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Tantalizing Clues in Pictures of Saturn's Moons
Aziabel writes "Titan and Dione, two of the moons orbiting Saturn, apparently aren't exactly what researchers had previously believed. Photographs taken during a flyby of the Cassini space probe this week may clarify and even overturn long-held assumptions about the surfaces of these satellites. Bright streaks on the surface of Dione, a heavily cratered moon with little atmosphere, have long been believed to be ice, noted Carolyn Porco, imaging team leader for the Cassini project from the Space Science Institute in Boulder. Images captured this week, however, appear to indicate that the bright streaks are cliffs. They may have been created by ice, but not a lot of ice remains in the area. Meanwhile, the 'ocean' on Titan may not be. Instead of a liquid body of water, the dark mass seen on the surface of the Titan may be a viscous fluid flowing onto the white 'coastline,' Parco said. Then again, the viscous fluid could be flowing down from a higher altitude, like a glacier, onto the white mass. Right now, researchers only have two-dimensional images. Stronger conclusions may be possible with the availability later of images that are more precise, or stereoscopic images that include shadows or information on altitude."
$3 billion or however much it was, 6 years of waiting and now they can't figure out what the pictures are showing.
Of course, they can't figure out what these pictures are showing. It often takes years to evaluate that kind of data fully and come to conclusions. That's to be expected when embarking on new scientific territory. We may not even get the answers we seek with Huygens either. It may take many more probes to get an idea of what Titan is like; we don't even know yet what's seeping out of the crater walls on Mars.
With how much has been invested in this mission, I'm sure the scientists are going crazy to present the public with findings (or at least the PR people are)
They are getting data from publicly funded instruments and they are putting it on the web as soon as they can. They are also annotating it with their first impressions and theories. That doesn't mean that they are "going crazy", it means that you are seeing science in action: raw data, hypotheses, debates, and all that. These people are doing a great job. I really don't see what your problem is with all that.
Until then, quit confusing me.
Just don't look, then; you'll get the Discovery channel version quickly enough.
The summary says "liquid body of water" in description of the hypothesized ocean on Titan. Titan was always known to be too cold to have liquid H2O on the surface. The hypothesized material in the oceans was never water, it was liquid methane. CH4.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
two of the moons orbiting Saturn, apparently aren't exactly what researchers had previously believed.
That's not a moon, that's a space station!
Errr, and the other one too!
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Yes, and instead of the hypothesized liquid hydrocarbon ocean we only have a "viscous fluid", probably liquid hydrocarbons. Doh!
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
We need more missions to the gas giants..
Every time we look at these systems with a new generation of science instruments, there is a re-writing of the text books, and it will take years to untangle what Cassini is telling us now.
Great though Cassini is, I think there is an argument for doing a larger number of smaller missions, using tried-and-tested technology - for example, New Horizons to Pluto is a mere $600 million, vs the $3 billion Cassini costs, and we could have a follow up New Horizons-II mission to Uranus & several KBO's for even less..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Now here is a new tactic for supporting space exploration. Announce that there are liquid hydrocarbons --- OIL --- on the surface of Titan. In no time the nations and corporations of the world will be racing to make sure that they have the rights to develop Titan's oil industry. Soon we will have regular tanker shipments from Titan.
engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff
Looking at the Dione picture, I'm intrigued by the linear feature near Dione's terminator to the left, crossing a number of craters and irregular fractures on the surface (diagonal orientation, from upper left to lower right). It has an internal shadow on the upper right side suggesting it's some kind of ditch or canyon. Given that Dione's radius is 560 km, this canyon seems to be more than 1 km wide and 100 km long. Could that be a tectonic feature too, or is it the track of a meteorite barely touching Dione's surface instead of impacting? I'm inclined to believe the latter, since it's so straight, but I wonder what such an event might have looked like.
Maybe Cassini will obtain a closer look at this area later. It would be nice to have a 3D model of the terrain, showing elevations.