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Cassini Finds Evidence of Water
CheshireCatCO writes "Scientists working on the Cassini Mission think that they have found compelling evidence for the existence of liquid water at the south pole of the moon Enceladus. In addition to the obvious puzzles relating to how temperatures can be held high enough for liquid water, the presence of water, as well as the detection of organic molecules, opens up the possibility for life at Enceladus's south polar region. The findings are to appear in the 10 March issue of the journal, Science"
2. Bottle the icy-cold water
3. Ship bottles to Earth
4. Sell "Enceladus Springs" at outrageous prices
5. (Need I say more?)
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Attempt no
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That's the perfect place for me and my rag-tag band of misfit rebels to establish a secret base! I just hope that taun-taun life is sustainable there.
Yeah, I know a *true geek* such as typically is found on /. will know this without looking it up, but for those afraid to ask...
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Do they know that it's Water as in H2O or simply a liquidy viscuous substance that shoots from a small opening at the tip of the moon?
...while I run out to light up my giant "WELCOME TO EARTH" sign.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
In the spring of 2008, scientists will get another chance to look at Enceladus when Cassini flies within 350 kilometers (approximately 220 miles), but much work remains after Cassini's four-year prime mission is over.
We need a closer look, but it would be interesting to gather some samples of this water and see if it contains microorganisms of any kind.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Did you all purposely do this?
I'd love to see a rover there.
Wonder what is causing the warm temps.
...it's an Evian station!
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Yeah, all NASA's/JPL's/etc.'s press conferences seem to be way overhyped like that. There's always something on SpaceRef or one of the other sites about some press conference that will reveal major findings, then when it comes around, it's like, meteor fragments on the moon or something else that we could probably have guessed.
It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
Thats "Cassinian", pronounced "Enceladacian". :)
1) Suggest a possible discovery of liquid water out there
2) Make allusion to possibility of life emerging there
3) ???
4) Grant Funding!
I'm as much a fan of discovery as the next scientifically minded person, but this has become a little tired in recent years. Every time a possible discovery of liquid water creeps up, the potential for life always follows in the very next paragraph if not the next sentence. One would wonder what would happen if we found a vast reservoir of liquid water but no life in it. I imagine some segment of astrobiology would be so incredulous as to insist on probing it until an earth born microbe manages to survive the trip and contaminate the discovery.
When I was first reading this I thought "Wow, wouldn't it be interesting to figure out how liquid water could have existed there." Then came the inevitable "hey, maybe there's life there!" I just gave up. The conditions for liquid water are remarkable enough, do we need to include the outrageously small probability of life developing before we've looked at the more answerable questions like "where's the heat coming from?"
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Neat page w/video
I've heard of water as cold as -40C.
Man, you really need that seminar!
All of the NASA money is going into manned space programs. Money for the science space program depends on how much money is left over from updating the website.
All /. comment so far have nothing to do with the news. *sigh* Always the same with astronomy items.
/. posts are just people cracking stupid jokes.
The news: The most simple and common combination of two extremely common elements might have been noticed on a large rock, very far away.
Like most astronomy news, it's incredibly boring unless you let your imagination run wild and start dreaming about colonies, alien life, or other flights of fancy... so it's no surprise that most of the
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If you're talking about the office site at JPL, that's because it *does* mention that Cassini/Huygens is a joint venture. Quite a lot, in fact. Including at the end of the official press-release. ciclops.org isn't an offical NASA website, it's the site for one instrument on Cassini. We're funded by NASA, so we're not a joint venture. (Although there are team members who do hale from Europe.)
or is it liquid due to being compressed due to the denser air of the moon?
One wonders what it's exact chemical makeup - and impurities or compounds - are.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
1) Suggest a possible discovery of liquid water out there
...
2) Make allusion to possibility of life emerging there
3) ???
4) Grant Funding!
Well, the avian-human transmission of influenza was actually discovered by a research scientist who wanted an excuse to go surfing in Australia, so he proposed a grant to study if seabirds were a reservoir for influenza that infects humans.
Turns out they were. Plus, he got some good surf in.
So, maybe we should investigate the surfing potential of this moon, and maybe we'll discover a cure for cancer
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The editors changed my story link. My original submission had http://www.ciclops.org/ which has not only the press-release but several supporting images which might be of interested. Granted, our server is feeling the load pretty badly at the moment, but that'll probably ease up in a little while.
He's had a banner running on this for several hours before /.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
It's oil. Now we can get our petrol without having to rely on those unstable sources like Canada.
The current theory is found in this link
They reported the same stuff about a year ago. Water mixed with ammonia is heated by an unstable crust and ejects into space at superheated temperatures. This keeps the surface relatively smooth. What, are they now MORE convinced that this is water?
Speaking as someone who worked this: no we didn't. We knew that there was a plume earlier but as far as we knew it was warm ice that produced it. And that wasn't a year ago that we announced the discovery of the plume, either.
The new measurements suggest that there too much water vapor in the plume to be warm ice and it almost has to be liquid water.
Also, there is no detection of ammonia so far.
If you look at a temperature map of Enceladus, it's still quite cold, perhaps 100 degrees Kelvin. With virtually no pressure, it's enough to cause evaporation and the formation of water. There's a good write-up here.
