Slashdot Mirror
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!
It's good to know we've got our brightest people on this.
--Greg
What does it mean to Slashdot people?
Really cool pets.
KFG
To others it means life evolves and all religion dies
What? You mean that religion is still alive? I thought we killed that with priests sexual behaviors & coverups, gay marriages, and general rememberances of holy wars?
The trouble with religion is that it mandates that you must justify everything to fit your previously held views and faith rather than explore and make up your own mind when presented with another possible take on the universe.
Its a shame, or perhaps just sham, that religion has anything to do with it. It is space exploration, no more startling than when Columbus went looking for tea bags by heading for Florida.
For some reason people think that life on other planets means something religious? It means that there is life on other planets. If your faith has no room for an omniscent god to have created life on some planet that you aren't part of, I pity you.
Perhaps it would be better if we ALL simply sat down and decided that these old religious things we carry around are not right, and a new view is in order?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
"Everyone you say who says that they have no religious beliefs is just so certain about their belief that they accept it as truth. If you just start asking probing questions, and they start getting mad, then you've found their religion." --Orson Scott Card.
We now know yours. Hugs. :)
BTW, Mormons beleive there is life on other planets as a matter of religion. I'm sure they're not the only ones.
If I understand Dirac correctly, his meaning is this: there is no God, and Dirac is his Prophet. -Pauli
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.
As an amateur meteorologist, I find that strangely erotic.
Okay, I lied, I'm not a meteorologist.
o_O
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.
A viewpoint about religion does not a religion make.
Atheism is no more a religion than asantaclausism. The only defining characteristic of atheism is the lack of a belief in some sort of god. That's it, nothing else. And yes, agnostics are a subset of atheists.
Religions, on the other hand, are a collection of beliefs regarding supernatural entities, (or what are percieved as supernatural entities) and worship of those entities, with a collection of rituals attached to it. All this is done in the hopes of acquiring some sort of favor from the entity, eg. forgiveness, salvation, success, etc.
See, atheism, while it has one belief concerning supernatural entities, lacks the worship, magic rituals, and prayer that religions have. There is no moral code attached to atheism, whis is not to say that atheists have no morals.
Nice Marmot
Pardon me for a second, but...
1) Secular humanism is not atheism, even if you call it that. If you don't believe in god, and you take a "other people can rot in a ditch for all I care" attitude, you're not a secular humanist.
2) Most atheists have had plenty of time to understand religious people, as 90% of the people around them are theists, and almost half the country is evangelical.
3) When, on Earth, did the parent "oppress" others? Talk about a persecution complex, geez. I'll never get how people who are part of a religion that composes 3/4ths of the US population think they're being oppressed. Who is this little non-Christian cabal that is keeping you down?
4) Since when was it "atheists" who desecrated the Quran? The religious beliefs of those involved weren't stated, but given the strong Xian majority... your evidenceless assumptions are, quite frankly, insulting. Besides, haven't you seen the sign or read the tracts? Let me tell you, it's not this country's tiny atheist minority that is anti-Islam...
5) Millenia of repression of religious thought
Excuse me????? Did you forget about the fact that the catholic church essentially *ruled europe* during the middle ages? Before that, there was the powerful influence of the Teutonic and druidic religions in the north, and the Greek-descended religions in the south. What "atheistic regimes" are you picturing here? Heck, many early governments claimed to either be descended from gods, or gods themselves.
Seriously... get out of your persecution fantasy world here - religion used to rule almost every society.
All we want to do is eat your brains.