Pluto Probe Makes Discoveries at Jupiter 125
Riding with Robots writes "No, it's not an accident due to a metric-to-English-units error. In February, the New Horizons probe passed through the Jupiter system on its way to Pluto, and we saw some spectacular pictures. Now, the science teams have published detailed scientific results, along with new images and movies. The probe's instruments saw clouds form from ammonia welling up from Jupiter's lower atmosphere, and heat-induced lighting strikes in the polar regions, and fresh eruptions on the volcanic moon Io. New Horizons also captured the clearest images ever of the tenuous Jovian ring system, where scientists spotted clumps of debris that may indicate a recent impact inside the rings, or some more exotic phenomenon." I bet Neil DeGrasse Tyson will be on 7 Discovery channel specials talking about these new discoveries inside of the week. Hope he's nicer than he was to poor Pluto :)
yeah, I'l say (Score:1)
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Oblig (Score:3, Funny)
Except Europa.
Attempt no landings there.
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Informative)
Jesus. We've sent, what, 5 probes close enough to get a look at Io, and every one of them saw significant vulcanism? Pretty safe bet then that it's erupting like that constantly, huge lakes of glowing lava and sulfur plumes 200 miles high.
I'll take my chances with Europa.
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Sounds like a great place, eh!
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I'm going to solve the Earth's energy problem and get rich at the same time. All I need to do is build a trans-solar-system pipeline from that moon to the Earth to bring all of that beautiful methane here. Voila. No concerns for a very long time. As far as global warming goes, its a double win. Soon all of my Alaskan and Canadian beach front property on the northern shores will be prime warm vacation land. And to top it all off, I have a pipeline to attach a space elevator to to bring people up to the
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Informative)
In addition, New Horizons spotted the infrared glow from at least 36 Io volcanoes, and measured lava temperatures up to 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit, similar to many terrestrial volcanoes.
Tim.
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money well spent (Score:4, Interesting)
unlikely (Score:2)
So, if a permanent automatic system was installed there, it would give us exactly the same day by day, year from year.
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Ok, but who is going to listing to the Jupiter weather forecast? I would much rather have a reliable prediction for the weather right here during the week to come.
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Re:unlikely (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe it would, and maybe it wouldn't. We don't know. Does the vulcanism on Io go through seasonal variations? Does it only happen on Io, or are there other geologically active moons in orbit? The Cassini probe showed that we can park a satellite in orbit around these far planets, and obviously a permanently stationed device is going to give far more detailed data than one that's whizzing past. I think it's wasteful to launch these probes and have them leave the solar system when they could be inserted into orbit around a planet and give us years worth of useful data. As far as I know, apart from Earth, the only planets we have probes around are Mars and Saturn... and maybe Venus.
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We did have a probe parked around Jupiter for a while. It was called Galileo [wikipedia.org]. It spent 8 years documenting Jupiter before it was decommissioned by sending it into the Jovian atmosphere.
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While I agree with the first part of your post about the value of long-term observation, the quoted part of the comment is much easier said than done, especially for such a distant target as Pluto. New Horizons will fl
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Well, we already have something like that in the Cassini probe for Saturn. The issue with having a "permanent" research stations is lack of power. That far out, there is very little solar radiation, so power has to come from nuclear batteries, which have a limited lifespan.
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Most probes don't use the same kind of color capture technique that "house cameras" offer. They use filters. If you want color, you take images under different filters (select a given wavelength to "see" with). This increases the sensativey range. New Horizons is certainly capable of using many filters to produce color images, but it may have had to weigh different factors. For one, NH does
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Speaking of which, why don't probes ever have true color cameras? What's with all the false color images from probes?
