Cassini Discovers First River On Another World 230
Posted
by
timothy
from the ok-now-find-some-rafts dept.
from the ok-now-find-some-rafts dept.
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)."
Re:Oil may not be a fossil fuel then? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org], 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.
Re:No running. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No running. (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, it's perfectly safe from fire. See, a hydrocarbon world like that is a chemical Bizarro World. It's the oxidizers that you have to keep under control.
Indeed.
I've occasionally wondered whether anyone at NASA has ever designed a UAV with oxygen or fluorine tanks instead of fuel tanks, for use on worlds with hydrogen/hydrocarbon atmospheres.
Re:Fahrenheit? (Score:2, Interesting)
Dividing inches into halves and then into halves again is easy to measure visually. I personally don't like using mm all that often for measuring things just because the lines are too close together. I realize that rulers with inches shows a line every 1/16th of an inch, but the lines are usually different lengths. I don't know why that's not done for even numbers of mm on the metric side. It's a much easier spatial math to me.