did it appear on the evolutionary scale.

Slashdot community getting rude?

[kalirion]

The one story practically created for welcoming new overlords, and not a single post??!! Is the story simply too perfect to be funny, or are slashdotters becoming unfriendly?

This isn't a search for life

[nutznboltz]

It's more like a time machine back to the very origins of life itself.

Interstellar missions.

[Christopher Thomas]

As for interstellar exploration, we need a financial incentive, much like the X-Prize. Only, in this case, first company sponsoring a colonization mission to an Earth-like planet, claims it.

The problem is that unless we discover new physics, sending even a flyby probe across interstellar distances within anything approaching a reasonable timeframe is an absurdly expensive project. It's within the capacity of Earth's richest nations to do it if they bent all of their resources to the task, but that's about it. This means that any financial incentive an X-prize like contest could offer would be insignificant compared to the project's cost. Similarly, not even Bill Gates could afford the ticket price for interstellar tourism, so using the prize to leverage advertising for another market doesn't work either.

As manufacturing and especially automated manufacturing technology improve, the cost of an interstellar craft may drop to the point where it's feasible for only a large organization to produce a probe, or even send colonists. However, for the time being, an Alpha Centauri shot is at about the same stage as a Moon shot was 50 years ago - something that could be done as a pissing contest (or military turf battle) between the richest governments, but by nobody else.

I hope to see a probe launched in my lifetime, but I don't expect it to be any time soon, or by profit-driven private organizations.

wonton destruction

[Anonymous Coward]

the next generation in asian biological weaponry!!!

Read My Sig.

[roman_mir]

-- no body --

Such a turd

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultimately you don't really give a fuck about the students - you just want to bash unions because you have a philosophical problem with them. Go back to 16th century england and work in a factory you prick.

Like Green Peace and Roads...

[BrianMarshall]

Sorta like Green Peace opposing roads into wilderness areas - if there are no people, an area is pristine; once there are people there, it's desecrated.

People are part of nature!

The idea that huge areas of wilderness should be unavailable to people is disgusting.

As opposed to corporations...

[DrMorpheus]

For example, based on a 40 hour work week, Sanford Weill "made" $103,934 an hour as CEO of Citigroup in 2001.

Mull that over for a second. $103 thousand dollars each and every hour. This one man made more eating lunch and going to the bathroom on any given day than most median-income workers earn in four years.

(Of course, words like "made" and "earn" or "compensated" become utterly meaningless in this context. What the hell do you call this?) Mind you, that's only what he realized in one, single year. Plus, he just got a big fat tax cut.

What on earth could one human being offer any enterprise that would be worth $103,000 each and every hour?

Can you honestly say that that ISN'T wasting money as bad or worse than what Congress does?

Bzzt, wrong.

[DrMorpheus]

We have NO evidence of whether or not Titan has active tectonics. None, zero, zip. We have never seen the surface so your talking out of your ass here.

Furthermore, even if there were not active tectonics the presence of radioactive materials would provide a source for heat.

Also, look at Io. No plate tectonics there either, but the whole moon is covered by active volcanos because of the effects of Jupiter's gravity. Titan is further from Saturn than Io is from Jupiter, but it still experiences significant tidal forces.

Finally there's the radiation from Saturn's radiation belts. Incoming radiation would also provide an energy source for life.

This should be mod'ed redudant

[DrMorpheus]

NOT informative!

Re:This should be mod'ed redudant

[Chris Tucker]

Why?

I was lucky enough to get into the newspaper site before it got slashdotted, and copied the text just in case.

As it turns out, the site did get slashdotted and I posted the info for those folks who didn't want to wait for the slashdot effect to dissipate.

Oh, and it's spelled "redundant". Two n's, not one.

Strong source of energy...

[Nick Driver]

Saturn is a huge gas giant like Jupiter. Jupiter eminates massive amounts of life-frying radiation. Even though Saturn has only about 30% the mass of Jupiter (Saturn is also the only planet that has lower density than water!), it is reported that Saturn's radiation output is even higher than that of Jupiter.

rabbi,priest,duck into bar.Tender saysISTHISAJOKE?

