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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."
Could you imagine if Earth's moon was the source of rainfall? What kind of mythology/traditions would we have come up with from that!?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
This needs to be addressed, immediately. If the rain is coming from it's moon, then what will happen to all the whales?
Even today science would have trouble explaining how rain could originate from the Moon, which doesn't actually have much surface water on it... :p
Then your answer is no, you can't imagine what mythology/traditions would have arisen if rain came from the moon?
[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.
Imagination is a lot harder than knowledge.
The Greeks would have some weird story of how Luna/Selene "cries" or something, and Egyptians would have one of their animal-head-on-human-body dudes pouring water from the sky.
As for the Judeo-Christian stuff... Well, I can't be sure, but I can tell you that it would be the cause of killing people.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
But what if it used to, and it all ended up raining on Earth?
Are you drinking moon water now?
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!
You're right -- I was too specific. What I meant to say was: any religious belief had, as some point in time, people killing or dying for it. It's just that I don't think that these days someone would do anything violent in the name of Zeus or Ra. These days people kill and die for entirely different deities. History speaks for itself: just like people kill for what they know exists, they also kill for what they believe exists.
If we had rain falling from the moon, different religions would have different explanations for it. And people who believed in these explanations would, inevitably, kill for them. I'm not even coming at this from an atheistic direction -- just browse human history.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Imagination is a lot harder than knowledge.
I would imagine it is.
But I don't know. =/
Considering how well our ancient brethren figured out the movements of the stars? I don't see why it would be so hard for them to figure out that if the moon has a big geyser and a couple of days later it rains that the two are related. After all they built great temples aligned to the summer and winter solstices as well as devices like the Antikythera mechanism so I wouldn't say it was outside the realm of possibility.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Wait for it, wait for it...
Its saucy limerick time!!!
When it rains on Saturn
Does it fall in a pattern?
Does it water the grass?
Or just dampen your ass?
Lets not forget the classic:
There once was a moon call Enceladus
who with a kind word reminds us
you can spew into space
or spew in her face.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
"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"
> These days people kill and die for entirely different deities.
Mostly Mammon, I'd say, with Allah in a distant second place.
What a depressingly stupid machine.