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Probe Shows Jupiter Moon 'Puking' Into Space
Tablizer writes "The New Horizons probe caught the moon Io in the act of 'barfing' into space. A five-frame sequence from the New Horizons probe captured a beautiful plume of ash from Io's Tvashtar volcano. "Snapped by the probe's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) as the spacecraft flew past Jupiter earlier this year, this first-ever "movie" of an Io plume clearly shows motion in the cloud of volcanic debris, which extends 330 kilometers (200 miles) above the moon's surface ... The appearance and motion of the plume is remarkably similar to an ornamental fountain on Earth, replicated on a gigantic scale.""
It's probably just dizzy from all that spinning.
So... The demotion of Pluto has finally reached Jupiter?
One CS student VS 893 DOS games: Let's play oldies
So, why does the summary title and text use the terms "puking" and "barfing" when the article itself doesn't make any such references? Gratuitous? "Submitter's license"?
I mean, was that really necessary? Or is the story not interesting enough itself without toilet humor?
When did "puking" and "barfing" become scientific terms? Wouldn't "ejaculate" be a more appropriate term?
So which is it? Puking or barfing? The summary leaves me confused.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
...the slutty drunken sorority moon of Jupiter.
Step 1: Find a science story about a well-observed and described phenomenon. :) :) :)
Step 2: Add a purile, irrelevant adjective, one that will set you apart from the pack.
Step 3: Write it up. Hello, interwebz. Let's move some ads!
Step 4: News aggregate sites filter out the best from all the... oh wait, here comes Zonk. Go, go Slashdot!
Step 5: Profit!
It's full of puke.
put the distance in kilometers?
Not sure where you read what you read, but it is obvious that you did not RTFA, since from the article we learn...
... and although this is not the height of the volcano that is erupting, it points to structures on Io that are larger than anything here on earth.
...from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior_Solar_Syst em/Jupiter/Io ...or you might have read this though...
...which came from http://science.nasa.gov/NEWHOME/headlines/ast04oct 99_1.htm and only indicates that due to conditions on Io, a familiar geyser on earth would eject matter quite high. However, with this data from the article...
... we can safely infer that the volcanoes erupting on Io are not similar to earth geysers in size, rather only in how they erupt.
... in other words flat holes in the ground slightly similar to sinkholes. So personally, I wouldn't look forward to an eruption from the still active Loki, at a diameter of 125 miles. I mean, I wouldn't look forward to sitting ringside to that.
"Boosaule Mons, which at 18 kilometers (11 miles) is the highest mountain on Io and one of the highest mountains in the solar system, pokes above the edge of the disk on the right side."
You might have read this...
"Unlike most moons, Io has a "young" surface. Because there is so much volcanic activity, the surface is almost free of craters. Also, its volcanoes are quite unusual. Instead of erupting like a normal volcano, they erupt more like geysers do on earth."
"Io has lots of thermal areas just like Yellowstone," says JPL's Bill Smythe. "The volcanic plumes get most of the attention but there are probably also things like fumeroles and geysers. On a previous flyby the Particles and Fields instruments saw a deficit of energetic particles over Io where gas was probably coming out of the surface -- but no plumes were seen. We call this the 'stealth plume hypothesis.' The closest Earthly analog to what's happening would be a water geyser like Old Faithful. In fact, if you put Old Faithful on Io it would be about 37 km high!"
"the cloud of volcanic debris, which extends 330 kilometers (200 miles) above the moon's surface. Only the upper part of the plume is visible from this vantage point - the plume's source is 130 kilometers (80 miles) below the edge of Io's disk, on the far side of the moon."
Volcanoes on Io are rather different in general from their Earth cousins. From Wikipedia...
"Io's surface is dotted with volcanic depressions known as paterae. Paterae generally have flat floors bounded by steep walls. These features resemble terrestrial calderas, but it is unknown if they are produced through collapse over an emptied lava chamber as with their terrestrial cousins. One hypothesis suggests that these features are produced through the exhumation of volcanic sills, with the overlying material either being blasted out or integrated into the sill. Unlike similar features on Earth and Mars, these depressions generally do not lie at the peak of shield volcanoes and are normally larger, with an average diameter of 41 km (25½ mi), the largest being Loki Patera at 202 km (125½ mi)."
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -D. Adams
What you are seeing in this image is mostly sulfur and sulfur dioxide that has condensed out of the gas in the plume. There is also a mix of basaltic ash. The plume consists of gas and dust that escapes from an erupting lava curtain on the surface.
The Gish Bar Times - Blog covering Jupiter's moon Io