[Anonymous Coward]

" The only difference between Democrats and Republicans regarding budget cuts is tense"

Patient says I dream last night I was a wigwam. The night before that I dream I was a teepee. Doc said "The interpretation of your dreams is easy, you are too tense."

dontgetit?read(stnet owt)backwards.

1.2kW peak, not average.

[Jesrad]

NT.

Grammar nazi alert

[Des Herriott]

Look at what happened to Apollo ... Apollo 11? Everyone was watching. By Apollo 14 the public was disinterested.

I do not think that means what you think it means. Go look up "disinterested" in a dictionary. Compare & contrast with "uninterested". If you use the first definition from dictionary.com, be sure also to check the comment attached to it.

Re:Grammar nazi alert

[Jahf]

I do not think that means what you think it means. Go look up "disinterested" in a dictionary. Compare & contrast with "uninterested". If you use the first definition from dictionary.com, be sure also to check the comment attached to it.

But if I choose not to use the first definition (link to the mentioned page), then I can use the second which clearly shows that my usage is exactly what I intended.

The question is, does one accept only the original definition of the word that you were pointing out? Or does one accept that we speak a living language and after enough undefined but accepted use said connotation becomes a new denotation?

I tend to fall under the living language category. Apparently so does Dictionary.com since even though their note supports the first definition, they continue with a second definition that supports it. In fact, it would appear that the online Webster's dictionary lists my usage as the first and yours as second, probably because yours has come to be considered archaic in modern use.

FWIW, since the sentence is syntactically and semantically correct, you are not truly criticizing the grammar. You are challenging the usage and context. If my usage had been definitively incorrect instead of contextually viable then it might be considered by some to be a grammatical error but in this case it was not.

And now that we've spent too much time on it, I await a -1 Offtopic :)

I suggest a Big Brother approach

[RedLaggedTeut]

We just put cameras on the mission to Mars.
Also see "The Simple Life".

On the mission to Mars, we should send some nude dancers, a gay, a lesbian, a hairdresser, someone with Aspergers, a hippie, a republican congressman (or any combination thereof).

We watch everything they do, their disputes and troubles get discussed every day, we give them little tasks - "Today, Bill and Joel have to repair the solar panel on a spacewalk. If they succeed, the crew may heat their dinner."

I expect a big success, though some troubles - "Bill has decided to leave, but Joel blocks the air lock".

No

[Rogerborg]

Not even remotely. Why do you ask?

What choices do you have ?

[vlad_petric]

Republicans and Democrats.

Need I say more :) ?

Re:Grass

[A55M0NKEY]

Saw 'Grass' last night. One statistic was that the War on Marijuana cost the gubmint over 200 billion dollars from 1980 to 1998. I can damn well have a few cents of my taxes wasted on generating interesting space stories to read on the internet if certain Weeners can have 200 billion$ to waste on preventing people from getting stoned.

Re:Give credit where credit is due....

[Anonymous Coward]

This is based on an old Jack Benny gag, part of his comedic persona was that he was rich but also a tight-wad.

Life on earth

[eightball]

Life has existed on earth 3.45 out of 4.55 billion years.

read that again

[r00t]

You must learn the language of your local government.

If you are Brazilian, you learn Portugese.
If you are Iranian, you learn Farsi. (not Arabic)

Both of these languages are kind of obscure in
the world though. Nearly all of the countries
next to Brazil are Spanish speaking, so that
would be a useful choice for a Brazilian.

Many of the countries near Iran speak Arabic,
and in general it is a popular second language
in that part of the world. So an Iranian might
get some use out of Arabic.

A native speaker of English or Spanish will not
gain so much from learning another language,
as long as they are under a government that
speaks their native language. This is because
English and Spanish are not obscure.

Troll?!? I'd say: the bitter reality!

[ArsenneLupin]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/11/election .day.delay/index.html