Electric Titan

Historic planetary instability and catastrophe. Evidence for electrical scarring on planets and moons. Electrical events in today's solar system. Electric Earth.

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StefanR
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Re: Titan's hidden ocean

Unread post by StefanR » Fri May 23, 2008 12:38 am

Krackonis wrote:I would check to see if that bright spot, which seems to be creating a vortex into titans atmosphere is not the footprint of a current between Saturn and it's offspring...
Yes, it would seem to fit nicely in the row of common observations, indeed.

Summing up some ESA quotes:

* an unusual bright, red spot on Titan.
* That area is 50 percent brighter, when viewed using light with a wavelength of 5 microns, than the bright continent-sized area known as Xanadu.
* Xanadu extends to the north-west of the bright spot
* The origin and geography of Xanadu remain mysteries at this range. Bright features near the south pole (bottom) are clouds.
* A methane cloud can be seen at the south pole (top of image).
* The bright spots near the bottom represent a field of clouds near the south pole.
* A bright cloud of methane particles is apparent in all three images near the south pole. Its persistence over an extensive range of colour wavelengths indicates that these cloud particles are large compared to the typical haze particles surrounding the moon, suggesting a dynamically active atmosphere near the south pole.
* a huge cloud system covering the north pole of Titan.
* The condensates may be the source of liquids that fill the lakes recently discovered by the radar instrument.
* These clouds are probably produced when gaseous methane in Titan’s atmosphere cools and condenses into methane fog as Titan’s winds drive air over the mountains. It was once thought that these recurring clouds were produced by volcanic activity on Titan, but this image calls that idea into question.
* the expected break-up of the northern polar vortex in northern spring


But the strangest thing I found the wordings in the flight mission description PDF quoted earlier:

* The Huygens probe landed near a bright region now called Adiri
* Huygens landed in the dark region, and it is solid. Scientists believe it only rains occasionally on Titan, but the rains are extremely fierce when they come.
* Only a small number of impact craters have been discovered. This suggests that Titan’s surface is constantly being resurfaced by a fluid mixture of water and possibly ammonia, believed to be expelled from volcanoes and hot springs.
* Volcanism is now believed to be a significant source of methane in Titan’s atmosphere. However, there are no oceans of hydrocarbons as previously hypothesized. Dunes cover large areas of the surface.
* the T41 through T44 flybys put the spacecraft in an ideal location to have another opportunity to see Titan outside of Saturn’s magnetosphere, in shocked solar wind ahead of the magnetosheath as happened on T32


and again from Esa:
* new observations raise the possibility that much of the sand grows from hydrocarbon particulates fallen from the sky that, once on the ground, join together and become sand grain-size particles.
* Titan's windblown dunes of dark, organic material look like mountainous drifts of coffee grounds
* dunes contain less water ice than the rest of Titan
* The dark brown sands appear to be made up of the same kind of complex organic chemicals that dominate Titan's smoggy atmosphere.
* dunes surrounding a bright feature
* Dunes have been previously seen on Titan, so far concentrated near the equator.
* several kinds of interaction between the dunes and the brighter features
* flow around bright 'islands'


Hmmmm. :|
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Re: Titan's hidden ocean

Unread post by StefanR » Sat Jun 14, 2008 8:45 am

Image
Saturn moon casts 'once-in-a-lifetime' shadow
CHANDRA X-RAY CENTER NEWS RELEASE
Posted: April 5, 2004

A rare celestial event was captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory as Titan -- Saturn's largest moon and the only moon in the Solar System with a thick atmosphere -- crossed in front of the X-ray bright Crab Nebula. The X-ray shadow cast by Titan allowed astronomers to make the first X-ray measurement of the extent of its atmosphere.
"This may have been the first transit of the Crab Nebula by Titan since the birth of the Crab Nebula," said Koji Mori of Pennsylvania State University in University Park, and lead author on an Astrophysical Journal paper describing these results. "The next similar conjunction will take place in the year 2267, so this was truly a once in a lifetime event."

