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Is There a Subsurface Water Ocean On Titan?
Stirling Newberry writes "Luciano Iess and team have hypothesized that Titan joins Earth, Europa, and Ganymede as ocean worlds. They measured the size of the tidal bulges and found that the moon is likely not solid (abstract). Team member Jonathan Lunine points out that Titan's methane atmosphere is not stable, so it needs some source, perhaps from outgassing. On Earth, water means life, and in the future, ice covered ocean worlds are targets for human colonization. As the late Arthur C. Clarke observed, water is the most precious substance in the universe to humans."
I hope this is an exception.
One of the great accomplishments of this probe is that it has turned Titan from a world which, like Venus, was shrouded in a dense atmosphere, and therefore a mystery, to a dynamic and fascinating target for exploration in its own right. Imagining a probe that could function on its surface is a fascinating exercise.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
BBIAB
We need spice!! Call me when we find a desert planet populated by giant worms.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Yea, fuck that reasearch stuff! It only helps the top .1% while the rest of us aimlessly wander the wilderness.
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Undergraduates no longer need research, now that the net has provided search that even undergrads can use.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Since statistically speaking, many of that 99.9% hold a creationist view of the earth, it won't make a difference, but it really should. Imagine for a moment life that might exist near hot vents in a Titanian inner ocean, which would teach us more about the possibilities, or lack their of, for life in a myriad of environments, than we have learned in all the time that science has existed at all. Consider that of the large icy bodies, more of them are potential harbors for life than the rocky bodies, and the earth has life in water under ice as well. From what we know of exo-planets, ice-ocean worlds might be far more numerous havens for life than atmospheric rocky worlds.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Is there a subsurface water ocean on Arrakis?
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Less so with a methane atmosphere.
Think in fishing expedition. You can get nothing of it, or get something that could make a big difference, both for what you can make/find/bring from there, or for something that could understand us or our planet better, or even for what we will learn just trying to get there. The side effects of just going into orbit definately did a difference for a good percent of population of the world, this could pay that much too.
If you worry only for today you could not have a future. What is the alternative? using money to finance banks? to bring entertainment? to finance bloated government agencies to demolish your privacy?
Which is odd, because the one thing Titan has plenty of is hydrocarbons, so you would think it would be of very great interest in the long-term as a potential source.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I was actually going for +5 (funny), but oh well.
maybe
One would think transporting oil a billion miles would cut into your profit margin.
The initial investment would be rough but it would take less fuel to ship a tanker of oil from Titan to the Earth then it does to ship it from Iraq to New Orleans.
And we could get there for a lot less than it took to invade and occupy Iraq.
On Titan, where surface temperature hovers at 94 K, or on Earth, where Octomom makes masturbation porn videos.
HRH The Duke of Windsor
Betteridge's Law of Headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'".
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Right now it sure would, but write back in 75 or a 100 years, when we've exhausted most of our oil reserves and polluted most of the groundwater with fracking, and the price of oil reaches obscene heights, then it might make a lot more sense.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Not like it will make a difference in 99.9% of the population of the world in the first place. Just another bloated government agency, wanting more money for more research that won't do anyone any good.
Sort of like Christopher Columbus' expedition, then.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Although some may call it such (and in some contexts it might qualify), don't confuse searching the web with "research". At least not in the scientific sense.
Search = discover things that others discovered before.
Research = discover things that no-one else discovered before.
I can't believe I got out of bed for this.
Barring some major changes in rocket technology, not likely. We're not going to run out of oil (or, more accurately, various hydrocarbon sources of uneven quality, quantity and cost to produce) - we're just running out of the cheap stuff.
I can't imagine even if it gets pretty scarce, it would be cheaper to drag stuff out of the middle of solar system and somehow get it back to the surface than it would be to dribble out small volumes of oil and gas from existing infrastructure.
Besides, warp drives don't work in system, right?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It wouldn't have to be transported, the energy could be sent via lasers or microwaves.
