Water Plume Detected At Dwarf Planet Ceres 66
astroengine writes "Astronomers analyzing data from the now defunct Herschel infrared space observatory have made a huge discovery deep inside the asteroid belt. Dwarf planet Ceres, the largest body in the region, is generating plumes of water vapor. 'This is the first time water vapor has been unequivocally detected on Ceres or any other object in the asteroid belt and provides proof that Ceres has an icy surface and an atmosphere,' said Michael Küppers of the European Space Agency in Spain and lead author of a paper published today (Jan. 22) in the journal Nature."
Re:Great discoveries ... (Score:5, Funny)
Can someone give me one good reason to not have water on Ceres, so that I may marvel at the fact that there is?
Oh. For Fuc-- Are you kidding me, mate? I mean really: A big clear sky with a HUGE easy to spot moon made of the VERY SAME elements as your planet and a neighbor a bit further out with no EM field but some CO2 and an iron-Oxide rich crust you can dig -- PERFECT for baby steps learning survival without your cradle of life and its magnetic field. Then there's a rich asteroid field conveniently broken up into manageable chunks smaller than planets, a gas giant that's nearly a brown dwarf to study gravimetrics and there's moons full of methane and oceans, gorgeous ringed worlds that rain diamonds further out just begging to be seen with ever clearer optics...
The stars laid out a damn red carpet for you. You're 500,000 years overdue for a mag-pole tear-down and rebuild, by the by -- Oh, and the regular flip cycle stopped just as soon as life started showing signs of intelligence too (that's quite the tab you've run up). And you're not even the SLIGHTEST bit impressed with all the good fortune? I mean, Really?! You just EXPECT to hit the jackpot EVERY damn time? Wow. Just wow. It's no wonder you think you can just sit there, even after having set foot off-world, not sending a single soul out of magnetosphere for FORTY FRIGGIN' Years?! Oh, man, I'm getting this on perma-record -- Only from the "mind" of an Earth ape would you get such an entitled outlook on everything. Well, in all but that Quantum Politics thing (superposition of Useless and Pointless) making you the laughing stock of the whole Galax-- er, uhm. What I mean is that with all that good luck you've apparently used up you should be BLOODY FLOORED that Ceres isn't on a -- wait, let me check... That it's not the thing on a collision course with Earth!
Seriously, no other sentient life could STAND to just layabout in the gravity well like some ignorant primordial sludge -- What are you thinking? That someone's just going to come along and HAND YOU a space transport?! [Oh oh oh! Get a load of this, some of 'em actually ARE! Have you seen this Fermi Paradox? Classic Earth Logic!]
Protip: The dinosaurs did have a "space program" -- Chicken Little organized the aeronautics program and survived.