Chandra's observation revealed that the diameter of the X-ray shadow cast by Titan was larger than the diameter of its solid surface. The difference in diameters gives a measurement of about 550 miles (880 kilometers) for the height of the X-ray absorbing region of Titan's atmosphere. The extent of the upper atmosphere is consistent with, or slightly (10-15%) larger, than that implied by Voyager I observations made at radio, infrared, and ultraviolet wavelengths in 1980.

"Saturn was about 5% closer to the Sun in 2003, so increased solar heating of Titan may account for some of this atmospheric expansion," said Hiroshi Tsunemi of Osaka University in Japan, one of the coauthors on the paper.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0404/05titanshadow/

Titan
Astronomers have used the lack of X-rays from Saturn's largest moon, Titan, to draw some interesting conclusions. On January 5, 2003, Titan - the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere - crossed in front of the Crab Nebula, a bright, extended X-ray source. Titan's transit enabled Chandra to image the one-arcsecond-diameter X-ray shadow cast on Chandra by the moon. This tiny shadow corresponds to the size of a dime as viewed from two and a half miles. The diameter of Titan's shadow was found to be larger than the known diameter of its solid surface. This difference in diameters yields a measurement of about 550 miles (880 kilometers) for the height of the X-ray absorbing region of Titan's atmosphere. The extent of Titan's upper atmosphere is consistent with, or slightly (10-15%) larger, than that implied by Voyager I observations made at radio, infrared, and ultraviolet wavelengths in 1980. Saturn was about 5% closer to the Sun in 2003, so increased solar heating of Titan may have caused its atmosphere to expand.
http://chandra.harvard.edu/xray_sources ... stem7.html
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Re: Titan's hidden ocean

Unread post by StefanR » Sat Jun 14, 2008 8:55 am

A "Dragon" on the Surface of Titan
VLT Looks through Narrow Atmospheric Window and Produces Most Detailed Images Yet
Updated on June 21, 2004: Added PR Video Clip 06/04
Summary

New images of unsurpassed clarity have been obtained with the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) of formations on the surface of Titan, the largest moon in the Saturnian system. They were made by an international research team [1] during recent commissioning observations with the "Simultaneous Differential Imager (SDI)", a novel optical device, just installed at the NACO Adaptive Optics instrument [2].

With the high-contrast SDI camera, it is possible to obtain extremely sharp images in three colours simultaneously. Although mainly conceived for exoplanet imaging, this device is also very useful for observations of objects with thick atmospheres in the solar system like Titan. Peering at the same time through a narrow, unobscured near-infrared spectral window in the dense methane atmosphere and an adjacent non-transparent waveband, images were obtained that are virtually uncontaminated by atmospheric components. They map the reflectivity of a large number of surface features in unprecedented detail.

The images show a number of surface regions with very different reflectivity. Of particular interest are several large "dark" areas of uniformly low reflectivity. One possible interpretation is that they represent huge surface reservoirs of liquid hydrocarbons.

Whatever the case, these new observations will be most useful for the planning of the delivery of the Huygens probe - now approaching the Saturn system on the NASA/ESA Cassini spacecraft and scheduled for descent to Titan's surface in early 2005.
Image
ESO PR Photo 11a/04 shows the clearest view of Titan's surface, available so far. It was obtained through a "transparent", narrow spectral window with the 8.2-m VLT YEPUN telescope and the NACO adaptive optics instrument operated in the Simultaneous Differential Imager (SDI) mode [2]. It covers about three-quarters of the full surface and has an image resolution (sharpness) of 0.06 arcsec, corresponding to 360 km on the surface. One degree of longitude on the equator corresponds to 45 km on Titan's surface. The brightness is proportional to the surface reflectivity. The nature of the various regions is still unknown although it is speculated that the darkest areas may indicate the extent of reservoirs of liquid hydrocarbons.
Image
ESO PR Photo 11c/04 shows simultaneous images of Titan, obtained on February 7, 2004, with NACO in SDI mode. Left: at 1.575 μm with a clear view towards the surface. Right: at 1.625 μm, where the atmosphere appears entirely opaque. PR Photo 11d/04 shows views of Titan, obtained on six nights in February 2004. At the right, the image from the first night (Feburary 1-2, 2004) has been enlarged for clarity and the coordinate grid on Titan is indicated. The images are false-colour renderings with the three SDI wavebands as red (1.575 μm; surface), green (1.600 μm; surface) and blue (1.625 μm; atmosphere), respectively.
Image
http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/pres ... 09-04.html
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Electric Titan

Unread post by redeye » Fri Sep 12, 2008 12:32 am

Titan's Temporary Magnetic Field
Cassini scientists found that Saturn's moon Titan, which has no magnetic field of its own, holds onto remnants of Saturn's magnetic field when it periodically moves out of the magnetosphere of its parent planet. A unique flyby of Titan caught the big moon on one of its excursions outside Saturn's magnetosphere.

