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The Swirling Vortex of Titan
sighted writes "New images from the robotic spacecraft Cassini show the ongoing formation of a massive vortex in the atmosphere of Saturn's planet-sized moon Titan. (See also this animation.) The same moon has recently provided tantalizing hints of an underground ocean as well. Future missions, if any are ever funded, will have plenty to explore."
Maybe theres a trailer park there
Cut taxes, starve the government. Live free or die hard!
ftfy
with each discovery. Would that space exploration were the priority, we could have robots swarming the solar system, including permanent orbiters around the gas giants and landers on the ice worlds.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Please mod this entire fucking thread offtopic before it engulfs a potentially interesting discussion about Titan.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
And my positive contribution to a serious thread:
The dipole moment of water, the dipole moment of anything, ammonia for example, is necessary for life
Because life has to have something to work with chemically, a way in, a way that can lead to more complex chemistry.a dipole moment supplies this way in and way up
Therefore, I am voting against life on titan, as a bunch of hydrocarbons with no dipole moment offer no stepping stone to more advanced chemistry
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I wish there were more comments in stories like these. I always get a sense of child-like wonder when I see new things like this and I always find myself wondering how/why/what is going on. With the physics stories, we usually see some experts or at least some clued-in non-arrogant people having discussions that REALLY enlighten me. Stuff like this, not so much. It makes me feel kind of sad.
I wish I knew more about this subject or at least enough to know where to go look. I will probably have to start with cloud formations and vortex mechanics and work my way out from there, but by the time I finally have a general idea, the wonder will be lost... but at least the information will still reside in my brain and I can apply it to Jupiter or somesuch. I am getting too old and the universe is too big for me to do original research on everything. That is the only reason I wish I could live forever. :)
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
A moon is a satellite of a planet. Note that this is different to the Moon (note the capital). So Titan is a moon, but not the Moon.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
NASA is due (this month?) to make a final selection between three competing Discovery-class proposals. Among them is the Titan Mare Explorer, the first attempt to put a boat on an extraterrestrial sea. How cool would that be? Good overviews of the proposal are here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Mare_Explorer
http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2011/08/time-and-updates.html
A more detailed description is here;
http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/workshops/titan2010/presentations/aharonson.pdf
Disclosure: If the TiME mission is selected, I am hoping to work on it.
Luna is the name of Earth's only natural satellite, it is 'a' moon.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
And in the question of space exploration, the questions of how much we discount the welfare in the future, and what the curve of dynamic inconsistency looks like are essential in deciding at what point it is worth while to invest in an expensive project with very long term payoffs.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
I think it is an area of relative calm around the swirling bands...but that's my 2 cents of scientific insight/guessing...
Supreme Granter of Doctor of Obviology Letters ("A FIRM Command of the Obvious")