The Mystery of Saturn's Atmosphere

eldavojohn writes "Scientists are being forced to rethink theories on why Saturn's upper atmospheric temperature is hotter than can be explained by absorbed sunlight. 'This unexplained "energy crisis" represents a major gap in our understanding of these planets' atmospheres,' the scientists write. 'We need to re-examine our basic assumptions about planetary atmospheres and what causes the observed heating.'"

Comments

Mandatory GW

[Oligonicella]

"...a major gap in our understanding of these planets' atmospheres..."

But, we understand ours .

Re: Mandatory GW

[Black Parrot]

> But, we understand ours .

If you read the article you'll find that "these planets" refers to the gas giants. It's a specific phenomenon with as-yet unknown causes, not a general problem with understanding atmospheres.

Re:Mandatory GW

[DarkSideofOZ]

Actually, we STILL do not fully understand ours as of yet.

Besides, the high tempuratures on Saturn can be explained easily, Star Jones unleashed massive anal born methane attacks on the planet while doing non-stop Barrel Rolls fueled by the only food that could survive the long trip or a nuclear winter, Twinkies.

Re:Mandatory GW

[blazematrix]

I wonder why any scientist would have any presumptions about anything off our world. Example, Gamma ray bursts, if the burst is omni in all directions, it blows the hell out of the theory of relativity so scientist bottle up the gamma ray burst as a single point cone and assume all the gamma ray burst are pointed at us.

Re:Mandatory GW

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, your complaint is that scientists have a current model which agrees with our existing experience in favor of a second model for which there is no evidence, specifically disagrees with our existing experience, and is (at least at this time) completely unfalsifiable.

Re:Mandatory GW

[delt0r]

I would aggree with you.

In fact I would go one step further, and predict that once we understand our atmosphere we will be able to show that we can never predict events of that atmosphere. Chaos and all that. So to double the predive accuracy or time length you need exponetially more data. I predict that even with ultra addvanced mesurement methods and supercomputers we still won't have a good weather forcast past 1 month.

I still wonder why so many put so much faith in our gloabal warming prediction when our ablity to predict anything is rather poor. Especially the weather.

Unlike modding on /. which is a truly stochastic process with no hidden varables. ;)

Re:Mandatory GW

[PietjeJantje]

99 out of 100 scientists and everybody outside the USA think otherwise. I'm sure it's conspiracy, so I'm awaiting your scientific evidence that will make you that 1 guy that puts it all right.

"I still wonder why so many put so much faith in our gloabal warming prediction when our ablity to predict anything is rather poor."

Not only prediction, the prediction is the result of historical fact:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Note that such an increase in temperature in such a small period of time has nothing to do with our understanding of Ice Ages, the athmosphere of gas giants, the effects of year-long oil industry propaganda and campaign funding, or the weather forecast on Fox.

Re:Mandatory GW

[blazematrix]

Paradigm & Fear

Re:Mandatory GW

[bricko]

So, will someone actually say we dont know ka-ka about what is going on...and move on. Or as someone stated below...is it all the Saturn SUV's that is causing this....

Re:Mandatory GW

[delt0r]

Well first off I was OT. So i wasn't really expecting a reply. But since you did.....

99 out of 100 scientists and everybody outside the USA think otherwise. I'm sure it's conspiracy, so I'm awaiting your scientific evidence that will make you that 1 guy that puts it all right. Interesting "fact". You made it up based on what the popular media report I think. Guess what real scientists are not anything like that. Not even close. I could link to about 100-200 papers i have I on the topic since I use to work in the feild (more or less). But hay I was making a prediction! I intend to quote my own peer reviewed paper on the topic soon enough.

Not only prediction, the prediction is the result of historical fact: I wasn't talking about what has happened, but what will happen. Oh the planet will warm. How the hell can you get more vauge. The climate has never reamined constant. EVER. Futhermore Wikipedia is not a source of any scientific standing. If you want to get all "quote your source" quote a real source first.

If you have stuided historical climate and climate models you would know there is considrable doubt on the mechinisims that produce historical climate events. And knowing the past in a chaotic system does not improve your ablity to predict the future of the system.