"Titan seemed to be dressing up in its parent's magnetic field although it had left Saturn's magnetosphere," said Cesar Bertucci, Cassini scientist on the magnetometer instrument at Institute for Astronomy and Space Physics, Buenos Aires, Argentina. "For the first time, we were able to measure how long this magnetic field stays around Titan's atmosphere after Titan exits Saturn's magnetosphere and is exposed to the sun's magnetic environment.

Titan's orbit keeps the moon within Saturn's magnetosphere most of the time. The sunward side of Saturn's magnetosphere moves, however, and occasionally Titan finds itself outside that magnetic bubble.

Scientists believe that the history of the magnetic field to which Titan is exposed is recorded in the moon's atmosphere like stratified layers of sediments on Earth. "We basically recorded the 'magnetic memory' of Titan's ionized atmosphere," said Bertucci. Cassini observations show that this magnetic memory affects Titan's atmosphere from 20 minutes to 3 hours.

This observation, made on June 13, 2007, provided a unique opportunity for scientists to study the interaction between Titan and the solar wind, which spews from the sun. A paper in the Sept. 12 issue of the journal Science provides more details on this interaction.
Cheers!
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Re: Titan's Temporary Magnetic Field

Unread post by substance » Fri Sep 12, 2008 9:25 am

But of course, this is not a real magnetic field, this is just a memory, even a hologram. It`s not there, although instruments show otherwise. I think this is just some trick, Titan is playing on his astronomer friends from Earth.
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Re: Titan's Temporary Magnetic Field

Unread post by MGmirkin » Fri Sep 12, 2008 3:31 pm

redeye wrote:
Scientists believe that the history of the magnetic field to which Titan is exposed is recorded in the moon's atmosphere like stratified layers of sediments on Earth. "We basically recorded the 'magnetic memory' of Titan's ionized atmosphere," said Bertucci. Cassini observations show that this magnetic memory affects Titan's atmosphere from 20 minutes to 3 hours.
Cheers!
Scientists do think some weird things sometimes...

And how do they propose that titan's atmosphere acts like sedimentary layers that somehow retain a record of magnetic fields the atmosphere was exposed to? I don't get it. Isn't the atmosphere dynamic? I mean, wouldn't circulation and mixing more-or-less erase whatever "information" about prior states may have been contained therein? They've got a lot more selling to do on that one... And they better hope it's not snake oil!

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Re: Titan's Temporary Magnetic Field

Unread post by redeye » Sat Sep 13, 2008 3:51 am

But of course, this is not a real magnetic field, this is just a memory, even a hologram. It`s not there, although instruments show otherwise. I think this is just some trick, Titan is playing on his astronomer friends from Earth.
But of course, this is not a real magnetic field, this is just a memory, even a hologram. It`s not there, although instruments show otherwise. I think this is just some trick, Titan is playing on his astronomer friends from Earth.
It's a good point. When you appear to be getting extrordinary results, you really need to examine the interpretation of the original data. The Redshift fiasco for example.

The only explanation I can think of is that, whilst in Saturn's magnetosphere, Titan becomes coupled to this electromagnetic environment (Titan is locked in an orbital resonance with Saturn). When Titan passes out of Saturn's magnetosphere, it is still in resonance with Saturn, not the Sun, and this clash with the heliosphere is what we are detecting. I would say that whilst Titan is inside Saturn's magnetosphere it is analogous to Venus (orbital resonance with the Sun) and when Titan passes into the heliosphere it is more like the Earth (prevented from falling into orbital resonance with the Sun due to the presence of our Moon, and producing a considerable magnetosphere as a result).

