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Is Mimas Hiding Pac-Man?
cremeglace writes "Shaped into the likes of the Death Star of Star Wars fame by the giant crater Herschel, 396-kilometer-diameter Mimas was expected to have its warmest surface temperatures on the equator, where it was early afternoon. Instead, it was warmest in the morning (all of 92 K), giving rise in the science team's temperature-calibrated color scheme to a very large Pac-Man."
yes, yes it is. Thanks for asking.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
The crater looks like a pac-dot that he's about to eat.
And what's with all the questions for headlines recently?
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No, but Uranus is hiding Q*bert!
...is that this was meant to be an April Fools' Day hoax that was released early on accident. :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
They say the Cassini Program costs less -per bit of data sent- than an SMS.
If you've got some hard math on that, please post it.
Worst summary ever...
This space for rent, inquire within.
Would be interesting if other spectral bands show the same effect. My first thought would be that it is a difference in surface composition that causes the different heat retention mentioned in TFA. It still is an extremely weird shape for that, with that straight and rather sharp lines. Any ideas what could cause such a triangular boundary? Only thing that comes to my mind right now is that it looks like a bow wave, or a shock wave boundary.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Will the neighboring satellites turn blue and change direction?
That's no moon... oh wait, sorry, yes it is.
Is it just me, or do you hate it when people say "Is it just me..."?
... you're just holding the picture at the wrong angle.
[signature]
Too confusing; couldn't understand. So, what orientation does Mimas need to be in to make it early afternoon everywhere along the equator?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Cmdr. Taco is hitting the sauce before the sun is over the yard-arm this morning.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I had been wondering for years where he went.
I keep checking the date. It's not April 1st anywhere yet, is it?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Yes your right, I made a mistake. But what is it with Slashdoters/Geeks and not being able to explain yourself properly, that's at least as important as Grammar!
"Portion of this graph that looks like Pac-Man."
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
Lordy, we can't even RTFS?
Or are you claiming you've never heard of Mimas?
Please surrender you Geek Credentials NOW. Astronomy is not an optional affiliated specialization.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Please surrender you Geek Credentials
Whereas, as every Geek knows, grammar is an optional specialization.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
...Please insert coin to continue...
Until the skies turn blue...
Until the air of freedom strikes us...
The long-lost backstory on Pac-Man has its origins in space, too! Of course, every geek probably knows this already:
In 1976, Cosmonaut Nikolai Peckmann was sent alone to an orbiting space station for what would be called Mission Six- to study the radiation levels and strange circumstances that killed all four crewmen of the last research mission.
By the third day, Peckmann's broken transmissions were coming back to ground control filled with increasing paranoia and delusion. He claimed that the spirits of the dead cosmonauts were coming to claim him, and that he had to keep moving to evade them. He shouted that if he could capture consume these spirits himself while he still had strength, he could move to the next level of consciousness...Truly the rantings of an insane man.
Indeed, video recovered later would show Peckmann running around the confined but maze-like station, downing emergency sedatives like a madman....pausing in a corner momentarily, only to throw back vitamin pills and give chase to his invisible demons.
He had exhausted the entire cargo of vitamins, pills, and fresh fruit well ahead of schedule. There was no way another crew could be assembled to rescue him before he starved. After one rather violently garbled transmission, the static cleared and the last live image on record is that of Peckmann's empty, wilted spacesuit on the cabin floor.
It was determined that another mission to recover any remains or gather any more research would be a waste of the people's money, and the station was allowed to drift out of orbit and into space- a failure never to be mentioned again. It was ordered and assumed that all video and paper evidence had been destroyed.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
just wait until pinky and clyde show up from around the side of saturn
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And seriously, why do they have tri-color on a temperature scale?
A quantity that has one dimension, such as temperature can be a graded scale of a single color and when you use purple and mauve and hot pink it simply confuses the interpretation. If you were trying to represent two or three dimensions of data then I could see that using RGB would allow quick interpretation of the data once an association was learned, however in this case it simply serves to obscure the data.
That's just COOL! Too bad the writer of the article didn't know enough about Pac Man to realize that he's about to much on a Power Pellet and eat all the ghost-Thetans that are coming his way after liberation by the Scientologists!
like, I dont't know, something large smacking a crater into the surface? it's extremely likely they crater formation was not because an asteroid went straight in, but at an angle,
and HEY! maybe- just maybe (sarcasm not directed at OP) the same crater maker threw out some material from deeper beneath the surface- which was a different composition -and all around the crater.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Yes your right, I made a mistake. But what is it with Slashdoters/Geeks and not being able to explain yourself properly, that's at least as important as Grammar!
... and can wee ad "your" two you're list of gramar and speling ofences;
More importantly, explaining oneself rationally is a dying art - what is most important here and increasingly so in popular media is being charismatic and sounding like you know what you are talking about. This is why I think it very important that we all should make use of articles to prove our point on any subject. For instance, the current one about Pac-man and the Death Star posing on the surface of some far off moon no one will ever visit would be much better understood via this link or this one or this last one. A mouseover before clicking will also prove most instructive.
Omnomnomnom
The teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.
If it is 'obligatory', it isn't funny.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
So's personal hygiene. What's your point?
I drank what? -- Socrates
Or any LHBS that carries the licensed Rogue ingredient kits should also have Pacman.
This is obiously a message from pac-man that he wants us to be reminded of his eternal love. If every Jesus shapped food item has this kind of meating then that is the only conclusion I can draw.
Ascii artist &
Cassini has put his thumb into the frame again.
That's no moon.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Please surrender you Geek Credentials
Whereas, as every Geek knows, grammar is an optional specialization.
And in this particular case, I would say Greek Credentials.
This is not the droid you're looking for.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Take a look at this page on NASA's website: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/imagedetails/index.cfm?imageId=3919 If it is a hoax, then NASA is going all-out.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
No, in this case, it's "That's no space station, it's a moon!"
Ezekiel 23:20
Oh, I screwed it myself now. That should have been "That's no moon, it's a Playstation!"
Ezekiel 23:20
Er, yes it is. This is a moon that looks like a space station, not the other way around.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
Now if this image is a representation of temperature difference, and the shape colored like Pac-Man represents a warmer area... one might say that Mimas has "Pac-Man Fever".
Typos != bad grammar. Of course, he could have just been speaking Ebonics, some of us nerds like learning foreign languages.
Free Martian Whores!
Here is the artwork to go along with your story. I believe this is the original artist. Could be wrong.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
These aren't the moons you're looking for.
...let me know if and when they find a giant Miner Willy on Titan or something.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.