Re: Mandatory GW

[tassii]

There are winds moving at 1000 mph and it doesn't occur to anyone that there might be some friction generating heat?

Re:Mandatory GW

[Anonymous Coward]

So, have there been any single gamma ray bursts that came from every direction?

Re:Mandatory GW

[Woundweavr]

How about
-Previous predictions regarding global temperature and glacial melting have come true.
-Complete and full understanding is not necessary to make general large-scale predictions. Newton didn't understand Relativity but that doesn't mean he couldn't predict where the apple was going. A complete understanding of the human genome is not necessary to associate missing chromosomes with major problems.
-The underlying science of global warming does not require complex interactions. More CO2= more heat retained. The fundamental science isn't extremely complex and the evidence is overwhelming.

Re:Mandatory GW

[delt0r]

-The underlying science of global warming does not require complex interactions. More CO2= more heat retained. The fundamental science isn't extremely complex and the evidence is overwhelming. The question is how much will it warm. Now its a complicated question. Infact one we can't answer with any proper relaiblity. Global warming is not what i dispute. Its the cause that I question. In fact its the confidance of the cause by the media and ./ers that i question. Sure some scientist think its probable that it our contrabution to CO2. But thats a long way from evidance or proof.

Its interesting that you bring up newton. A 3 body system is in fact chaotic. We have good tools but the predictive power of obital mechanics falls in the same catagory. Fluid dynamics that governs the oceans (poorly understood and the dominate driver of long term climate) and the atmosphere are derived pulely from netwon laws of motion (ok a little thermodynamics as well).

Really this is a dam hard problem. Some of the claims are just to precise to be creidable. When you read the original source you find that things really arn't as simple or as certine as they "popular" versions claims.

Re: Mandatory GW

[ultranova]

There are winds moving at 1000 mph and it doesn't occur to anyone that there might be some friction generating heat?

Since winds are usually caused by heat differences in various parts of atmosphere, the question remains: where does the heat come from ?

Re: Mandatory GW

[tassii]

Wind is mostly caused by pressure differentials... air rushing from high pressure to low pressure. While heat is one reason for a pressure differential, its not the only reason.

Re:Mandatory GW

[An Onerous Coward]

You really, really don't sound like the sort of person who could get a "peer reviewed paper" published on climate change.

You don't seem to understand the chaos theory you rely on, especially the difference between predicting small-scale events and long-term trends. The difference between weather and climate has been beaten to death in this forum, so I'll just limit my commentary to stating that your demand for a good thirty day forecast strikes me as irrelevant.

You say that climate is always changing, and that's true. But you're only arguing against a rather naive and simplistic view that the environment is entirely static, which no informed person on any side of the global warming debate shares (read: strawman). Having said that, it's clear that we've had about ten thousand years of relative stability, followed by a century of abrupt warming that coincides with mankind pumping billions of tons of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. While certainly there is such a thing as coincidence, no alternative explanation can compete with the anthropogenic theory. Solar forcing is often proposed, but it only manages to account for a small fraction of the total.

Scientists know full well that they're dealing with a chaotic system when they're looking at the climate. But the climate has been reasonably stable over recent history, and that stability has been very good for human activity. Chaotic systems often fall into regions of stability, but they can be knocked out by external influences (say, pouring billions of tons of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere). So if we know nothing else about the climate (as you want to lead us to believe) that only leads us to conclude that we're better off not messing with it so brazenly, because we don't know where it will end up or how easy it will be to adapt to the new conditions.

You want to convince us that "real science" doesn't do consensus, and that the media has been painting a false picture of emerging scientific agreement. I would argue the opposite: that the consensus among active researchers is far stronger than the media usually portrays. Two things are happening here. First, the media both loves controversy and hates appearing one-sided, so if journalists believe that there might be two sides to the issue, they usually try to at least pay lip service to both. Second, entrenched industrial interests take advantage of this by paying a small, incestuous group of climate skeptics and policy organizations to cast doubt on the reality of global warming, its human origins, and the need to take political action to counter it.

