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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.
The surface has no shadow detail, so it is impossible to determine whether peaks and valleys exist on the ground.
Here's the quote: Because of the global haze layer, Porco says, "we do not see shadows on the surface of Titan. And because we don't see shadow, we can't look at an image and immediately deduce what's up and what's down." There could be massive mountains and deep valleys there, or the surface could be completely flat. At this point, there's no way to tell.
Also, the interesting thing about Titan is that the cloud cover which should be methane seems to be composed of something else, altogether. Particles such as ethane and even polystyrene have been suggested as possible cloud particles. But until further investigation, it only seems to be that our initial theories of methane clouds were off the mark.
"WTF??" is where great science starts.
RTFA! The article doesnt say the surface is smooth .. they say they cant make out the surface's topography because the thick haze diffuses the light and prevents shadows from being formed preventing the discernment of topography .. There are as yet no conclusions about how rough or smooth the surface is. Please don't overhype this stuff.
.. hopefully.
If the Huygens mission is successful we'll know more
Another nifty bit was that the methane clouds don't seem to be methane.
Obviously, Titan picnicers have been shredding their plastic foam coffee cups, and the winds have whipped them aloft....See what I've been reading.
Just to put the Cassini mission into perspective, no human being in the history of our species has ever seen the surface of Titan. No one, in the hundreds of thousands of years that we've been around, has been able to know what we are about to know.
Sure, this sort of thing has happened before - there was the first (and last) picture from the surface Venus, the first image of the far side of the moon, etc. I hope we haven't gotten too accustomed to it, at least not yet. I think we are amazingly fortunate to be able to see and know things that no one before could possibly have known. There is something there. Some people will think it's boring. "It's just rocks and mush," they'll say. But I think it's special. It's a place. It's an actual, real, physical place that is up there, just out of reach until now.
No amount of desire or commitment (or for that matter luck) could have revealed it to our fathers, or their fathers, or their fathers. No matter how badly they might have wanted to know it, it was hidden from them. They had to guess, or fantasize, or just live with the mystery. But we get to see it. We are the first.
And the best part about the universe is, there's always more to see just around the next corner.
i don't think this should be such an odd find. what are the prerequisits for a planet/moon having tectonic plates? the article states that Titan has a pretty dense atmosphere, that would protect it from most objects hurdling through space.
...maybe the whole moon is covered in some sorta liquid goo that covers all the valleys and troughs (sp?)
maybe it just wants to be different.
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This is /. The place where the editors spin more than a Bush/Kerry campaign manager. ;->
Is it just me, or is everyone noticing that each and every time we get new data on bodies in our solar system, scientists are "shocked", "mystified", "befuddled", etc. by the data? What exactly were they convinced of and proven wrong, after all the Ios, Encledaeus, et al surprises out there?
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
It would be like saying, "Yep, Mars is made of red rock and dust." That's not news, it's olds. There are probably heaps of discoveries that aren't brought to our attention because they fit the commonly held assumptions.
The discovery of Titan's flat surface is like the trailer to a movie. It leaves you wanting to know more, wanting to know why. It captures your interest, and so it's considered 'news'.
Although its good (for the type of people that read Slashdot) to know that theories are proven correct, it's just not interesting to the wider populace.
When Cassini was first launched Imaging Team was based at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. That team has since left for better pasturers elsewhere.
UofA will soon be base camp for Most Power Optical Telescope on the Planet, located nearby on Mt. Graham. Which is also home to other telescopes (optical and radio).
UofA is also home base for the design and building of one of the upcomming Mars Probes.
Tucson's County, Pima, is home to the most strict dark sky's lighting standards in the developed world.
Yes, never mind that Tucson is known as "The Astronomy Capital of the World."
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You realize thats not flat, thats just where they lost the data link right?