Plankton in the Clouds 84
An anonymous reader writes "NASA is reporting that the September 1997 Pacific hurricane, Nora, was able to deliver sea salt and plankton as far inland as Oklahoma. The tale-tell signs of prismatic light halos around cirrus clouds pointed to ice crystals with nucleated hexagons and sea-salted clouds. Various proposals have been made previously about such 'life in the clouds' proposals on other planets like Jupiter and Venus."
Intelligent life in Oklahoma... (Score:5, Funny)
Is now only a few billion years of evolution away...
Re:Intelligent life in Oklahoma... (Score:2)
Intelligent life in anywhere else? (Score:2, Informative)
Okie Stereotypes [216.239.39.100] "Yes, I'm from the Sooner State, I tell them -- land of wheat fields, Indian reservations, TV evangelists, and country music; and who could forget the setting of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma: 'O-o-o-oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain.'
A state shaped like a kitchen utensil, as if the founders who drew the boundary lines had consigned it to serve as a perpetual building block of the Southwest, an essential part of the meal that no one sees, all glamour and strengt
Re:Intelligent life in anywhere else? (Score:2)
slashdot does itself disservice (Score:1)
Who needs dogs and cats... (Score:3, Funny)
Is it just plankton... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Is it just plankton... (Score:1)
Re:Is NASA really relevant?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is NASA really relevant?? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Is NASA really relevant?? (Score:5, Informative)
Absolutely. Here's one shining example -- the so-called genesis rock, a piece of anorthosite which formed part of the moon's priomordial crust, was a critical piece in unlocking the moon's early history.
It was recoverd by the crew of Apollo 15, the first of the J-missions, where the objectives focused on science and not just seeing if the Apollo hardware worked (e.g. landing on 11, precision landing on 12).
This crew had been trained as pretty good field geologists by the legendary Lee Silver. Without their eye for geological context this rock would probably never have been spotted, and certainly not had it's recovery site as well characterised.
Even geologists who had been previously opposed to the manned missions to the moon acknowledged the value of their contribution, and those of Apollo 16 and 17.
To quote geologist Dale Jackson, who said at the time: "Did you see those guys today? They got up there on the side of that mountain and found that bolder and they sampled the soil around the rock, and then they knocked a piece off it, and then they rolled it over and got some of the soil underneath it! Why, they did everything but fuck that rock!"
If you think this material could have been recovered by, say, remotely controlled machine, well, I invite you to place the best robot and robot team you can find in the Arizona desert and match them up against a single geology grad student and search for, say, fossils, for a day.
Re:Is NASA really relevant?? (Score:2)
Re:Is NASA really relevant?? (Score:2)
Most estimates I've seen have the space program paying for itself in the long-run, you just don't see it because the money doesn't show up as income on NASA's budget sheets.
Re:Is NASA really relevant?? (Score:2)
"Aiee! I just clicked on a Space story by accident!"
"Don't move, I'll get the disinfectant!"
Re:Is NASA really relevant?? (Score:1)
the icon is 73x59 for me..
Re:Is NASA really relevant?? (Score:1, Insightful)
have stuff going in the sky,
I have seen a large stem of a plant flying at
2000m (6500ft).
It was taken there only with air convection.
Re:Is NASA really relevant?? (Score:2)
one word easily refutes your claim (Score:1)
Dead or alive? (Score:4, Insightful)
So they found some dead plankton. I'd be much more impressed about the connection with Venus if they were still alive while in the clouds some how.
Yes - For all intensive purposes he's the best! (Score:1)
Thank god no horrible spongebob references. (Score:3, Funny)
Moon rainbows (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on this article, I have to ask: Could saltwater have been a better explanation for this beautiful phenomenon? Does anybody here know?
Re:Moon rainbows (Score:4, Informative)
Google for sun halo [google.com] gives 155 000 hits compared to 91 000 for moon halo [google.com], so halos around the moon are apperently not entirely uncommon. On this page [nasa.gov] is a neat picture of a sun halo, and a short explanation of the phenomenon.