In short, I would be unsurprised if 95% of the scientists actively doing climate research believed in the reality of anthropogenic global warming, and I would be skeptical of claims of robust disagreement. Industry forces have certainly tried to manufacture the illusion of deep disagreement in the past.

Re: Mandatory GW

[DiamondGeezer]

What are the others?

Re:Mandatory GW

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

It is easier when you can acquire data any time you wnat and drill for geological records going back thousands of years.

Re: Mandatory GW

[cluckshot]

Since every time I clobber this issue, some idiot calls me a troll and mods me through the floor I probably shouldn't answer but in the hope that there are some true scientific types out there.... I will post away.

The answer is really very simple and detailed explanations can be found in the discussion of the Plasma Universe. Thunderbolts has a good explanation.

Essentially the real issue is that the EM force rules the universe and all of the data coming back backs up the assertions of the Thunderbolts crew. The Einstein Special Relativity crowd who thinks gravity rules are just wrong. Sorry but they are. Special Relativity is a busted theory and it doesn't answer issues like the atmosphere temperature on Saturn. A busted theory is one that doesn't match reality. They don't match reality.

The issue of the heating of atmospheres and much more is a very serious issue. I wish we could get some seriously good science going here. There is a lot going on that needs good science. The IEEE thinks so as well and has opened a full discussion site for the discussion of the plasma universe. I hope it happens soon and the guys who disagree get back into science and quit trying the shout down routine.

In the mean time if you are moderating quit thinking that to bring this up is troll. It is actually quite informative.

Re:Mandatory GW

[cluelessTypeOfGuy]

Am I missing something, or is this not supposed to be "insightful"?

Re:Mandatory GW

[cnettel]

The fact that a 3 body system is chaotic doesn't mean that the mass will suddenly annihilate or change its total mass/energy. The exact positions might be unknown, but not being able to time-step doesn't mean that you can't say useful things about the end result. I can say that we'll all be dead in 200 years with what's probably pretty good accuracy, while not being able to account for our future lives in any detail at all.

Re: Mandatory GW

[nebbian]

I went to the thunderbolts site, however it doesn't seem to contain an explanation of the "Plasma Universe". Maybe it's there, but if so then surely you should have deep linked to the explanation?

Clip clop clip clop what's that under the bridge, Mr. Billy Goat Gruff?

I smell a troll.

Re:Mandatory GW

[loki_tiwaz]

chaos theory is the only theory that will never be busted, it is going to eventually take over from quantum theory imho. chaos works on every level it has been looked for and explains all systems with a mixture of entropy and order. everything else other than chaos theory is just trend finding. special relativity works for some things, but not others. the laws of thermodynamics have exceptions too. so does quantum theory, and string theory would probably do well to mix with wave mechanics and chaos theory being that so far it models nothing. well that's the mix of directions i see physics going anyway.

Re: Mandatory GW

[TapeCutter]

"A busted theory is one that doesn't match reality."

I couldn't agree more. "The electric universe" has been busted, changing it's name to "the plasma universe" won't help.

Re: Mandatory GW

[Anonymous Coward]

Grilled stuffed Burritos.

Re:Mandatory GW

[rbanffy]

I wonder what catagory of spell checker you use. Its relaiblity is a major contrabution to the quality of your text. Must be a dam good one.

Re: Mandatory GW

[Dabido]

That friction might be from a big black monolith thingy. I saw one orbiting Jupiter. :-)

Re: Mandatory GW

[Anonymous Coward]

That's definitely a hot, and possibly wet, reason.

Re:Mandatory GW

[delt0r]

First, the media both loves controversy and hates appearing one-sided What media is that! The popular "media" I see and read is about as one sided as you can get.

In short, I would be unsurprised if 95% of the scientists actively doing climate research believed in the reality of anthropogenic global warming Talk to some and find out. Pop in to the nearset conference on the issue (if you are in the US they are very expensive however). Count me as a gloabal warming beliver and "humans are the Cause" doubter. Even better read some of the papers already published in peer rewived jornals. Its not as clear cut as it seems.

You really, really don't sound like the sort of person who could get a "peer reviewed paper" published on climate change. And in your opinion what does some who can get a paper out sound like? I have only 3 papers published in peer reviewed jornals and 1 book chapter that was also peer reviewed. But the postdoc sould bump that up.

