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."

Comments

Hot Spot?

[TimTheFoolMan]

As long as there's WiFi there, who cares how cold it is?

Tim

Re:Hot Spot?

[TimTheFoolMan]

As long as it doesn't say, "Posted: The 3rd planet is scheduled for demolition due to plans for an intergalactic bypass..."

Fifth possibility: pre-biotic party!

[noidentity]

I, for one, welcome our new pre-biotic lifeform overlords!

When you're hot, you're hot

[Greg Hullender]

From the article: If the spot glows at night, researchers will know it's hot.

It's good to know we've got our brightest people on this.

--Greg

Re:When you're hot, you're hot

[NanoGator]

"Why can't we point an infrared camera at it?"

There's an obelisk in the way.

Re:Life, evolution, everything...

[kfg]

What does it mean to Slashdot people?

Really cool pets.

KFG

Re:Life, evolution, everything...

[zappepcs]

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?

Entertainment

[Bob Gelumph]

Couldn't it just be a red light district? Even the most remote hell-hole needs hookers.

Re:Life, evolution, everything...

[Camel Pilot]

time for obligitory Sagan quote:

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

approximately the size and shape of West Virginia

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

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?