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The Rain On Saturn Falls Mainly From Space
The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers have discovered that the source of water in Saturn's upper atmosphere is none other than the geysers erupting from its moon Enceladus. The geysers spew water into space, most of which is lost. A small amount, though, falls to Saturn... equivalent to only about 7.5 kilos/second over the entire planet (PDF). A typical rainfall on Earth is 42 trillion times heavier."
Damn, that's cool..
This needs to be addressed, immediately. If the rain is coming from it's moon, then what will happen to all the whales?
For geeks whose culture don't go beyond warp drives and Homer Simpson the title is an allusion to a popular 1960's musical.
[Frederick Lowe orchestral music swells]
Professor Higgins (recitativo): by George she's go it!
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Ok, here's a link to the same story on esa.int. Hopefully now that the source of the same story has changed, it's more to your linking.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
I would not link to it either. I was disappointed as well. I expected a cool story about a constant rain of comets or something.
I had to go read the article to realize... The 42 trillion conclusion compares the average "rainfall" across the ENTIRE planet of Saturn, versus the amount of rainfall in a single area of steady rain on earth, at the rate of 1 inch per hour.
The average across the planet would be far far less, if we want to compare apples to kumquats.
Doesn't really have the right ring to it does it?
Not to polish and buff your already obvious self importance and ability to scoff at this article, but to someone like myself, who isn't really into the technical aspects or astronomy and the physics behind it - articles such as this one (and many others on that chaps site) a simple layman explanation of something cool that is happening, or freshly discovered is a great source of infotainment.
/. isn't purely about having technical papers. You could link me the paper that was obviously published somewhere on this, and I probably wouldn't understand all the technical astrophysics mumbo jumbo in it, nor would I have time to read what was probably a couple dozen pages at the very least.
So, for me, thank you for posting a brief article, from a source that I can read and understand - and most importantly - still think to myself how space and the universe around us is a wonderful thing that always has a wonderful surprise around the next corner waiting to be discovered.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Let me get this straight: Your complaint is that the story disappointed you? You got your hopes up, spent an entire 15 seconds to understand what it was about, and then bothered to post a comment complaining that it let you down?
Seriously, I'm not baiting here, but you're just not making any sense. How could anyone possibly gauge what would live up to your personal expectations? I'm a big fan of complaining, it's one of my favorite passtimes, but even I have some notion of when my complaint demands something of someone else that is literally impossible.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
According to Wikipedia 505.000 cubic kilometers of water falls on the earth every year.
This translates to 5.05x10^17 liters/year, or 16,013,444,951 liters/second, which is about 2 trillion times more than Venus, rather than 42x.
So... Typo on the part of the Summary?
Not a Typo, found the paragraph in TFA where the author is calculating out the 42 trillion figure. He's starting from different figures, citing the amount of water that falls "During a heavy rainstorm," which is going to be much higher than "Typical rainfall."
Damn! That doesn't even rhyme... What the hell is the matter with you people?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Not 7.5 kg/s on every square meter of the planet but 7.5 kg/s spread out over the entire planet.
"I wish to make a complaint"
"We're closed"
About this here 'passtimes' wot I purchas-ed from this very boutique not one hour ago"
"Oh, the Nowegian passtimes? Very nice passtime. Lovely plumage."
"It's got one 's' too many"
I can't drag it along any further. But it was worth the effort. Perhaps.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
What are "kilos"? The article never mentions them.
Wrong forum, kid. You should be asking this on Yahoo Answers.
So say we all
I guess on a terraforming planet, this would be the start of getting some real self sustaining atmosphere and biological movement.....next step would be single cell organisms appearing, and so on....might be the next earth in a few million years if the moon is able to sustain enough rainfall...
On Saturn, people live to be two hundred and five. Going back to Saturn, where the air is clean....
Anybody know what song this is from?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
I come here for the comments too, I swear.