Titan's Alien Thunder

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Posted by Hemos on Monday October 25, 2004 @01:24AM from the good-news-if-true dept.

An anonymous reader writes "What is not being reported much about the fascinating Huygens descent to the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is its remarkable microphone. In the silence of space, the probe offers a platform for listening to alien thunder while watching the lightning strike on this alien world--the only moon with an atmosphere thicker than our terrestrial one. The probe detaches from Cassini on Christmas for its atmospheric entry on 14 January 2005. The landing target on Titan borders a bright-dark region thought to be an oil-rich shoreline. Huygens can float for a few hours while still broadcasting if it lands in a lake of oil."

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Alien thunder by BWJones · 2004-10-25 01:25 · Score: 5, Informative

Titan may offer the first chance for a terrifying symphony of alien thunder.

Alien thunder?.........hrmmmmm......new, name......for a band? Yeah, that's it.

On a more serious note, here is the link to the Cassini-Huygens main page complete with a tital flyby schedule, a flyby mission description, photo essay including some amazing images of the rings of Saturn, Titan and more.

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1. Re:Alien thunder by another_henry · 2004-10-25 01:34 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Heavy oils on Earth are generally created by chemical processes acting on dead microorganisms over geological time. The "oil" on Titan is hardly oil at all, it's light short-chain hydrocarbons such as methane (CH4), ethane (C2CH6) and propane (C3CH8) which would be gases on Earth. These are much easier to form "abiotically", i.e. without life. In face the gas giant outer planets Uranus and Neptune have large amounts of methane in their atmospheres. (IANAAstronomer)
  
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2. Re:Alien thunder by another_henry · 2004-10-25 01:36 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Those molecular formulae should be CH4, C2H6 and C3H8 respectively. Improper backspacing, sorry.
  
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3. Re:Alien thunder by praedictus · 2004-10-25 02:28 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The person who came up with the abiotic theory is largely regarded as a crackpot. Methane can be generated abiotically and there may be reserves related to this, but crude is full of degenerate organically derived molecules - cracked chlorophyll and other such things. Host reservoirs are categorized by the degree of such decomposition - see Vitrinite Reflectance Index. The Athabaska tar sands are Cretaceous, they merely overly the Shield.
  
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Thankfully, they had extra propellant... by bc90021 · 2004-10-25 01:35 · Score: 4, Informative

...since they had to compensate for a telecommunications problem. Read more here.

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Re:For all the NASA jokes... by strictfoo · 2004-10-25 01:42 · Score: 5, Informative

you HAVE to be amazed by what they have accomplished on an ever-shrinking budget.

Actually, NASA's bugett has basically been constant, receiving small increases to adjust for inflation.

1999 - ~$13.6B
2000 - ~$14B
2001 - ~$14.5B
2002 - ~$14.5B
2003 - ~$15B

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Re:Oil? by BenjyD · 2004-10-25 01:49 · Score: 4, Informative

It's all just hydrocarbons, it's just that on earth a lot of the solid carbon is tied up in living creatures so our hydrocarbons come from decomposition of their dead bodies. The clouds of ethanol in outer space don't make me assume that there are deep-space breweries, for example.

On Titan, it's cold enough that the lighter hydrocarbons like methane are liquid, so the sea of 'oil' is probably just short chain alkanes like methane.
Sorry, but IMHO you're wrong... by cavac · 2004-10-25 02:51 · Score: 4, Informative

"Huygens can float for a few hours while still broadcasting if it lands in a lake of oil."

It may float that long, but the batteries are running out soon after landing.

And because Huygens is scheduled to be dead shortly after landing/crashing, the communication session with Cassini is limited to that time span - Cassini doesn't listen much longer and Huygens has simply no programming for a longer mission time. So, even if Huygens manages to survive longer than expected, it wouldn't provide much more data nor would Cassini pick it up.

It didn't find the link again, but that's what i remembered reading somewhere on www.esa.int...

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Re:I dont want to steal their thunder.. by chiph · 2004-10-25 02:53 · Score: 4, Informative

For example the camera on the $4 billion Cassini mission is only 1 megapixel - if we had a larger number of smaller, cheaper missions, would we be there now with a much better imaging system.

The Mars rovers only have 1-megapixel cameras too, but those pictures look pretty darned good. It's all about the quality of the design and the parts that go into it, mostly, the lens and the size of the imager chip. Read more at msnbc.

Chip H.