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Space

Titan's Alien Thunder 222

Posted by Hemos from the good-news-if-true dept.
An anonymous reader writes "What is not being reported much about the fascinating Huygens descent to the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is its remarkable microphone. In the silence of space, the probe offers a platform for listening to alien thunder while watching the lightning strike on this alien world--the only moon with an atmosphere thicker than our terrestrial one. The probe detaches from Cassini on Christmas for its atmospheric entry on 14 January 2005. The landing target on Titan borders a bright-dark region thought to be an oil-rich shoreline. Huygens can float for a few hours while still broadcasting if it lands in a lake of oil."
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Titan's Alien Thunder More

Titan's Alien Thunder

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  • Alien thunder (Score:5, Informative)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:25AM (#10619961) Homepage Journal
    Titan may offer the first chance for a terrifying symphony of alien thunder.

    Alien thunder?.........hrmmmmm......new, name......for a band? Yeah, that's it.

    On a more serious note, here is the link [nasa.gov] to the Cassini-Huygens main page complete with a tital flyby schedule, a flyby mission description, photo essay including some amazing images of the rings of Saturn, Titan and more.

    • Re:Alien thunder (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:29AM (#10619986)
      Isn't oil created by a biological process? How can there be oil on Titan?

      • Re:Alien thunder (Score:5, Informative)

        by another_henry ( 570767 ) <slashdot@@@henryhallam...cjb...net> on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:34AM (#10620025) Homepage
        Heavy oils on Earth are generally created by chemical processes acting on dead microorganisms over geological time. The "oil" on Titan is hardly oil at all, it's light short-chain hydrocarbons such as methane (CH4), ethane (C2CH6) and propane (C3CH8) which would be gases on Earth. These are much easier to form "abiotically", i.e. without life. In face the gas giant outer planets Uranus and Neptune have large amounts of methane in their atmospheres. (IANAAstronomer)

      • Re:Alien thunder (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:38AM (#10620058)
        I think they are referring to the seas of liquid hydrocarbons suspected to exist on Titan as oil.

      • Re:Alien thunder (Score:5, Interesting)

        by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:39AM (#10620064) Homepage Journal
        As I understand it, biological production of oil is one of those long accepted dogmas that may or may not be exclusively true. There is a theory that suggests that oil production may not be biological exclusively. This is supported by a number of meteorites that have fallen to earth containing what appear to be complex hydrocarbon rich complexes. However, all of this said, I seem to remember a recent article in Science or Nature that suggested abiological production of hydrocarbons was possible (as observed in the Canadian shield), but not a significant resource for production of hydrocarbons.

        • Re:Alien thunder (Score:3, Interesting)

          by danudwary ( 201586 )

          Though I'm no geochemist, and I've never really sought out dissenting opinions, Thomas Gold's book "The Deep Hot Biosphere" is a pretty interesting and convincing read about the abiogenic oil theory.

        • Re:Alien thunder (Score:5, Informative)

          by praedictus ( 61731 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @09:28AM (#10620441) Journal
          The person who came up with the abiotic theory is largely regarded as a crackpot. Methane can be generated abiotically and there may be reserves related to this, but crude is full of degenerate organically derived molecules - cracked chlorophyll and other such things. Host reservoirs are categorized by the degree of such decomposition - see Vitrinite Reflectance Index. The Athabaska tar sands are Cretaceous, they merely overly the Shield.

      • Re:Alien thunder (Score:3, Interesting)

        by hb253 ( 764272 )
        I don't have it in front of me, but one of the articles in this month's Scientific American says that oil on Earth may not necessarily be created from solely biological processes.

        Can anyone corroborate if I read it right?

    • They formed after Wyld Stallions broke up.

  • A Lake of Oil? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Moby Cock ( 771358 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:26AM (#10619971) Homepage
    Is NASA going to let a contract to Hallibuton to develop the resource?
    • Congratulations, NASA!

