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Titan Moon's Bright Hot Spot
An anonymous reader writes "Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has been the target of great interest because of its unusual pre-biotic chemistry and thick atmosphere. The Colorado-Boulder Space Science Institute announced a new mystery today involving a persistently bright spot, perhaps one of four possibilities. The spot could be a surface coloration, a mountain range, a cloud, or a hot spot."
As long as there's WiFi there, who cares how cold it is?
Tim
I, for one, welcome our new pre-biotic lifeform overlords!
Life on the moons of other planets means what? To me it means God is everywhere and has a super weird plan. I've always been ready to believe that the universe is for everyone and I'm ready to accept it. To others it means life evolves and all religion dies. What does it mean to Slashdot people?
We already know what this persistently bright spot is, /.
Kubrick and Clark told us back in 1968
Slow news day? There wasn't a Mozilla update you could post?
Time to move the mother ship I guess.
"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes." -Mahatma Gandhi
Near the hotspot a radio beacon
was detected. It transmitted:
"Evacuate. All ships move to Earth"
God to humanity:
Oh yeah...theres life outside earth, must have slipped my mind 2000 years ago.....
It's good to know we've got our brightest people on this.
--Greg
I wonder if we'll one day be travelling out to Titan to grab some of those hydrocarbons that are everywhere on the planet. It's probably not very economical, but I can visualize any future colonies going there to grab what they need. Hey, it's pie in the sky, but you never know.
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
Hey I'm excited, ever since the last election I've been looking for a bright spot.
So, Vim is space-capable now?
Emacs: Your move.
This slashdot-related signature is a stub. You can help kihjin by expanding it.
I'd very much like to find the very fudge caked coward that moded this post down... Life on other planets very well may change our thinking. Just because the moderator is a university schooled ponk does not mean our downhill chocolate slide has to be a total downer. Come -- on --- dude! Ride --- it --- with --- me.... Moooode === up==== dude====(all down hill_) lamer foooooo ----- oooo ---- ooo ----llllllllll.
I thought Titan had an opaque orange atmosphere. False color imaging makes this hotspot stand out alot more than it otherwise would, no?
can anyone explain that?
this is actually the main topic. if you think we're just doodling about there, you're wrong.
we really carea bout what this stuff means.
We have billions of stars in this galaxy alone capable of maybe supporting life. Then there are billions more galaxies we have zero information about. At least 1289712 of them have to have life. The universe is amazing. It's hilarious we are studying planets in our solar system. Oh man, I wish I lived 5000 years from and maybe more. I can't wait until we figure out how to exploit light speed and really way beyond. Light speed is too slow actually. Anyways, anyone that says we are alone in space is crazy. There has to be aliens everywhere. Whaaaa!!!!!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Couldn't it just be a red light district? Even the most remote hell-hole needs hookers.
I'm gonna need a spec.
(sorry)
My genetic programming website: http://www.helpmefigurethisout.com/
isnt there an article around here somewhere about useless scientific research? honestly, if we havnt even set foot on mars yet, why even look at saturn
obviously a moon base.
Logic, macros, and more
As an amateur meteorologist, I find that strangely erotic.
Okay, I lied, I'm not a meteorologist.
o_O
Its a space station.
It's a sheep. Shaun the Sheep, more precisely.
:)
Or maybe I just need some sleep. Well, I know I can count on Shaun to help me!
a rebel base, obviously. Arm the weapons
"Words of wisdom: drop that zero and get with the hero" -- Vanilla Ice
...well not everywhere over here but certainly there are very primitive life forms to be found in some places
OTOH for those , like me, and maybe the parent poster, who think there is absolutly NOTHING, then we are atheist. And for us, truly the Orson Scott Card quote does not apply at all.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
All these worlds are yours except Titan. Attempt no landing there.
Probably terrorists , bomb first , ask questions later.
it's its bellybutton
rewriting history since 2109
...that one of the possibilities would have been a giant black monolith.
--
silence is poetry.
Alternatively, you could just rip his head off and shit directly down his throat. I mean, given his email address, I'd say it's safe to assume that he's "dying" for someone to kill him anyway. I say someone should help the poor wayward soul out.
NewScientist just ran an article that talks about "slime worlds", areas on planets that emit a near-infrared light, but amazingly there was no mention of the bright red spot on Titan. Perhaps we have found a slime world?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Well if there is life on other planets, I hope it's not as fucking stupid and useless as you are.
I work peripherally with some of the Cassini people, and the "hot spot" theory has been more or less abandoned. Radar observations have already confirmed that the spot isn't glowing or emitting energy on it's own. But they still don't know what it is.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
This is getting insane. Why would I ever use West Virginia as a unit of area? From reading stories on /. I'm much more familiar with the surface of Titan than West Virgina (and I suspect I'm not the only one). Shouldn't we be measuring the size of West Virgina in Titans?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I have often said "There are no political answers, only political questions." When someone tries to convince you not to answer a certain way to a question they allege is not political, they're being naive or disingenuous. Consider a question like: "What services will this hospital provide?" and a response that includes "Abortion." Telling someone that the answer must not include political answers like that is a trick. Leaving out abortion is just as political.