They often do have red/green/blue filters so that we can make true colour pictures out of them, but the thing is, true colour isn't very pertinent from a scientifical point of vue, the point of true colour is more to know what one would see there. It's more interesting to have filters that filter light at key wavelengths matching to absorption or emission of method or hydrogen, whatever mak
Re:money well spent (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, I agree it would be clever to design and assemble generic space probes with a generic instrument package and launch them towards some promising targets. If we can assemble a dozen of simple probes (or modular ones - i.e. inner solar system solar power module x deep space RTG power, custom instrument packages) instead of one twelve times more complex and launch them towards interesting targets it would give us a lot of coverage on a lot of other nearby objects for the same price (and in far less time). If something turns out to be more than an uninteresting lump of rock or ice, we could always send another probe with a custom instrument package. And, if the original one still has propellant on board, it could always be re-missioned to something else.
Maybe we could focus not on "Back to the Moon", "See Pluto" and "Probe Mars" specific projects and create a continuous exploration infrastructure that could serve us well for decades. If we focus too much on learning how to build a better spacecraft while building the spacecraft, the exploration becomes the least interesting thing in the project. If we focus more on the destination than on the vehicle, chances are we will get spacecrafts out to the launch pad on less time, within budget and more frequently than today. And by building more of them, launching more of them and testing more of them, we will end up learning just as much about how to build a better spacecraft.
This one-off custom-designed space probe business can become costly real quick.
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But Galileo did have a big antenna problem that greately reduced the amount and detail of images it could send back. Bleep happens.
But as far as "more permanent", there are two major limiting factors. The first is propellant to navigate the moons. Without navigation propellant you are limited from the different targets you can examine
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Compare it to launch costs. It's worth spending a bit extra so you have exactly what you want and no more instead of spending a lot extra getting extra mass out there. A "standard model" also implies that you have a very good tried and tested design and not continous improvement.
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Compare that with the ISS which, while cool, can't compare on ROI.
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Science instruments improve at a rapid pace, and I think this is why New Horizons found things that Galileo did not.
I think there is something going there in the 2010s that will replace the Galileo mission. It's going to have 10x the scientific payload, 10x the
Juno mission planned for 2011 (Score:2)
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Only the French and the Boks to knock over, and it'll be Swing Low Sweet Chariot all the way home :-)
And as a result of these new findings... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And as a result of these new findings... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, many people have called Jupiter a failed star [sciam.com].
Re:And as a result of these new findings... (Score:4, Funny)
(yes, just like yelling)
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It's a sloppy term really. Jupiter isn't even close to what you need for fusion mass is something on the order of 50-100 Jupiters, 2010 not withstanding to initiate fusion. Jupiter is a gas giant, a planet, something considerably different from even a brown dwarf which is a lot more appropriate for that label. It's not a "failure" at anything it is what it is, and it's helped clear out a lot of junk which would have hit this plan
Planets != People (Score:1)
Look this whole Anthropic Principle is getting ridiculous...
Re:Planets != People (Score:5, Funny)
Monolith? (Score:2)
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I saw lots of little monoliths with white spots on a table in Vegas. Vegas is where the enlightenment is. They free you from your money so that you can focus on your inner self.
You know (Score:2, Funny)
Re:You know (Score:4, Funny)
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All irreverance aside, fantastic stuff! (Score:4, Interesting)
These are all highly fascinating subjects each worth a read let alone the fantastic gallery: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos.html [jhuapl.edu]
I completely support the New Horizons team, they're doing amazing things from behind a computer screen. Something I honestly wish I could do.
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I have to say that all of you folks keep putting the stars in our eyes, great job!
Funny. (Score:2)
heat-induced lighting strikes (Score:2)
The Jupiter System? (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps the most facinating thing (Score:2)
Demoted (Score:2)
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Resurrect Dead on Planet Jupiter (Score:2)
http://www.toynbee.net/ [toynbee.net]
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=40111350 [myspace.com]
Neil DeGrasse Tyson (Score:1)
Tyson is not a scientist (Score:2)
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No, at best you could say you're wrong, and apparently incapable of admitting it. The fact is, he is a scientist, and he does have published papers. Whether you consider his contributions suitably "significant" is a separate and unrelated matter. Nice try attempting to reframe the debate, though.