      You have finally hit upon a theme that will
      garner greater interest from the Bush/Cheney
      administration. More funds are on the way!
      Now is the time to begin the construction of
      those fabled "Armageddon" armoured SST's.
      The invasion of Titan awaits ...
    • Synthetic Oil

  • "Liberation" of Titan (Score:5, Funny)

    by john_sheu ( 755802 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:27AM (#10619973)
    "lake of oil"...WMD's... We all know the drill.

  • In space no one can hear you scream (Score:5, Funny)

    by codepunk ( 167897 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:28AM (#10619980)
    That being said I wonder if the accelerometers are installed in the right direction?

  • For all the NASA jokes... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TrollBridge ( 550878 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:29AM (#10619987) Homepage Journal
    ...that crop up around here from time to time after setbacks, you HAVE to be amazed by what they have accomplished on an ever-shrinking budget.

    Kudos, NASA! Some of us are still impressed!

  • Alien oil (Score:3, Funny)

    by kalpol ( 714519 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:29AM (#10619991)
    The Titans might not be too happy about us making gasoline out of their ancestors.

  • Not reported? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:34AM (#10620026) Journal
    "What is not being reported much..."

    That's because it hasn't happened yet. I look forward to downloading the audio once Huygens lands, and if there happens to be a thunderstorm at the time. But until then, I'm not sure what the point of this story is.

  • Thankfully, they had extra propellant... (Score:5, Informative)

    by bc90021 ( 43730 ) * <bc90021&bc90021,net> on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:35AM (#10620039) Homepage
    ...since they had to compensate for a telecommunications problem. Read more here [nasa.gov].

  • Calling all scientists (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Man in Spandex ( 775950 ) <prsn@kev.gmail@com> on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:37AM (#10620052)
    the only moon with an atmosphere thicker than our terrestrial one.

    Does a thicker atmosphere necessarely mean a good thing? By good I mean in terms of maybe the life (if any) on the moon/planet or what ressources we may find or conditions of the air?

  • The only moon... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ArbiterOne ( 715233 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:38AM (#10620055) Homepage
    ... with an atmosphere thicker than our moon's that we know of. At the rate science is going... There was a great Arthur. C. Clarke book about hydrogen mining on Titan; I can't remember the title at the moment, but it's definitely worth a read.

  • -1, Redundant (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 )
    Are all the WMD and "Invade!" and "Haliburton!" jokes even funny any more? They're about as predictable as the Soviet Russia troll, but not nearly as funny.
  • Calling it alien thunder is quite a geocentric perspective. The thunder there is native, Huygens is alien.

  • Fuel-breathing jet engines (Score:5, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:42AM (#10620080)
    Hydrocarbon-rich atmospheres bring the possibility of fuel-breathing jet engines. With a tank of oxygen or other oxidizer, a craft could scoop the fuel from the "air" and fly or run a powerplant.
    • Hydrocarbon-rich atmospheres bring the possibility of fuel-breathing jet engines. With a tank of oxygen or other oxidizer, a craft could scoop the fuel from the "air" and fly or run a powerplant.

      So basically you are referring to the exact same thing as our jet engines here on earth, only we have to bring tanks of oxygen, instead of tanks of hydrocarbons.

      I can see aliens from a hydrocarbon rich atmoshpere world saying - 'wow - earth has oxygen everywhere - we can build a jet engine to scoop up the oxygen,

  • A lake of oil? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:43AM (#10620083)
    At last, a lake of oil that Cap'n Hazelwood and the Exxon Valdez can enjoy a good bit of drunken sailing in without worrying about the resulting oil spills causing a problem.

  • I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @08:51AM (#10620146)
    I wonder if the instruments are going to measure the effects of the sonic boom(s) on entry into Titan's atmosphere too...

  • Simplistic question (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @09:16AM (#10620337) Journal
    This is definitely a simplistic question and has probably been answered somewhere else in the ether of the web but here goes:

    If the probe will be able to float for a few hours IF it lands in a body of some liquid, why did they not include flotation devices like they used to have on the old Apollo capsules? Was it a weight thing (i.e. too much weight), design limitations (i.e. not enough room) a combination thereof or other reasons?