Re:Mandatory GW

[delt0r]

Unfortunatly the climate prediction does not lend itself to such easy predictions. There will be a ice age in the future. There will be warm periods inbetween. But what we are trying to do is say that it will warm buy 2 deg by 2100 and that we casued 80% of that warming from CO2. Thats quite a specific statement.

Re:Mandatory GW

[delt0r]

Aspell and my Wife. MS word can't get close to the word I'm atempting to spell, niether can OO. My spellchecker plugins don't seem to work. You'll get over it.

When I started to use a spellchecker on my email, a few of my workmates asked me to turn it off. Becasue they liked to have a laugh about my spelling.

Re:Mandatory GW

[An Onerous Coward]

>>> First, the media both loves controversy and hates appearing one-sided

>> What media is that! The popular "media" I see and read is about as one sided as you can get.

You're right, the two of us do seem to be getting our news from completely different sources. The media I read is more than happy to bring up the views of climate skeptics like Fred Singer and Willie Soon, and their bought-and-paid-for-by-Exxon advocacy groups like the George C. Marshall Institute, CATO, and the Heritage Foundation.

>>> In short, I would be unsurprised if 95% of the scientists actively doing climate research believed in the reality of anthropogenic global warming

>> Talk to some and find out. Pop in to the nearset conference on the issue (if you are in the US they are very expensive however). Count me as a gloabal warming beliver and "humans are the Cause" doubter. Even better read some of the papers already published in peer rewived jornals. Its not as clear cut as it seems.

Personally, I don't have access to enough data points to convince myself one way or another. I'd like to see an objective poll (read: not funded by the Heritage Foundation) comparing and contrasting opinions from three groups: the overall population, people with a Masters or higher in any scientific discipline, and active climate researchers. My suspicion is that, the more familiar people are with the material, the more accepting they are of anthropogenic global warming.

My reason for this: When climate skeptics cite their own expert witnesses and papers, they usually cite non-peer-reviewed material and experts in marginally related fields like astrophysics, geology, physics, engineering, etc. When you hear of letters and statements signed by "thousands of scientists skeptical of climate change", you see the same pattern: almost none of the signers have strong credentials in the most relevant fields.

>>> You really, really don't sound like the sort of person who could get a "peer reviewed paper" published on climate change.

>> And in your opinion what does some who can get a paper out sound like? I have only 3 papers published in peer reviewed jornals and 1 book chapter that was also peer reviewed. But the postdoc sould bump that up.

My concern is that it doesn't sound like you have a very deep grasp of the chaos theory that you frequently rely on in your responses. As I mentioned earlier, you freely conflate weather models and climate models, which is understandable for a layman, but completely unforgivable for a climate scientist. Certainly, there is some overlap and interaction between the two types of models, but it's perfectly possible to be unable to create an accurate 30 day weather forecast, and yet able to create an accurate 30 year climate forecast.

I would be lying shamelessly if I said I was any sort of chaos theory expert myself. I'm just going with my own best understanding.

Out of curiosity, what is your PhD in, and what were the subjects of the three papers you've published?

Re:Mandatory GW

[rbanffy]

:-) OK. I give up.

Re:Mandatory GW

[blazematrix]

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/ bursts.html

If memory serves correctly

[Anonymous Coward]

Fisty Prost has a direct relation to weather patterns on celestial bodies.

=D

Now, forget your sense of humor and mod it down!

Re: If memory serves correctly

[Black Parrot]

> Fisty Prost has a direct relation to weather patterns on celestial bodies.

No, you're thinking of frosty pist.

Its all our fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok... who was out driving their SUV on Saturn?

Re:Its all our fault

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not exactly sure how things like greenhouse gases filter into this problem. Saturn has a cloudtop temperature of about 90K which means that it isn't going to be emitting much heat by Stefan's law which depends on the fourth power of temperature. But then again, Saturn only receives about 1% of the sunlight intensity that we get so it is not light we are shining a bright flashlight on an icecube--it is more like we are shining an extremely dim flashlight on an icecube which amplifies the importance of changes in things like greenhouse gases and emissivity.

