Saturn's Moon Enceladus Has an Atmosphere

Dimentox writes "The Mercury News reports that the international Cassini spacecraft has discovered that Saturn's moon Enceladus has a significant atmosphere, NASA said Wednesday. The icy moon's atmosphere may be created by volcanism, geysers or gases escaping from the surface or the interior, the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said. Excluding Saturn's giant moon Titan, which was already known to have an atmosphere, it's the first discovery of an atmosphere on one of the more than 30 moons that orbit the ringed planet."

Comments

Immanuel Velikovsky would be pleased

[leonbrooks]

One more of his predictions gets a gold star. Wouldn't surpise him to see small amounts of heavier hydrocarbons too.

You haven't read any of the books, have you?

[leonbrooks]

It shows. Big time.

IV spends a fair few words shredding Jewish and other mythologies - at least, as they are normally interpreted.

IV predicted that Venus would be hot (but still cooling measurably), with high-pressure hydrocarbon-containing atmosphere and odd rotation while everyone else was predicting Earthlike conditions.

IV predicted that Jupiter would be a radio source, while everyone else said no.

IV predicted much stronger magnetism in the Lunar rocks than anybody else.

IV predicted that hydrocarbons would be found in comet tails, while everyone else was determined to stick with just dust and ice.

There were many other successful predictions - and watch out for solid-sounding but unsuccessful debunkings, as well. Velikovsky did indeed get some things wrong (IMESHO a few of them very badly wrong), but not near as many as his critics have claimed.

For example, the "Venus has no hydrocarbons" argument is based on measurement of the cloud tops, not of the body of the atmosphere. Would you expect to see heavy hydrocarbons in the could tops? The "Venus should have left footprints in the Greenland ice" argument was based on an ice dating system which mistook diffusion-based varves for annual varves (and is still widely accepted anyway, wooja bleev?). And so on.