    It would seem to me that if the device can float without these devices for several hours then including these devices could extend the floating ability of the probe for days/weeks/months/whatever. This would have substantially increased the time to gather information.

    Or are there devices already on the probe and this is the best they could do under the circumstances?

    • Re:Simplistic question (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @09:24AM (#10620403) Homepage
      IF the parachute deploys.

      At least they're deploying into liquid, instead of sending the probe into the desert at 350mph.

    • Re:Simplistic question (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ave19 ( 149657 )
      1) The batteries will not last much longer than the descent.

      2) It's antennea is too small to talk to anything but Cassini, which will promptly be flying off.

      This probe is designed to be expendable. That is really the right move for an environment about which you no nothing accept "Mostly orange."

      • It's antennea is too small to talk to anything but Cassini, which will promptly be flying off.

        Is that kind of like Cassini is dropping off Huygens to daycare? "Sorry, gotta run, got to get to work, enjoy your stay on Titan?"

        Sorry.

        --Rob

      • >an environment about which you no nothing accept "Mostly orange."

        At least we've learned something. Before Cassini, all we knew about Titan was "Orange".

    • Re:Simplistic question (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
      As mentioned, battery life is the issue here.

      Most likely the probe is designed to float, and WILL continue floating for quite a long time. But since Cassini will be gone and the batteries will be dead, it won't matter.

  • I dont want to steal their thunder.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adeyadey ( 678765 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @09:24AM (#10620406) Journal
    This is going to be a fascinating event - however I do have some questions.. The total mission cost is around $4 billion - is this good value for money? For example look at New Horizons, a Jupier/Pluto/KBO mission with a total projected cost of $600 million. I also wonder, given the scale of the mission, if a RTG should have been put on board Huygens so that it could stay longer and observe the Titan environment over a longer time? (Yes I know it could only relay data when Cassini passes by, but that could still be useful..) Listening to thunderstorms is all well and good, and adding a mic is worth doing because its a cheap thing to do in such a system, but what about a lander that spends more time there looking at the chemistry of Titan?

    I think that the smaller, cheaper missions return much better scientific return for the money. For instance, most of the function of the proposed $10 billion JIMO mission could be done by a cheaper Europa-only orbiter that would cost less than $1 billion. (See: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/hubble-04p.html [spacedaily.com] ) Also take a look at the SMART-1 ESA mission - less than $100 million for a complete mission featuring many new technologies.

    For example the camera on the $4 billion Cassini mission is only 1 megapixel - if we had a larger number of smaller, cheaper missions, would we be there now with a much better imaging system. Cassini had a much delayed launch, so the design was outdated by the time of its launch in 1997. The same mission launched on a later window could have used ion propulsion (SEP/RTG combo) saving weight (1/2 the 4 tons Cassini weight is fuel)

    The same thing could happen with JIMO - if NASA spend $10 billion on that, they could forego many other missions, such as a New Horizons II mission, which would give us a chance to look at Uranus (not always a good word to say on Slashdot) with modern instruments, as well as Jupiter & some more KBO's..

    Also think about Hubble - is it worth spending $2 billion on a robot to repair the aging telescope, when the same money could buy better new space telescopes.. (see link above)

    I dont want to belittle the work of the scientist working on Cassini - it will be a fascinating mission, I just wonder if we could get more return by rejigging the beurocracy.. The X-Prize, New Horizons and SMART-1 prove that more smaller & competitive missions return much more bang-per-buck..
    • One single word - "politics".

    • Re:I dont want to steal their thunder.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by chiph ( 523845 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @09:53AM (#10620695)
      For example the camera on the $4 billion Cassini mission is only 1 megapixel - if we had a larger number of smaller, cheaper missions, would we be there now with a much better imaging system.

      The Mars rovers only have 1-megapixel cameras too, but those pictures look pretty darned good. It's all about the quality of the design and the parts that go into it, mostly, the lens and the size of the imager chip. Read more at msnbc [msn.com].

      Chip H.
    • They already tried something similar to your approach. Remember the "Faster, Better, Cheaper" missions that NASA tried a few years ago? They became famous for failing spectacularly.

