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Cassini Discovers First River On Another World
AbsoluteXyro writes "NASA's Cassini orbiter, which has been dutifully exploring the Saturn system since 2004, has captured images of the first river ever observed on another world — and it's a biggun. 200 miles of flowing hydrocarbons meandering down a valley in the north polar region of Saturn's moon Titan, emptying into the awesomely named Kraken Mare — itself a body of liquid roughly the size of the Mediterranean Sea back on Earth. But don't think of going for an extraterrestrial skinny dip quite yet, temperatures on Titan average a brutally cold 290 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit)."
No bombing.
Diving permitted at deep end only.
NO SMOKING.
The white spots on the river banks look like population hot-spots on earth.
Let the conspiracy theorists begin making up stuff.
Surely they will claim something about extra-terrestrial cities and FBI secrets.
~ Best man at your service.
I get that no one on Slashdot RTFA, but this time even the description says "200 miles of flowing hydrocarbons."
Next up on Fox News - Terrorists on Saturn's moon are out to destroy America! Support out troops! Praise the lord and pass the ammunition!
Two factors:
It's hydrocarbons, not water.
Titan's surface pressure is 1.5 bars, 50% higher than Earth.
I don't get how this is new. Cassini has been detecting branching river systems and large lakes (Great Lakes size) filled with liquid methane since early in the mission. This latest release is adding to the mapped area, but isn't particularly new in that regard. However, if you read the original NASA press release on the Cassini web site, it makes more sense. This is not the first, but the longest river system that has been observed so far on Titan, at about 400km long.
So, instead of reading the article, you decided to search wikipedia instead? That's so messed up....
... are you stupid? Of course they use proper units.
This is a press release intended for the general public.
You'd think so, but tell that to the Mars Climate Orbiter which was expecting SI units but instead was given horses per submarine per twatwaffle or some other such ancient unit and took a steep dive into the atmosphere and burned up.
I'm quite ignorant of organic chemistry, but I thought hydrocarbons were fossils. How can there be hydrocarbons without life?
Or am I WAY off in my ASSumptions?
There are plenty of organic molecules out in space. All organic means is "contains carbon".
Organic compounds form anywhere there is carbon, which is made in stars and spread around by supernovae. Given that hydrogen makes up 99.8% of the stuff out there most of the carbon compounds you find in space are simple hydrocarbons, either aliphatic stuff like methane and ethane or aromatics like naphthalene and other poly-aromatic systems.
Where to begin....
"Fossil fuels' are mostly compressed algae and diatoms although the carbon sources doesn't really make any difference - it's just hydrogenated carbon chains squished under a lot of pressure, heat and time that flow into relatively impermeable areas and collect. It is NOT mostly bits of T. rex and friends. Coal is an early form of this process - less time and heat and pressure - so you can occasionally see the original (mostly plant) source material.
Natural gas refers to the various blends of short chain hydrocarbons that are created in the process and that tend to migrate to different places (but not always). "Oil" tends to be longer chains. Oil sands (oil rock) has long chains imbedded in an annoying matrix of one composition or another. Natural gas is a 'fossil fuel' although the term is not a very apt description of how the stuff was produced. All of those descriptions are arbitrary and the material is produced along a spectrum.
Hopefully, you are not trying to be an abiotic oil nutcase.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That's not what my Bible says. Where are you getting your information?
They're called fossil fuels because that's how they were formed on Earth.
Correction: They're called fossil fuels because that's how we think they were formed on Earth. There is not much evidence for abiogenic hydrocarbons, but their isn't enough evidence to rule them out either. Coal clearly came from fossils, but for oil and gas it is still an open question.
0C is the freezing temperature of fresh water, which is far more relevant a point than anything to do with seawater (and Fahrenheit didn't use real seawater anyway, it was ammonium chloride). 0C is the point your drinking water freezes, which is a lot more relevant to most humans. If immersed in freezing seawater or freezing freshwater you'll be dead before you have much time to think about the difference in human perception between 0F and 0C. They're both deadly without special protection. 10C is cool but easy to handle with a light coat, 20C is comfortable room temperature. Anything over 30C is freaking hot. Divide between those points accordingly. 100C is the temperature of boiling water (at STP) that you shouldn't be sticking your hands into.
I don't buy the "human experience" aspect at all for the silliness that is Fahrenheit. The freezing point of fresh water is THE most important point on a temperature scale relating to human effects, and Celsius puts that at a logical 0 rather than weird 32. I always thought it was dumb that you had to do a bit of albeit simple math to figure out how many degrees you were above or below the freezing point using the Fahrenheit scale. With Celsius, it's the + or -. Much simpler.
It's just what you're used to, and I see no downside to Celsius at all. Furthermore, Celsius degrees are a little bigger than Fahrenheit degrees. Less precise, you say? Human perception can't reliably tell the difference between 1 degree F anyway, and struggles to consistently perceive Celsius degrees (I can usually estimate +-2 or 3 Celsius at best).
At -179C, it doesn't really matter if it is in F or C. It's far outside normal human experience unless you have a habit of dipping body parts in liquified gases.