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Liquid Lakes On Saturn's Moon Confirmed
Riding with Robots writes "Scientists have been using the robotic spacecraft Cassini to explore what looked to be large lakes of hydrocarbons on the surface of Saturn's planet-sized moon Titan. But they couldn't be entirely sure that the features were actually liquid lakes, and not simply very smooth, solid material. Now, new findings seem to confirm that the observations really do show extensive seas of liquid ethane and other hydrocarbons. In fact, Titan seems to have an entire 'water' cycle of ethane evaporation, rain and rivers."
FTA: "[T]hese particles form a ubiquitous hydrocarbon haze that hinders the view."
Sounds just like LA.
Please tell me that all these rovers on Mars were just there to train for the real thing on Titan.
No seriously, picture how awesome it would be to explore Titan with rovers. This place is probably the one place in the Solar system that has the most in common with our planet! The fact that it still has rivers and liquid lakes makes it so much more interesting than Mars, plus it has a thick atmosphere (5 times our atmosphere on the surface) we could probably send a UAV there or a blimp.
You just got troll'd!
Does anyone know if Titan is in tidal lock with Saturn? Anyone know if there exists a list of which moons are in tidal lock and which aren't?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
No, Venus's surface is a desert. It'd be hard to get a river of metal anyway: only a few metals are liquid on its surface and not even the extremely abundant ones like iron.
Excellent presentation on the moons of Saturn by Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini mission imaging team at the 2007 TED conference. (video)
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/carolyn_porco_flies_us_to_saturn.html
Other than burning hydrocarbons, what would you do with them?
TFA says that theres methane, ethane and other light hydrocarbons. You can make CFCs, HCFCs, HFCs and that kind of fun stuff with methane and ethane, but to make polymers you need ethylene or other hydrocarbons with double or triple bonds.
It probably wouldn't be feasible to transport hydrocarbons from Titan back to Earth for consumption here, the energy costs alone would be astronomical; that and the whole climate change and tendancy to move away from hydrocarbons... The only thing I can see this being "useful" for is if we wanted a "refueling station" in space where we could just load up a spaceship with what is essentially natural gas. The only problem would be finding oxygen to combust it with...
I'm critical, not cynical...
Before anyone comes up with the idea to mine the hydrocarbonates on Titan to overcome the oil and energy crisis on Earth, hold your breath!
The energy necessary to accelerate the mined hydrocarbonates enough to transfer them to Earth is higher than the actual energy equivalent you get by burning the hydrocarbonates. That's because you would have to accelerate the Titan-oil from 9.7 km/sec (orbital speed of Saturn) to 29.7 km/sec (orbital speed of Earth).
Anyone else read the headline as:
Liquid Snake On Saturn's Moon Confirmed
Oh my god! A new MGS Game!
"the energy costs alone would be astronomical" ba dum tis
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
There's our chance to lower the gas price and test if the Global warming is a myth. Import it from Saturn.
What? Are you saying you want to try to burn ethane gas instead of gasoline? I guess you could, though I wouldn't want to be anywhere near ethane storage if a leak was suspected - mixtures of 3% ethane in atmospheric air can be explosive.
And of course that's ignoring how much energy and money would be expended to try to bring it to earth from Saturn.
On another tought, how about a refuelling station there for space exploration ?
Are you planning to burn the ethane? If so, then you would still need to bring oxygen with you, as there might not be any of it there. Unless you want to try to use it as a propellant on its own...
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pvt: Hey, do you think it's safe?
sgt: Don't worry, Geeblort don't surf!
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I thought we've always had beaten into our heads that hydrocarbons, and oil and gas in particular were the result of decaying biomass from dinosaurs. So, where did these hydrocarbons come from? Was Titan an outpost for some spacefaring dino species, that got wiped out in a strange intergalactic plague? Or is there a much more sane, reasonable answer that I just haven't seen yet?
Heretic! Everyone knows that ethane boils at 212 degrees Ethanheit, just as it freezes at 32 degrees E. 100 E is just a hot day in Titan-Texas.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The first manned mission to Titan ended tragically today as one of the astronauts stepped out onto the surface and lit up a cigarette.
You'd need oxygen for that.
You just got troll'd!
Not "invade". Sheesh, keep to the script why dontcha?!
Act 1: Locate & Destroy Secret Inter-planetary WMDs
Act 2: Er, forget that, we never said that, we meant; Liberate oppressed Saturnians
Act 3: Confuse Saturn For Something Jupiter Did - Meh, they're all gas-giants aren't they?
Act 4: Ooh, fancy that, you have oil? That we did not know.
Act 5: Damn Ungrateful Tentacle-heads
32-212 is equally nonsensical to everybody, except maybe an octopus.
I think that the Germans would have something to say about that :)
IIRC, Farenheit used the word "degrees" and thus wasn't worried about a 10-based system. The boiling point of water wasn't known yet, so he used some points that he knew to be constant. Icy salt water (well, ammonium cloride) was known to remain constant, so he used that for zero. Icy pure water was known to remain constant, so he used that for 32. The human body was known to be constant, so he used that for 96. Why he didn't use 0, 1, and 3 is beyond me... maybe he felt like he needed more resolution. I think one theory is that he originally picked 12 - a number that humans seem to like. Later, for whatever reason, he then sub-divided the scale with 8ths. Another is that he just built his scale by quadrupling a previous 0-60 scale and re-calibrating it.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Don' free teh Titans. Perseus is dead.
I drank what? -- Socrates
All the articles mention ethane being the product of methane "broken" by sunlight, it is actually methane CH4 having it's H knocked away by a sunlight reaction to make a methyl CH3 radical and joining with another CH3 to make ethane C2H6. I guess you can call that "broken" into ethane.
Given that the above reaction has a byproduct of H*, I guess there is an open question if it can somehow combine with the Nitrogen. For example, if you have some natural process of natural Nitrogen fixation (breaking the triple bond of N2 so it could be combined with H), it seems to me that there is at least some chance of life. Unfortunatly, at a very low temperature, this seems like it would be tough to do. But if you had a way to make ammonia (maybe lightning?), then it seems mightly likely that something could use this highly energetic molecule as a basis for life. Other than that, it seem like it's mostly a hydrocarbon stew...
Many folks think that simple, but highly energetic molecules like ammonia are needed for life. This is basically because it seems hard to evolve in an environment where free uncontrolled energy (like direct ultraviolet light which is what is making all that ethane from methane) is probably tearing down any molecules (like protiens or dna) which proto-life is carefully putting together, so you likely need a small molecule to transfer/store energy from where it is collected to somewhere more protected where you can use it to make more complicated molecules. Of course many folks could be wrong and something else might work just as well.
Wow, that didn't last long.
+5, Truth