One of the things that we can't ignore is the affect of spontaneous radioactive decay. If Saturn is just a ball of gas then it probably won't have very many heavy elements that can decay over time (heavy supernova remnants with half-lives in the billions of years like uranium). But if Saturn has a large hidden rocky core then it is certainly reasonable for it to have significant heat generation which would be insulated by the gases. Of course this is well known since it is what keeps the Earth warm (with the crust to insulate it from space).

Re:Its all our fault

[paj1234]

Thanks for your interesting post AC. However I could not help noticing that you should have written "the effect of spontaneous radioactive decay" not "affect". Generally speaking, when you affect something, you produce an effect upon it. http://www.englishforums.com/English/AffectEffect/ vdk/Post.htm

Re:Its all our fault

[khallow]

As I recall, there's significant contributions to the current heat of the Earth from the residual energy of formation (ie, all that junk colliding generates heat much which is still present) and tidal forces of the Moon and Sun.

Too darn hot

[sporkme]

Easy. It must be all the SUV's.

The corona of the sun is hotter than the surface or the core. Maybe they can examine the energies at work in the stellar phenomenon, as the gas giants are often referred to as "failed stars."

Re:Too darn hot

[sporkme]

--Wait. Hotter than the surface but not hotter than the core. The corona is one to three million degrees kelvin, the surface is around 5800 degrees, and the core is around 13 million degrees.

Re:Too darn hot

[BadEvilYoda]

But the sun (and other stars) have more mass than Jupiter and Saturn - that's why the pressure at the core was great enough to start nuclear fusion and "start" the sun at some point 5 billion years ago. Saturn and Jupiter, while they have hot cores under immense pressure and temperature (along with immense gravity), don't have high enough pressure (not enough mass) to kick the tires and start the fusion. So it may not be the same energy or processes at work, as fusion releases WAY more energy than just pressure and rotation alone. /"My God, it's full of stars" - Obligatory.

Re:Too darn hot

[Anonymous Coward]

...as the gas giants are often referred to as "failed stars."

Along with the contestants on American Idol, Star Search, America's got talent, etc....

We all can't be successful at everything we do!

Like my comedy writing career. Yep, that was my best material! Larry David I am NOT!

It's Saturday AM and I'm board, so I'd thought I'd type some really stupid jokes on /.

I'll go away now.

Sorry.

Re:Too darn hot

[rumith]

Particles in solar corona are accelerated by the magnetic field, and the process is more or less well modeled by now; gas giants do not possess that strong magnetic fields. One should note that it's the particles that originate in the core in fusion reactions and are emitted away; however, there are no fusion reactions in the cores of gas giants AFAIK, so we're talking about quasi stationary processes in the atmosphere. This difference is fundamental, and the analogy seems broken to me.

Re:Too darn hot

[Hawthorne01]

Didn't you read Slashdot yesterday? It's the dinosaur's fault!

Re:Too darn hot

[Iwanowitch]

Sorry to be pedantic here, but there is no such thing as 'degree kelvin'. 10 degrees Celsius = 50 degrees Fahrenheit = 283.15 Kelvin. It's minor, but important to know in some circles.

Re:Too darn hot

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to be pedantic here, but there is no such thing as 'degree kelvin'. 10 degrees Celsius = 50 degrees Fahrenheit = 283.15 Kelvin. It's minor, but important to know in some circles. The circles that judge you as "less worthy" based on some single obscure fact rather than the other obvious evidence of ones intelligence? In other words "Intellectual Snobs?"

Re:Too darn hot

[Anonymous Coward]

He had a Good side bar style point. You were the one that wasted space in the thread by wanting to call someone a snob.

Re:Too darn hot

[alexj33]

My friend, who is a PhD in Astronomy, gave me the canned answer when astronomers don't really know the real answer: "It must be the magnetic field."

Re:Too darn hot

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we sure that it's fusion happening there on and/or in the sun?

Once upon a time in history the sun was considered a giant burning ember like that from a conventional wood fire. Obviously the idea of it being a fusion reactor didn't appear before humans could conceive of the atom and the age of the atomic bomb.