So I think I am saying that planetary magnetosphere are borne of a clash with the surrounding electromagnetic environment.

But Substance is probably right.

Cheers!
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Life on Titan?

Unread post by redeye » Tue Jun 15, 2010 7:51 am

What is Consuming Hydrogen and Acetylene on Titan?
PASADENA, Calif. – Two new papers based on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft scrutinize the complex chemical activity on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. While non-biological chemistry offers one possible explanation, some scientists believe these chemical signatures bolster the argument for a primitive, exotic form of life or precursor to life on Titan's surface. According to one theory put forth by astrobiologists, the signatures fulfill two important conditions necessary for a hypothesized 'methane-based life.'
One key finding comes from a paper online now in the journal Icarus that shows hydrogen molecules flowing down through Titan's atmosphere and disappearing at the surface. Another paper online now in the Journal of Geophysical Research maps hydrocarbons on the Titan surface and finds a lack of acetylene.

This lack of acetylene is important because that chemical would likely be the best energy source for a methane-based life on Titan, said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., who proposed a set of conditions necessary for this kind of methane-based life on Titan in 2005. One interpretation of the acetylene data is that the hydrocarbon is being consumed as food. But McKay said the flow of hydrogen is even more critical because all of their proposed mechanisms involved the consumption of hydrogen.

"We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth," McKay said. "If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth."

To date, methane-based life forms are only hypothetical. Scientists have not yet detected this form of life anywhere, though there are liquid-water-based microbes on Earth that thrive on methane or produce it as a waste product. On Titan, where temperatures are around 90 Kelvin (minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit), a methane-based organism would have to use a substance that is liquid as its medium for living processes, but not water itself. Water is frozen solid on Titan's surface and much too cold to support life as we know it.

The list of liquid candidates is very short: liquid methane and related molecules like ethane. While liquid water is widely regarded as necessary for life, there has been extensive speculation published in the scientific literature that this is not a strict requirement.

The new hydrogen findings are consistent with conditions that could produce an exotic, methane-based life form, but do not definitively prove its existence, said Darrell Strobel, a Cassini interdisciplinary scientist based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., who authored the paper on hydrogen.

Strobel, who studies the upper atmospheres of Saturn and Titan, analyzed data from Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer and ion and neutral mass spectrometer in his new paper. The paper describes densities of hydrogen in different parts of the atmosphere and the surface. Previous models had predicted that hydrogen molecules, a byproduct of ultraviolet sunlight breaking apart acetylene and methane molecules in the upper atmosphere, should be distributed fairly evenly throughout the atmospheric layers.

Strobel found a disparity in the hydrogen densities that lead to a flow down to the surface at a rate of about 10,000 trillion trillion hydrogen molecules per second. This is about the same rate at which the molecules escape out of the upper atmosphere.

"It's as if you have a hose and you're squirting hydrogen onto the ground, but it's disappearing," Strobel said. "I didn't expect this result, because molecular hydrogen is extremely chemically inert in the atmosphere, very light and buoyant. It should 'float' to the top of the atmosphere and escape."

Strobel said it is not likely that hydrogen is being stored in a cave or underground space on Titan. The Titan surface is also so cold that a chemical process that involved a catalyst would be needed to convert hydrogen molecules and acetylene back to methane, even though overall there would be a net release of energy. The energy barrier could be overcome if there were an unknown mineral acting as the catalyst on Titan's surface.

The hydrocarbon mapping research, led by Roger Clark, a Cassini team scientist based at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, examines data from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer. Scientists had expected the sun's interactions with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce acetylene that falls down to coat the Titan surface. But Cassini detected no acetylene on the surface.

In addition Cassini's spectrometer detected an absence of water ice on the Titan surface, but loads of benzene and another material, which appears to be an organic compound that scientists have not yet been able to identify. The findings lead scientists to believe that the organic compounds are shellacking over the water ice that makes up Titan's bedrock with a film of hydrocarbons at least a few millimeters to centimeters thick, but possibly much deeper in some places. The ice remains covered up even as liquid methane and ethane flow all over Titan's surface and fill up lakes and seas much as liquid water does on Earth.