      Interplanetary travel is pretty difficult, so it ends up being rather expensive to build a spacecraft that can cope with the trillion little things that could go wrong.
      • I thought one of the things that did come out of "Faster, Better, Cheaper" in the end was New Horizons to Pluto.. The examples I gave illustrated that some teams can do missions at a much lower cost..
      • /i Remember the "Faster, Better, Cheaper" missions that NASA tried a few years ago? They became famous for failing spectacularly./.

        IIRC the Mars Pathfinder mission was a "Faster, Better, Cheaper" project, and it was a huge success.

        I'd rather have a couple of cheap failures than an outrageously expensive "success". We need to learn how to succeed in space on a reasonable budget, and we're never gonna do that without having a few failures along the way.
    • I was under the impression that the camera package on Cassini has two cameras [arizona.edu] - one very long focal length [very small field of view] and one wider focal length with 10x the field of view of the other camera.

      Yes, they are 1 megapixel chips, but you have to remember, the design for this started in 1990 and it was launched in 1997, so its not going to be up-to-the minute technology.

      Also, if you are going to send a probe all of the way to Saturn, you want to cram as much instrumentation on board as you can
      • Cassini missed a launch window due to delays - so it had to take much longer to get to Saturn. If it had gone to plan, it would already be orbiting & taking 1mp photos for a time, and if the budget would have been less we could a launched another follow up with higher resolution cameras.

        Smaller, cheaper, faster is better..
        • ??? You seem to be under the impression that Cassini missed its launch window and had to take an alternate cicuitous route to Saturn (like simillar cases with the NEAR mission and nozomi to Mars from Japan). This is simply false, Cassini missed its original launch date by a mere 2 days and it followed its original VVEJ (Venus Venus Earth Jupiter) gravity assist perfectly to arrive at Saturn right on time.

          The zombified mantra chanting of "faster better cheaper" is naive at best. It just isn't always properl
          • Agreed - whilst the mission profiles are ultimately the same [launch, cruise, land/orbit, take measurements], there is a world of difference between a relatively short trip to mars with its known atmosphere/surface, and a trip to the outer gas giants, with multiple gravitational slingshots on the way, a seven year cruise, orbital insertion and then deploying a probe/lander into an almost unknown environment.
    • Simply put, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Have you taken a look [wikipedia.org] at the number of instrument packages on Cassini and Huygens? It's HUGE. You get what you pay for. Especially in terms of reliability, if you're sending a probe on an 8 year journey you kinda want to be absolutely certain it works when you get there. Double redundancy on everything and money for insane amounts of testing does that for you. As for the one megapixel thing. This misconception has been debunked many times before. Imaging
      • Optics do matter, but it is wrong to say that the sort of quality of optics on this craft would not benefit from a higher resolution CCD.

        Make the missions faster & smaller in scale, you turn it around quicker (and more often) & hence deliever more up to date tech for any given timescale..
    • Everything is a trade-off.

      No matter what you do, it takes a huge amount of resources to orbit Saturn, so it made sense to load up as many instruments as you can for economy of scale. It's 22 feet x 13 feet and weighs six tons. It's taken it seven years to get to Saturn. The cost of building, launching, and staffing 3 or 4 smaller devices would be a great deal more.

      Cassini's two cameras are only one megapixel (1024 pixels square) but their versatility far outweighs this "low resolution". They are w
      • Everything is a trade-off.

        True enough. With Cassini, its design is "of its time" - newer versions of the same instruments would weigh less, and huge weaight/fuel saving could be made by using ion drives (SEP/RTG powered) at least in part.

        The point is that smaller more frequent missions mean newer tech being delivered to target at any given time.

        For example, is it right that there is a huge gap between Galileo & JIMO missions? Would smaller/cheaper mean continous orbiters returning science?

        Limited

  • Sorry, but IMHO you're wrong... (Score:5, Informative)

    by cavac ( 640390 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @09:51AM (#10620679) Homepage
    "Huygens can float for a few hours while still broadcasting if it lands in a lake of oil."

    It may float that long, but the batteries are running out soon after landing.

