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Titan's Smooth Surface Baffles Scientists
JazMuadDib writes "Scientists expected a few rough spots when their space drone snapped close-range images of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Instead, the planetlike moon appears to have a bizarre, mysteriously smooth surface, and Tuesday's images have left them in a state of wonder. Read more at the Tucson Citizen." NASA's Cassini pages have a wide assortment of images and analysis. Cassini's data has already thrown scientists for loop.
An earlier collision with the comet Botox.
than after months of anticipation, hard work, and millions of dollars to get to the moment of revealation where the mysterious coverings are peeled off, and my objective is laid bare, completely smooth, and ready for exploration.
"That's no moon..." is the comment for Mimas, not Titan :)
"Instead, the planetlike moon appears to have a bizarre, mysteriously smooth surface"
That's no moon, it's a space station!
Mysteriously smooth? Could it be a bowling ball?
Someone should check with John Varley and see if he knows anything...
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Did the Covenant glass it?
Cassini's data has already thrown scientists for loop.
Main screen turn on!
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
You think Titan's smooth - you should see Uranus...
*ducks*
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It looks lovely and smooth (and orange) in Celestia.
So how come NASA is surprised when Titan turns out to look similar to existing models? Do the rest of us know something that NASA doesn't?
It's funny. Laugh.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
When will the empire get the message that nobody wants these deathstars around?
is easily attributed to subtle variances in the curd temperature during the cheese formation process... oops wrong moon.
"OMFG!" as a close second, and "Hey, what's growing on my sandwich?" a distinct third.
You know, I kept telling them that they would later regret having made that translucent plastic lens cap. But did they listen to me? Noooo! "You're just a programmer", they said. "Shut up and write code", they said.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
cassini's inbuilt planet picture generator isn't pixel shader 2.0 / ARB2 compliant and thus can't apply a normal map to the generated planet :)
-= Technomancer =-
We're just walk-on extras in someone else's videogame, optimized to save rendering time where there's no prizes.
--
make install -not war
It's made out of antimatter! Don't try landing, the results could be catastrophic!!!
For the record, I *must* be a science fiction geek, because only a true SF fan would remember that Niven story.
That wouldn't explain how it came to be a moon of Saturn.
All it takes is nukes and nerves.
Interesting that the article is in the "Local News" section of the Tucson Citizen.
I thought some of the landscapes around Tucson look extraterrestrial. Now it makes sense.
Why would you want to go to titan? I heard it stinks.
"Thats no moon....THIS is a moon" -- Obi-Wan Kenobi drops pants
Dyslexics have more fnu.
I thought it was, "Hey, this is lemonade! What happened to my amoebic dysentery culture?!"
A dingo ate my sig...
polystyrene
It turns out that Titan is merely a left-over from the gods' last Nerf battle.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Oh hell. The spheroids are at it again. Betty, get me my shotgun.
I'm quite certain that it has a hard candy shell, my only problem is trying to figure out if it is chocolate filled. Or choclate w/ peanuts.
Why bother to render it with any more detail than absolutely necessary? And when the PC's get too close, obscure it with cloud.
And you call yourself geeks and gamers....
No one thought humans would take a close look at an object that fahr.
So, to save memory and computing power, they did a sketchy planet with small and blured texture in it.
Time to upgrade the matrix ?
Léa Gris
For those who don't get the joke: http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v 9i3/kansas.html
Ooh, maybe it's hot fudge or butterscotch.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
If it's methane, I'm holding my breath.
This space for rent.
Reminds me of the vampire LARPer in a jam on a bright, moonlit night.
He was surrounded by enemies, and at a loss for action. Panicking, he tried to use his line-of-sight teleport power to teleport instantly to the moon. The judge thought about it for a moment, and said that it was an acceptable use of the power. He then informed the player that his character was dead. The player didn't understand.
"What killed him," asked the player.
The GM, not missing a beat, replied, "Exposure to direct sunlight."
In other news, yesterday a high energy beam from a mysterious spacecraft impinged on -- and disintegrated -- Titan's Hoarfrost district. The energetic photons swept without warning across a long swath of the oldest residential and commercial district on Titan, causing the ancient complex of slowly-grown crystalline towers and bridges to explode and collapse into dust. The area has been flattened. The unknown source of the destructive beam seems to have left the vicinity of Titan, at least for the present.
The article mentioned that this has "thrown scientists for loop". WTF does that mean? Is it something like:
for (;;)
{
launch_satellite();
if (strange_discovery)
throw "we've got hello from outer space!"
}
The third Death Star has finally been found. All these years it has been in a parking orbit in an out of the way solar system. Over time it picked up an atmosphere which is obscuring the laser turrets and docking ports.
Now the plot for the third Star Wars film is out.
Wow, a complete civilization that's sole job is to ride zamboni's across titan's surface completely resurfacing the whole thing. This must be a sign of life on Titan
My UID is prime is yours?
Hopefully by the time we arrive on Titan, there will be interesting things for Space Marines to shoot at.
-sig removed for tax purposes-
a flat moon covered with hydrocarbons. I thought alt.pave.the.earth was only a joke?
Kanga: That's not a fish, that's a bird.
Pooh: Yes, but is it a starling or a mackeral?
wouldn't that be funny if where they lost datalink was like a deep pit or something really cool like that lol
That's no moon, that's a spacestation!!!! :)
Had to be said!
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
Argh! I want to go to Titan!
ME TOO!!
>>ME TOO!
>>>ME TOO!
>>ME TOO!
>>>>ME TOO!
>ME TOO!
>>>>ME TOO!
>>>>>>ME TOO!
>>>>>>ME TOO!
etc...
"And then I visited Wikipedia
Thousands of titanians worked for weeks to polish up their planet, now they get this? damned if you do, damned if you dont...
I don't get it. Don't you know how to pen a silly joke?
> Welcome to slashdot, the home of the following overused jokes and habbits:
"habits." And you forgot the pedants! HOW could you forget the pedants!
That's flatter than the state of Kansas!
... well at least those of the IHOP variety anyway.
Then by conjecture, that would also make the surface of Titan flatter than a pancake!