"Titan's atmospheric chemistry is cranking out organic compounds that rain down on the surface so fast that even as streams of liquid methane and ethane at the surface wash the organics off, the ice gets quickly covered again," Clark said. "All that implies Titan is a dynamic place where organic chemistry is happening now."

The absence of detectable acetylene on the Titan surface can very well have a non-biological explanation, said Mark Allen, principal investigator with the NASA Astrobiology Institute Titan team. Allen is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Allen said one possibility is that sunlight or cosmic rays are transforming the acetylene in icy aerosols in the atmosphere into more complex molecules that would fall to the ground with no acetylene signature.

"Scientific conservatism suggests that a biological explanation should be the last choice after all non-biological explanations are addressed," Allen said. "We have a lot of work to do to rule out possible non-biological explanations. It is more likely that a chemical process, without biology, can explain these results – for example, reactions involving mineral catalysts."

"These new results are surprising and exciting," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL. "Cassini has many more flybys of Titan that might help us sort out just what is happening at the surface."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini.
Exciting stuff. I've long considered Titan to be the best candidate for life in our Solar System (probably cos I read it somewhere). Titan has a massive amount of volatiles in it's huge atmosphere. There is also speculation as to the presence of liquids on it's surface which could provide an emulsion which is considered necessary for life. Titan also dips in and out of Saturn's magnetosphere which could provide the changing energy state upon which life could thrive.

It's quite speculative but I've been waiting ten years for news like this.

Cheers!
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Re: Life on Titan?

Unread post by jjohnson » Tue Jun 15, 2010 11:07 pm

Possible - who's to say until we actually find a non-water-based life form, or water-based life forms that don't utilize carbon compounds, or silicon-based life forms? Still, at the temperatures found on Titan, it would be a really slo-o-o-w metabolism!
C.J. Cherryh has some very interesting life forms in some of her SF universes, including the "methane-breathers"! Also, Canadian SF writer Julie Czerneda, a biologist by education, has some very unusual life forms in her delightful novels.

I'm no ethnobiologist and a lousy chemist, but how do you conduct redox reactions for energy where the elements being considered are all what we consider "fuels"? Is acetylene an oxidizer? In our metabolism, energy comes from oxidizing reactions with our carbon-based food and cell contents. We breathe in our "oxidizer" - literally, oxygen molecules in air - but what would a Titan resident breathe or aspirate or absorb to do the same? Not the hydrogen, which is an electron donor, not an electron "receiver" like fluorine or oxygen, etc. This will be interesting to follow and see if it gets any traction.

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Re: Life on Titan?

Unread post by redeye » Wed Jun 16, 2010 7:42 am

Nice post JJ. I have to admit I'm no expert in...well anything really. I have a sneaky suspition we'll eventually find life almost everywhere in our Solar System, once we cast off our anthropomorphic views on the different forms life could take. I'll check out those authors too, always on the lookout for interesting speculative fiction.

We have to take these findings with a pinch of salt. There are undoubtedly many researchers at JPL who have been looking for evidence of something metabolising Titan's atmosphere and are desperate to be the one who finds extraterrestrial life. The article seems fairly honest however and other unknown processes could be at work. We're unlikely to know for sure until another Huygens type probe could be sent and that could be decades away.

Check out "Titan" by Stephen Baxter if you want. Baxter is no Ballard but I like the way he presents complicated science in a manner that can be understood by novices.

Cheers!
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Re: Life on Titan?

Unread post by jjohnson » Wed Jun 16, 2010 1:32 pm

Thanks for the tip on Stephen Baxter's books! Hmm, birthday coming up in September... I'll have to see if Amazon US has these. I like 'hrad' SF the best - it seems more plausible somehow. Not much into fantasy stories, or "swords and sorcerers' other than Fritz Leiber, anyway.

I wonder if there are any slug-like life forms that have adopted a fatalistic phrase like, "...have to take this with a pinch of salt!"
:D

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Re: Titan's hidden ocean

Unread post by keeha » Sun Oct 10, 2010 7:12 am

If a laser paintball business opens up near Houston imagine the scientific breakthroughs we might read of.