So, don't expect to see exotic creatures swimming about. It might end up being a great place to mine for water, however, supporting future colonies of Saturn. The moon has virtually no gravity, so you could practically throw it off the surface (well, not really - the escape velocity is 212 m/s).
So say there are organisms that live on Saturn's moon. My fear is that they are extremely efficient at utilizing resources since they probably don't have many resources there. If we all of a sudden bring them back to earth where the resources for are that much higher then how do we know they won't spread unstopably and destroy us all?
I for one, welcome our Cassinian Microbial Overlords.
...
Well, with organics and methane, perhaps, but perhaps they use RNA and are Cassinian Viral Overlords? For all we know, they could already have an array of BSD devices built with buckyball technology that operate inside the liquids, and are merely waiting for an unsuspecting crew to land
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Good point. Let's alert the President and he can declare war against said organisms since they might have WMDs. Or Oil. I'm sure one of those two things will get his attention ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Pluto is made of solid matter. The Earth is made of solid matter (it least its surface has a large solid component). There are computers on Earth. So maybe there are computers on Pluto. I vote that we allocate funds to NASA to research this hypothesis.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
I remember seeing a doco about one of Neptune's moons (I forget which, it was at least 5 years ago).
;-)
That moon had oceans of Nitrogen, with a frozen nitrogen surface. Scientists thought that the energy to thaw the oceans came from the elliptical orbit of the moon. this caused variations in gravity which contorted the core of the moon - producing heat.
Pretty awesome, IMO..
If we found life on this moon, and our probe destryed it all, it likely had a very fragile grip anyway, and likely wouldn't have lasted. Also, if we found life on this moon, it would indicate that life in space is likely common. That being the case, one moon in the long run would not be a huge deal. This of course is a worse case scenerio. You can be sure that this worse case scenerio would also lead to massive support by the public to increase space exploration.
Now I can ship myself and a ton of robots and equipment there and begin to fufill my evil plans...
I will have the first wave of gas staions, drive-throughs, and Starbucks on the spacelanes and secure a monopoly all for myself!
Bwahahaha! Monopoly! I feel like Bill Gates...
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"...might have WMDs. Or Oil."
You mean might be WMDs. Or Oil.
I say it's the whole Enceladus!
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
WMD stands for Weapons of Mass Destruction. It's already plural, there is no need to put an 's' on the end. In doing so, you have effectively said Weapons of Mass Destructions.
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WMD stands for Weapons of Mass Destruction. It's already plural, there is no need to put an 's' on the end. In doing so, you have effectively said Weapons of Mass Destructions.
Well, since these are from biotic lifeforms using organic buckyball circuitry on a distant moon, they're better than your usual Weapons of Mass Destruction, on the order of a gazillion times more power, and are thus Weapons of Mass Destructions.
Now, given that their are readily available supplies of ice, I suggest we get our mutated space trout to use their frickin lasers to find some ice cubes, so that we can set up an iced coffee stand on the moon, in anticipation of record profits from all the visiting spaceships.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Less powerful organizations can simply refuse to pass on any more embargoed stories to the individual who breaks the embargo; it's a judgement call as to whether that's going to be worthwhile.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
They already have water parks.
Enchiladas is my favorite moon of Saturn.
Assuming they are the things I sometimes get at Taco Bell.
Meh.
See - the water on this little moon is boiling away due to "Global Warming" so this is yet ANOTHER example of the failed Eco policy of this administration!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
From the Space.com article on the same subject:
The moon is only the third other body in the Solar System - Earth, Jupiter's moon Io and possibly Neptune's moon Triton are the others - known to have active volcanic processes, researchers said.
Volcanoes are hot and provide energy.
Energy and water are two very important things life needs to survive. This puts Enceladus towards the top of the list of places where life may also exist in our solar system.
In the spring of 2008, scientists will get another chance to look at Enceladus when Cassini flies within 350 kilometers (approximately 220 miles)
Actually, the new altitude for that flyby will be 25 km. Boo Yah!
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Don't know why we are looking for water and air. Wouldn't it be possible for X (life?) Y (live?) without these things. Isnt it we (life on earth) adapted ourselves to consume these things air, water, air-in-water, etc.
... especially when Cassini gets shot down by the Enceladians because it's interfering with their military frequencies and -- more importantly -- their satellite TV transmissions.
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Actually, the news in this case:
The most simple and common combination of two extremely common elements might exist on a large rock, very far away, in a form that shouldn't be possible based on our current understanding of the conditions there.
You might not find that to be interesting, and may even be in the majority, but for people who are interested in that field, possibly finding something completely unexpected (not the water part, but the liquid state) is pretty interesting.
Am I suggesting that people leap up and down and hoot and holler over this? No, but I'm not suggesting that people should treat this as just "more of the same" either.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
NASA is waiting to release information about the discovered life forms, but only after they are able to determine whether they know about Jesus or not.
What good is galactic life if it isn't saved? All Marklarks will be marklarred.
Brian
Why are we trying to find water on other planets when we 80% of our planet is covered in it?
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Sorry....wrong forum..
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