And the fallacy in your logic is that this work is not the result of bloated government agency.
Additionally, your entire analogy is bogus, unless you think we'll stumble upon the fountain of youth, or some alien technology that will convert dog poop into food. I can only assume you've watched to much sci-fi and earnestly believe what you wrote.
What are you going to use to oxidize it?
Europa is a lot closer
(and we know it does have an ice covered ocean
and lower gravity too - easier to get the water off the moon and into space.
Since statistically speaking, many of that 99.9% hold a creationist view of the earth, it won't make a difference, but it really should.
I don't see how this follows. Are you saying that "creationist" == "rejects extraterrestrial life"?
I've never heard of such a connection.
No.
Slipping shoelaces ?
One would think transporting oil a billion miles would cut into your profit margin.
Bah, transporting it back to Earth would be a waste of time -- instead I'll use it to power my space lab in space.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Sort of like Christopher Columbus' expedition, then.
The thing that made Columbus' expedition profitable was the discovery of vast amounts of human-compatible, habitable land that was (more or less) available for colonization, and also natural resources that were worth more what it cost to transport them back to Europe. It seems unlikely that either of those things will be found on Titan (which isn't to say people shouldn't try anyway).
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Yes.... but being able to export our democracy to Iraq? Priceless.
In the Saturn system, there is another candidate for a sub surface ocean: Enceladus, which has been the subject of speculation about life. Titan, however, has the additional advantage of being known to be rich in the sources for organic chemistry.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
... and on the seventh day, He rested. On the eighth day He got up early - He had Mars & all the bloody asteroids to do.
Seriously, it would rather put dampers on the belief that we're somehow His special favorites, wouldn't it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I think you don't understand the mechanics of schizophrenia. Do you think they can simply "admit" being wrong?
The problem is, that their whole reality is built upon delusions.So destroying them, would equal loss of everything that makes sense of everything.
Imagine that... imagine not being able to tell whether throwing a stone into a window will still break it... whether you will still wake up tomorrow... imagine not being able to tell *anything*... how would you possible live in such a world? It would be death.
And in reality, if you *force* someone with schizophrenia into it, it will result in *actual* brain death. The brain will simply fire so much and hence change so much, trying to sustain some sense, while the only way left becomes to flee inside you, that they may very will still live, inside there, but you will never again be able to tell.
You might even have to turn of life support on a actually perfectly healthy human being because of that..
Even the thought of doing that to a person is a nightmare, isn't it?
The trick is, to go the other way. Accept them as they are, and offer all changes of their model of reality as something compatible with their delusions, and better than what they currently have (from their p.o.v.). They will be naturally dragged to it.You don't need to add any negative pressure, since all the naturally occurring dissonances will be more than enough to create a gradient.
Now if that person is not already nearly FUBAR like above anyway, she will instinctively move out of the mess...
And the more the new great concepts/views give her some hold, the more she can release the old stuff... without any fear or pressure... because the world doesn't make less sense, but MORE. And that is awesome. Literally.
Do it long enough, and the illness will simply dissolve. With a long tail But it will.
Now for the 10 billion dollar question: Where do you get the nerve power and time, to go through with this until the end?
Because if you can tell me such a infinitely nice, caring, loving and time-having person, I can guarantee you that we can cure pretty much every single case of that illness in the world.
We already have technology to extract oil from plants, and with little refinement, turn it in to bio diesel. There's already a process to turn solid plant matter in to crude oil - but it's only price competitive at $120/gallon. Lots and lots of alternative energy options are available - it's just that they aren't as cheap or cheaper than oil until oil hits the $120-200/barrel range. The "argument" against wind energy relies on the same principle.
Also, the US has something like 300 years worth of coal. We're the Saudi Arabia of coal.
moox. for a new generation.
Seriously, it would rather put dampers on the belief that we're somehow His special favorites, wouldn't it?
But we already know we aren't particular favorites Jesus/Aslan likes Narnia too!
-- QED