Space Daily: Cassini Catches Saturn Moons In Paintball Fight (JPL) Oct 08, 2010
A paper based on the findings was recently published online in the journal Icarus. In it, scientists describe prominent global patterns that trace the trade routes for material exchange between the moons themselves, an outer ring of Saturn known as the E ring and the planet's magnetic environment.

The finding may explain the mysterious Pac-Man thermal pattern on Mimas, found earlier this year by Cassini scientists, said lead author Paul Schenk, who was funded by a Cassini data analysis program grant and is based at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston...

"The richness of the Cassini data set - visible images, infrared images, ultraviolet images, measurements of the radiation belts - is such that we can finally 'paint a picture' as to how the satellites themselves are 'painted,'" said William B. McKinnon, one of six co-authors on the paper. McKinnon is based at Washington University in St. Louis and was also funded by the Cassini data analysis program.

Icy material sprayed by Enceladus, which makes up the misty E ring, appears to leave a brighter, blue signature. The pattern of bluish material on Enceladus, for example, indicates that the moon is covered by the fallback of its own "breath."

Enceladean spray also appears to splatter the parts of Tethys, Dione and Rhea that run into the spray head-on in their orbits around Saturn. But scientists are still puzzling over why the Enceladean frost on the leading hemisphere of these moons bears a coral-colored, rather than bluish, tint.

On Tethys, Dione and Rhea, darker, rust-colored, reddish hues paint the entire trailing hemisphere, or the side that faces backward in the orbit around Saturn. The reddish hues are thought to be caused by tiny particle strikes from circulating plasma, a gas-like state of matter so hot that atoms split into an ion and an electron, in Saturn's magnetic environment.

Tiny, iron-rich "nanoparticles" may also be involved, based on earlier analyses by the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team.

Mimas is also touched by the tint of Enceladean spray, but it appears on the trailing side of Mimas. This probably occurs because it orbits inside the path of Enceladus, or closer to Saturn, than Tethys, Dione and Rhea.

In addition, Mimas and Tethys sport a dark, bluish band. The bands match patterns one might expect if the surface were being irradiated by high-energy electrons that drift in a direction opposite to the flow of plasma in the magnetic bubble around Saturn.

Scientists are still figuring out exactly what is happening, but the electrons appear to be zapping the Mimas surface in a way that matches the Pac-Man thermal pattern detected by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer, Schenk said.

Schenk and colleagues also found a unique chain of bluish splotches along the equator of Rhea that re-open the question of whether Rhea ever had a ring around it. The splotches do not seem related to Enceladus, but rather appear where fresh, bluish ice has been exposed on older crater rims.

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Re: Titan's hidden ocean

Unread post by mharratsc » Sun Oct 10, 2010 8:30 am

There is no accountability for truth or good science at NASA now, and this article is the admissible evidence for my accusation.
The reddish hues are thought to be caused by tiny particle strikes from circulating plasma, a gas-like state of matter so hot that atoms split into an ion and an electron, in Saturn's magnetic environment.
Where did this magic million-degree gas come from, in the vacinity of Saturn? Perhaps it's migratory and flies out from the Sun like swallows- either African or European... laden or unladen. o.O
The bands match patterns one might expect if the surface were being irradiated by high-energy electrons that drift in a direction opposite to the flow of plasma in the magnetic bubble around Saturn.
Electric 'radiation'? That sounds neat! I think I'm going to go down to Radio Shack and buy me an electric radiator! I'm tired of all my electrons flowing in currents- I want to see mine radiate instead!

Someone tell me how to complain, and whom to complain to, and I will fire off some words. Maybe I will write a letter to President Obama... but they're so busy with campaigning right now I'm certainly not going to hold my breath. :\
Mike H.

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Re: Titan's hidden ocean

Unread post by starbiter » Sun Oct 10, 2010 9:05 am

Stefan posted this earlier.

Volcanism is now believed to be a significant source of methane in Titan’s atmosphere. However, there are no oceans of hydrocarbons as previously hypothesized. Dunes cover large areas of the surface.

Thanks Stefan, michael
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Re: Life on Titan?

Unread post by redeye » Thu Dec 02, 2010 8:01 am

NASA to Hold News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. PST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/r ... 0-110.html

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