The reason I even asked, is because I know there are plasma physicists who are claiming the sun is not a fusion engine but that observations fit better with known plasma physics and that astronomers are basically ignorant and arrogant assholes (my summary interpretation). I'm not an astronomer nor am I a plasma physicists so honestly I can't claim to know anything. But after reading a few of the electric universe theory's articles I tend to find it very plausible, more plausible IMO than conventional theories.

So really, how much of this is just an assumption that has been repeated often enough that it is now accepted as fact?

Re:Too darn hot

[rbanffy]

Dear Coward,

Showing proper knowledge is important for your argument to be considered. I reserve the right to consider anyone who doesn't know "Kelvin" is a unit as not properly educated and, therefore, under-qualified to make comments on Physics.

With so many incompetent people making such bold statements about Climatology, there is little time to be wasted with what can only be considered as layman ramblings.

Would you consider someone who doesn't know Mexican is not a language or who doesn't know when a fiscal year ends or that Pakistan is not an Arab country to be fit for Presidency?

Oh... Wait...

Re:Too darn hot

[StikyPad]

Sorry to be pedantic here, but kelvin is not capitalized, only its symbol, K. It's minor, but important to know in some circles.

My hypothesis...

[Black Parrot]

The Saturnians haven't invented Slashdot technology yet, so all their bull sessions generate high-energy hot air rather than low energy moderation packets.

Re:My hypothesis...

[Anonymous Coward]

Saturninans? Surely you mean the Ringmakers of Saturn! :O

http://www.unexplainable.net/artman/publish/articl e_2842.shtml

Saturn is a gas giant

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_giant

Saturn has a very hot core and is mostly gas so it will have convection ... I would not have supposed that solar heating would explain what's going on with Saturn's atmosphere. Am I missing something?

Re:Saturn is a gas giant

[Goaway]

Oh wow, convection! Thanks for pointing that out, I'm sure no planetary scientist had ever thought of that before!

"energy crisis"

[nurb432]

Why does everything have to be a damned 'crisis' these days?

1 - its pretty far away
2 - its been going on long then we have been around

I really dont think this qualify as a *crisis*

Re:"energy crisis"

[maxume]

If you study gas giants and you find out that your models don't match observations, it isn't that extreme to call it a crisis.

Re:"energy crisis"

[Cromac]

It's probably a crisis to academics who are convinced they're never wrong and have the answers to all of the universes mysteries.

Re:"energy crisis"

[Anonymous Coward]

crisis (kr'ss) Pronunciation Key
n. pl. crises (-sz)

      1.
                  1. A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point.
                  2. An unstable condition, as in political, social, or economic affairs, involving an impending abrupt or decisive change.
      2. A sudden change in the course of a disease or fever, toward either improvement or deterioration.
      3. An emotionally stressful event or traumatic change in a person's life.
      4. A point in a story or drama when a conflict reaches its highest tension and must be resolved.

Since this incident represents a turning point in our understanding of Saturn's atmosphere, it seems like its status as a crisis is an objective fact independent of the personality flaws of academics.

the mystery of man'kind' committing life0cide

[Anonymous Coward]

aka: when way too much is never enough.

from previous post: many demand corepirate nazi execrable stop abusing US

we the peepoles?

how is it allowed? just like corn passing through a bird's butt eye gas.

all they (the felonious nazi execrable) want is... everything. at what cost to US?

for many of US, the only way out is up.

don't forget, for each of the creators' innocents harmed (in any way) there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/US as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile will not be available after the big flash occurs.

'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi life0cidal glowbull warmongering execrable.

some of US should consider ourselves very fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate.

it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc....

as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis.

concern about the course of events that will occur should the corepirate nazi life0cidal execrable fail to be intervened upon is in order.

'do not be dismayed' (also from the manual). however, it's ok/recommended, to not attempt to live under/accept, fauxking nazi felon greed/fear/ego based pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking hypenosys.

consult with/trust in yOUR creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?

Re:the mystery of man'kind' committing life0cide

[skoaldipper]

Your ideas intrigue me and I'd like to subscribe to your Christian Science monitor.