    And because Huygens is scheduled to be dead shortly after landing/crashing, the communication session with Cassini is limited to that time span - Cassini doesn't listen much longer and Huygens has simply no programming for a longer mission time. So, even if Huygens manages to survive longer than expected, it wouldn't provide much more data nor would Cassini pick it up.

    It didn't find the link again, but that's what i remembered reading somewhere on www.esa.int...
  • There will be a Titan flyby on Tuesday Oct, 26 [nasa.gov]. Huygens will be released, and the first good images of Titan will start coming in Tuesday evening. Nasa will have special coverage. You can join #cassini on irc.freenode.net and join in the discussion. Tommorrow promises to be great fun. We invite everyone to join in on irc and party like its 1999.

  • Television programme 9-10 years ago (Score:3, Informative)

    by hoofie ( 201045 ) <(mickey) (at) (mouse.com)> on Monday October 25, 2004 @10:50AM (#10621297)
    I remember watching a television programme about 10 years ago in the UK about an Open University academic who was designing a penetrator for I think the Huygens probe. I remember that it was a probe [open.ac.uk] to determine if they hit liquid or semi-liquid ground on the surface. The person in question was interviewed as hoping that it would get on the probe etc, be launched ok etc.

    Sure enough, 10 odd-years later, that probe is now on the bottom [see ref ACC-E] [open.ac.uk] of Huygens and may well be the first part of the spacecraft to touch the surface of Titan later this year.

    I can't imagine the dedication involved in working on something that looks simple [but I am sure is not] and then waiting seven or more years to see if it ever works.

    The lead on the team is a Professor John Zarnecki [open.ac.uk] - I wonder if he remembers being interviewed [if it was him] by the BBC 10 years ago ?.
    • Good to see someone else interested in the details of the instrument packages, the SSP in particular :o). I'm consistently amazed at the beautifully elegant design of the onboard experiments and the sheer number of them they were able to cram into such a tiny package! Check out this [usra.edu] paper on an idea to use the penetrator along with the onboard microphone in effort to determine the makeup of the surface material by listening to the "crunch" it makes at the instant of touchdown. Astounding....can't wait to Ja

  • Oblig: Futurama quote. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cervantes ( 612861 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @11:35AM (#10621773) Journal
    Professor: Now, Fry, scientists renamed Uranus in 2256 to put an end to that silly joke.

    It's now called "Urectum".

    ->Note: Quoted from memory, not accurate, deal. :)
  • I took a look at some of the artist impressions of Titan and the probe coming down.

    http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/artwo rk/index.cfm [nasa.gov]

    At first I wondered if daylight would be that bright on Titan. That made me study the way light is depicted.

    If you study the light source in several of the artistic renderings, the light striking Saturn in the background has nothing to do with the light on the surface of Titan. One image (Probe over Titan) shows Saturn getting light from a direction low on
    • As an amature space artist myself (see http://www.geocities.com/astroviews/), I think I can comment on some of these.

      At first I wondered if daylight would be that bright on Titan.

      "Bright" is relative. I would very roughly guess that the light that reaches the surface is a little bit brighter than as that given by a full-moon on earth. If your eyes are dark-adjusted, you would be able to see surface features in reasonable detail I assume.

      One image (Probe over Titan) shows Saturn getting light from a

  • first close flyby Tuesday 10/26 (Score:4, Informative)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @12:13PM (#10622163)
    Cassini passes within 800 miles of Titan about 5:40 PM EST tommorrow. Some imaging earlier in the mission saw some stuff below the haze. Could be spectacular.
  • What's more, they will be recorded by a microphone on the probe and relayed back so that everyone on Earth can hear the sounds of Titan. Although the Russians took a microphone to Venus in the 1970s, few scientific results came out of that endeavour. A similar microphone for Mars was destroyed when NASA's Mars Polar Lander crashed a few years ago.

    How convienient that so many NASA probes to Mars worked out, when the only one with a microphone failed, eh?

    And although I cannot find the final answer on if i
  • Mr. President, we've received intelligence reports indicating that Titan is harboring terrorists and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

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