Re:Moon rainbows (Score:5, Informative)
Some links:
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answer s/970207e.html [nasa.gov]
http://www.geocities.com/~kcdreher/sundogs.html [geocities.com]
They may be pretty, but they'd be easier to appreciate if they didn't signify that it's freakin' cold outside :-/
Re:Moon rainbows (Score:1)
life (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Europa (Score:2)
Re:Europa (Score:2, Funny)
Re:life (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:life (Score:2, Offtopic)
Personally I couldnt care less about the religious people anymore.. I've lived in the bible belt for so long i'm immune to some of the residents' 'blind faith'. Blind faith has always bothered me to no end. Even when I was a naive kid of 5 or 6. I believed what my parents told me to believe; but i didnt like it. None of it made any sen
Re:life (Score:1)
Well, that of course assumes your ego gets out of the way, so maybe I'm exercising a little too much blind faith here as well.
Re:life (Score:2, Insightful)
Try not to belittle others for not blindly believing something. Skepticism is a good thing.
Re:life (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:life (Score:2, Offtopic)
You're painting with an awfully big brush there. I don't know of many religions where "life only exists on earth" is a major doctrine.
I'm sure there are some people for whom it is a strongly held belief, but for each one of those there are many more who do not have a strong belief either way, and even quite a few for whom the discovery of life on other planets would be a
Re:life (Score:2)
Re:life (Score:2)
I do not think it has anything to do with radiation from Jupiter (since any radiation would simply be reflection from the Sun), but instead the heat is caused by the intense gravitational tidal forces from Jupiter (similar to the tidal effect of the moon on Earth). Gravity is constantly compressing and altering the shape of Europa and this friction causes it to heat up to the point where liquid water can exist (under the sur
Jumping the Gun? (Score:4, Insightful)
Up in the clouds the conditions are too violent and volatile and material transfer is past, so life may land up there, but it is difficult for it to develop from there, unless the whole cloud is made of primodial soup, like the depths of jupiter where there is thich murky cloud where scientists think life is possible.
But life forming in clouds like venus has, sorry i dont bite.Yet more exciting! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yet more exciting! (Score:1)
It pains me to note that you've put people in the same category as dogs and farm animals
That sounds like a horrible Beatles song (Score:5, Funny)
I seem to remember someone finding spiders and vaious bacteria way up before, and as soon as they brought them back down to eath they came back alive. Curse my bad memory.
OOOOOklahoma! (Score:5, Funny)
in other news (FISH) (Score:3, Informative)
English as second language? (Score:3, Funny)
I guess once the FAA gets word of this, they'll require algae impact testing on airliner windshields
Star Control II was right... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:not before my coffee (Score:1)
It's perfectly clear.
There was a rainbow-colored arrow pointing at ice crystals on honeycomb, with a side serving of salted mashed potatoes.
Maybe you should order from the kiddie menu. Want some fried immature avian reproductive cells on dehydrated ground grass seed paste?
They must be in heaven (Score:2, Funny)
Hey this plankton came from cloud No 9, came with a tiny harp.
A good book... (Score:3, Informative)
-Ben
The Sun, The Genome and The Internet (Score:3, Interesting)
From the final chapter: "Every time there is a major impact on Europa, a vast quantity of water will be splashed from the ocean into the space around Jupiter. The water will partly evaporate and partly condense into snow. Any creatures living in the water not too close to the impact (meteor impacts) will have a chance of being splashed intact into space with the water and quickly freeze dried."
I'm not sure if this book has been reviewed in slashdot, but it deserves another shot since so much here is relevant especially after the last shuttle disaster. Dyson is dead on track here.
Impact on other sciences ? (Score:2)
IAJAP, I am just a programmer, but
If this living material is present at that level, do we think it can precipitate out ? and if so, what impact do you think this would have on projects that analyse the minute traces of life in remote areas [sciencenews.org] ? Actually, what impact might that have on umbrella sales ???
Anything else in the clouds? (Score:1)
Your an idiot (Score:1)