Why is he babbling off-topic like this? you find yourself asking just about now. Well, I've recently extended my rule to say "There are no religious answers, only religious questions." If one possible answer to a question is "Religion caused this." then the question is religious. That tells us something as important about religion as the politics rule tells us about politics.
Religion isn't the study of a kind white man with a booming voice who hangs out in the clouds and is good pals with someone named Peter. Religion is simply the way each of us answer the inevitable questions about the Universe, where it came from, etc. Stories about the Bible are one set of people's answers, Science is another. Science, in that sense, is another kind of religion with different rules. It adds the ability to test what it knows at the expense of knowability of other things. Some people find testability comforting and don't mind knowing. Others find knowability comforting, and will sacrifice testing for it.
I think it's reasonable to think of science as a (growing) subset of religion, if you think of religion as the quest to know All The Answers. It's pretty clear that no matter what religion you have, it needs to explain the testable aspects of science. But saying that religion then has no place or has been obviated by science makes no sense. No matter how many things are discovered, we'll have a lot of unknowables for a long time yet, probably forever. I don't see any harm in a live and let live policy for religion as long as it has the same policy for science. Of course, now we're back to politics, so I must be drifting off-topic again and should stop before I'm modded down.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Sweetie we already talked about this,.... remember? You have to take the little pink pill eeeevery day or doctor will be upset with you next time we visit.....mmmmk hon?
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Could it be possible that this "hot spot" might just be an alien outpost with city lights reflecting off the buildings?
... is to post an "argument" that's not falsifiable.
The Raven
Shit, like it's only Sector-G993's third largest and definitely most racey inter-fucking-steller resort! I mean who hasn't heard of the quad-tittied Zaljingo Dancers and the city of a million spice-bars? Sheeesh.
You're right.
It allows it to make more sense.
If God is infinite, why would He be satisfied with just creating life here? He's already created an infinite universe (as far as we can tell), and it would be a waste to not populate it. If He really is infinite like every religous person believes, then there would also be an infinite number of populated worlds.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
It is the ultimate Goatse prank.
Table-ized A.I.
Because an average american is much more familiar with the size of west virginia than the same size in square miles or should i even bother to say the size of Titan?
I would personally prefer square kilometers, go figure.
maybe God is has a lottery every now and again. "Lets make the weather shit...*closes eyes and points finger*...HERE!"
I hate to get prescriptive on you, but bald cannot be a hairstyle:By definition there must be hair there -- hair to style. That's like saying that not having a beard is a beard-style or being dead is a lifestyle.
If you are trying to make the point that atheism:religion::color:hairstyle, you probably could have said it in a better way.
Can you agree atheism:theism::bald:hair (the most basic meanings, obviously antonyms)? If you take religion (at Oxford's word) to be then it would be fair to substitute theism for religion in the above analogy, at which point, your whole argument fails. And the parent poster is correct -- that is "Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hairstyle."
To be fair: your supposition is that atheism is some kind of religion, but look at it in terms of what atheism means, "the theory of belief that God does not exist." Isn't that directly antithetical to the definition of religion? I know where your argument is though, don't get me wrong. If one cannot prove the existence or non-existence then one must take it on faith that there is no God and (fallaciously) faith must equal religion. But really that's just it -- atheist's faith doesn't imply religion (or religiosity) at all.
(full disclosure, I am an agnostic secular humanist with Buddhist leanings)
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
It's an owed favor. This was the best thing they could think of to say about West Virginia, after one engineer got high on bug juice (lab ethanol and Dr Pepper) and insulted another engineer's family tree "that doesn't fork". Even this engineer couldn't bring himself to describe West Virginians as "bright", so he applied the term to its equivalent on Titan.
Duh.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
"In Xanadu did Kubla Kan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea..." -- Samuel Coleridge
Oh wait - here you are saying what I was saying in my other reply to you. Haha. Arguing on Slashdot is such a waste of time. :-)
Sorry for the trouble. Well anyway, since we agree that atheism is not a religion, consider my previous reply to be merely about "baldness as the null set of hairstyles" compared to "atheism as the null set of religion". I think you you might agree with me there as well (with that clarification), that 'color' is not the null set of hairstyles, and thus not apt to describe atheism's relationship to other religious belief.
Again, sorry to waste your (our) time.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
C'mon slashdotters, no one posted a Uranus joke about this...????
It's Motel 6 headquarters you fools!
Two people in observatory looking through a telescope at Titan...
Astrophysicist: "Do you see that bright spot?"
Paris Hilton: "Uh-huh..."
Astrophysicist: "What do you think of that mysterious surface feature?"
Paris Hilton: "That's hot."
Authority questions you. Return the favor.