Re:the mystery of man'kind' committing life0cide

[FooAtWFU]

I really can't tell whether this guy is serious, or if he's secretly an 3v17 capitalist pretending to be an incomprehensible environmentalist so as to discredit his political opponents' positions.

Re:the mystery of man'kind' committing life0cide

[skoaldipper]

Yeah, brother. I don't know either to be quite honest. My guess would be that he was probably receiving messages while holding hands around a candle lit medium table, typing on his laptop in between "messages".

Space Is The Place

[ettlz]

So is this the real reason why Sun Ra came to Earth?

Re:Space Is The Place

[MechaShiva]

Flamebait? If I had mod points, I'd help you out more directly.

If nothing else, maybe this'll help. Nuclear war truly is a mother fucker.

Re:Space Is The Place

[ettlz]

Flamebait?

Yeah, I didn't realise just how many Saturnian members of the Angel race hung out around here.

5 billion years ago?

[Ogre332]

How can the sun be 5 billion years old when the universe is only 6000 years old?

Re:5 billion years ago?

[Seto89]

You are working in different units. 6000 god years is about 12 900 000 000 Sun years, which is not that different from the values we predict from the speed of the expansion of the Universe.
Religion is not wrong, it's just using different meanings of words and God's special units (GSU) rather than SI units.

Re:5 billion years ago?

[cakefool]

god reuses parts, like you do with HD's and RAM.

Friction

[faqmaster]

It's friction from all the wind.

Re:Friction

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, wind friction heats the air, then the warmed air creates wind! Brilliant!

Oh noes!

[Quiet_Desperation]

Photino birds!

The answer is simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's hot gas next to Uranus

Atmosphere warming?

[albertost]

ask Al Gore!

Re:Atmosphere warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent funny

Oh, No!!!

[$0.02]

Think about dinosaurs there. By the time we reach Saturn they may all get extinct.

Ah but they have ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a little light reading for you.
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm04/fm04-sessions/fm0 4_T42A.html
Rather than sniping from the bushes, how about stretching your mind a bit and providing a cogent explanation.

Chemical reactions

[foniksonik]

Seems like some simple calculations of what types of chemical reactions may be taking place in there, based on our knowledge of constituent elements that make up the atmosphere, could be made and levels of energy resulting could be inferred. I don't imagine there's some mystery heat engine there... just some extra chemical activity that hasn't been accounted for.

Re:Chemical reactions

[radtea]

I don't imagine there's some mystery heat engine there... just some extra chemical activity that hasn't been accounted for.

Planetary chemical reactions generally run to completion on relatively short timescales compared to the age of the solar system. For example, if Earth were deprived of life there would be no free oxygen left in its atmosphere after a million years or so due to weathering.

Giant planets are mostly hydrogen and helium, so there isn't a lot to work with chemically. There have been suggestions that ongoing fractionation of gases, with the helium sinking to the bottom and thereby releasing its gravitational potential energy, might be a source of the giant planet's excess heat. But even that explanation is a bit marginal, as the lifetime for such fractionation is comparable to the age of the solar system.

See!!!

[element-o.p.]

Global warming *isn't* our fault after all!!!

Saturn's Polar Hot Spot

[pln2bz]

It's interesting to note that the polar hot spot on Saturn is one of the Electric Universe's testable hypotheses:

[Concerning the polar "hot spot" on Saturn]: "Its compactness is due to the electromagnetic pinch effect where it [electric current] enters Saturn's atmosphere. The hot spot's behavior should be variable, like that on Venus, and correlated with the appearance of Saturn's ring spokes, which are a visible manifestation of a heightened equatorial discharge in that part of Saturn's Faraday motor circuit." [Saturn's Strange Hot Spot Explained http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=1xz2g6 tn ]

Wikipedia, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't anyone recall the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism? It's like people just suddenly forgot it existed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin-Helmholtz_mech anism

You'll also find links to it from the Wikipedia pages on Jupiter and, you guessed it, Saturn.

Sheesh.

An easy answer...

[mtec]

Examine Julia Roberts in her prime, now there's something that was hotter than can be explained. I mean, just look at any one part of her and you think... meh. But pull the camera back, take her all in at once and boom! - more hotness than can be explained! Once they figure out Julia - mystery's over.

