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Cassini 'Tastes' Organic Material at Enceladus
Riding with Robots writes "As previously reported, the robotic spacecraft Cassini recently flew through the mysterious geyser plumes at Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. Today, NASA released the preliminary results of the flyby, including some intriguing findings, such as organic materials 20 times denser than expected and relatively high temperatures along the fissures where the geysers emanate. 'These spectacular new data will really help us understand what powers the geysers. The surprisingly high temperatures make it more likely that there's liquid water not far below the surface,' said one mission scientist."
Does someone want to tell me what definition of "organic" they are using, which can be found in comets and moon geysers?
"Compounds containing carbon".
That's all it means, really. Methane is a common one.
The enemies of Democracy are
or to be more precise by citing wikipedia:
Organic chemistry is a specific discipline within chemistry which involves the scientific study of the structure, properties, composition, reactions, and preparation (by synthesis or by other means) of chemical compounds consisting primarily of carbon and hydrogen, which may contain any number of other elements, including nitrogen, oxygen, the halogens as well as phosphorus, silicon and sulfur.
it should be noted however that otherwise "organic" compounds containing boron or silicon are often not characterized as being organic, usually they are referred to as being part of organometallic chemistry. th is even though boron and silicon are not strictly metallic, they are in fact semiconductors.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
According to wiktionary, both definitions are correct. As for this article, they are referring to carbon based material. Or so we hope.
It is too close to Saturn and in too stable an orbit.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I thought the "tasting" was a bust...
Only one instrument had problems. The others worked.
Table-ized A.I.
Just to be picky, you don't actually need hydrogen. I reckon most chemists would count hexafluorobenzene as organic. Even with just carbon and oxygen, benzene-1,2,3,4,5,6-hexacarboxylic acid trianhydride (C12O9) would be classed as organic.
A better definition might be, "Contains carbon, does not contain metals (inc. semimetals)", with carbon dioxide and carbonate excluded for historical reasons" :).