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Cassini Shatters Titan Theories

Posted by timothy on from the ok-now-give-me-my-money-back dept.

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."

26 of 461 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting by dark404 · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  2. NASA Funding by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:NASA Funding by maggeth · · Score: 4, Insightful
      "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.

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    2. Re:NASA Funding by Hank+Chinaski · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because more money does not equal better work.

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    3. Re:NASA Funding by blue+trane · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We elect Congress. It's ultimately our fault.

    4. Re:NASA Funding by gilroy · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.
      --
      The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
    5. Re:NASA Funding by servognome · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

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    6. Re:NASA Funding by Rinikusu · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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

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    7. Re:NASA Funding by Jahf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
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  3. building blocks of life.... again... by Doppler00 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:building blocks of life.... again... by howlatthemoon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:building blocks of life.... again... by Sven-Erik · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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      - "Every demand is a prison, and wisdom is only free when it asks nothing." Sir Betrand Russell
    3. Re:building blocks of life.... again... by Esion+Modnar · · Score: 3, Insightful
      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?

      --

      They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
  4. Temperature to Support Life? by artlu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  5. Re:Ethical questions by wjsteele · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

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  6. Re:Ethical questions by Almost+A+Knave · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Ethical questions by Shihar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:Ethical questions by techno-vampire · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  9. subsurface life by Gothmolly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

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  10. Re:Ethical questions by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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

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  11. Re:Ethical questions by Have+Blue · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:Ethical questions by mikerich · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

  13. Re:Ethical questions by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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'.

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  14. RTFA: "may" contain building blocks of life by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  15. Re:Ethical questions by lightknight · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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  16. Re:Ethical questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!