Re:An easy answer...

[Xyrus]

Julia Roberts was never covered in hot corn nuts. Therefore she will never be hotter than Mila Jovivich covered in hot corn nuts.

~X~

I figured it out!

[Anonymous Coward]

I had left the sun shade open for the moon-roof in my Saturn ION.

I know

[Tablizer]

It's all those ring tourists from Andromeda. Sucks having a pretty planet in yur solar system.

Gravitational Contraction

[Anonymous Coward]

One source of energy in addition to the sun is the gravitational potential energy of the material of the planet itself. As more massive substances fall deeper into the planet, potential energy is turned into heat energy.

Exactly how this energy gets into the upper atmosphere is an interesting question, but it isn't as much of a mystery as the article tries to make it out to be.

Gravity Rules, EM Drools!

[s388]

"the EM force rules the universe and all of the data coming back backs up the assertions of the Thunderbolts crew. The Einstein Special Relativity crowd who thinks gravity rules are just wrong. Sorry but they are. Special Relativity is a busted theory and it doesn't answer issues like the atmosphere temperature on Saturn."

Special Relativity also doesn't explain the price of tea in China either, but I've never heard that cited as a disadvantage.

I've also never heard any "relativity crowd" claiming that "gravity RULES" or that "EM drools" or any other similar nonsense that you just made up. I'm not a physicist and even I know that gravity is extremely weak relatively, no pun intended, and would never explain-- and isn't supposed to explain-- the vast majority of phenomena in the universe. You know, like sub-atomic ones, or the thermal mechanics of every atmosphere (let alone a single one), or good web design.

You're looking for "true scientific types" and "some seriously good science" to swoop in and justify or expand on what you've claimed, but you don't seem to be a practitioner yourself.

http://www.thunderbolts.info/synopsis2.htm

Practically every passage of that page is problematic at best and absurd at worst. It's the kind of thing that's so foolish it makes you do a confused a tap-dance just to address the tangled web of stupidity. Here I go anyway: evidently no one pointed out that a force-like phenomenon keeps us attached to the earth-- we don't float away-- with no electricity or magnetism involved. And that when we formalize the relationship between people/cannonballs, the same principles (OF GRAVITY) easily and uncontroversially explain many cosmic phenomenon whose parts are billions of times more massive than people and even than our planet.

"Close approaches of planets led to powerful electric arcing between planets and moons. All rocky bodies in the solar system show the massive scars of these kinds of electrical events."

Interplanetary electric arcs? Come on.

Re:Gravity Rules, EM Drools!

[sbohmann]

Wait a minute.

It is true that electron clouds form pretty much all of the visible universe, in so far as whatever we see, we do so as an effect of electron-electron interactions carried out by photons.

The solidity of solid ojects is due to electricity, too.

Mass and gravity are more or less the only non-electrical features things expose to us in everyday life.

Of course, in the cosmic scale, electric interactions rarely occur, due to the fact that planets and stuff, massive as they are, do not carry huge charges with them. (Or else our hair would be always standing straight up)

Re:Gravity Rules, EM Drools!

[s388]

Yeah, granted. Maybe I wasn't clear about "EM drools." I didn't mean that EM was negligible or contemptible in the slightest-- just aping the (opposite) caricature of the parent.

Wait....

[argStyopa]

"We need to re-examine our basic assumptions about planetary atmospheres and what causes the observed heating"

Pish-tosh. I watched An Inconvenient Truth and am certain that we already know everything there is to know about atmospheric science.

Or is it?

[The Monster]

someone who doesn't know Mexican is not a language

You might find a lot of Spaniards who don't know that, just as you'd find a pretty good number of English who think that American qualifies as a foreign language.

Warmer? Less cold?

[StikyPad]

Scientists are being forced to rethink theories on why Saturn's upper atmospheric temperature is hotter than can be explained by absorbed sunlight.

While technically correct, using "hot/hotter" to describe -185C just seems wrong. Sure it's 88K over absolute 0, but still well below the freezing point of people, let alone their perception of hot.