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So now you're going to start doling out baseless accusations? Nice. Very "scientific" of you.
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I think if Tyson were a real scientist, he'
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I think if Tyson were a real scientist, he'd recognize that the fuss over the designation "planet" is too arbitrary to be worth worrying much about, and it's silly to take a strong position on one side or the other *except* for tradition's sake. His position thus makes little sense, and it's telling that this is an issue that he chooses to take a stand on.
If you've listened to him speak on various occasions, he's said repeatedly that this whole thing is much more about politics than science. (the biggest push to keep Pluto's old status comes from the USA which doesn't want to lose the distinction of the only planet to be discovered by an American)
You're wrong however that he should ignore it. The American Museum is one of the most prestigous faces of science to the general public. As he and others have pointed out, the Pluto controversy is an enormous l
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If it's necessary to use something as irrelevant as this as an excuse to inform the public about science, the battle is already lost. This sort of thing is an example of, if you'll excuse the cliche, "the soft bigotry of low expectations". If you don't challenge your audience and don't expect them to know or want to learn more than they should have learned by fourth grade, you're not achieving anything useful and
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No, but it should be worth learning about. There may have been public interest in Pluto's status, but there's also public interest in Paris Hilton and OJ Simpson. Tyson catered to that public interest in exactly the same way as any media whore responds to public attention, with no noticeable attempt to redirect the conversation to anything more substantial. The alleged
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Although you both disagree, I have to say the thread has given me pause to contemplate the ethics of professionalism, how we term ourselves and how such things are measured. It's a real concern for me, who must honestly admit my best work was done when I was considerably younger. At what point must I characterise myself as "once was..." on my resume?
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As to the answer on your resume. I think the "once was" is still bs despite what I said. People like Einstein, Sagan, and Tyson in thier dotage still manage better than many in thier prime. It's n
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Do you want the list alphabetically or in order of importance?
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Ahem! There, fixed that for you.
As any astronomer would tell you, mixing up the two is a capital offence.
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Just trying to help.
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"In February, the New Horizons probe passed through Uranus system on its way to Pluto, and we saw some spectacular pictures. Now, the science teams have published detailed scientific results, along with new images and movies. The probe's instruments saw clouds form from ammonia welling up from Uranus's lower atmosphere, and heat-induced lighting strikes in the polar regions, and fresh eruptions on Uranus' moons. New Horizons also captured the c
Re:Pluto probe makes discoveries at Uranus (Score:4, Funny)
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Leela: I don't get it.
Professor: I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.
Fry: Oh. What's it called now?
Professor: Urectum. Here, let me locate it for you.
Fry: Hehe, no, no, I think I'll just smell around a bit over here.
Oblig Futurama (Score:1)
I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.
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Fry: "Did you build the smelloscope?"
Professor: "No, I remembered that I built one last year."
Fry: "Hey, as long as you don't make me smell Uranus." *laughs*
Leela: "I don't get it."
Professor: "I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all."
Fry: "Oh. What's it called now?"
Professor: "Urectum. Here, let me locate it for you."
Fry: "Hehe, no, no, I think I'll just smell around a b
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Fry: "Did you build the smelloscope?"
Professor: "No, I remembered that I built one last year."
Fry: "Hey, as long as you don't make me smell Uranus." *laughs*
Leela: "I don't get it."
Professor: "I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all."
Fry: "Oh. What's it called now?"
Professor: "Urectum. Here, let me locate it for you."
Fry: "Hehe, no, no, I think I'll just smell around a bit over
Re:I propose a name change (Score:4, Funny)
(pun not actually intended, but hey, it works)
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Do you people have any idea how hard it is to teach astronomy when half the class snickers every time the 7th planet is mentioned?
In light of the public's growing familiarity with anatomy and diminishing mental age, the IAU should rename Uranus.
New name under consideration (Score:1, Funny)
In light of the public's growing familiarity with anatomy and diminishing mental age, the IAU should rename Uranus.
I heard the IAU is considering "Urasshole"...
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Just pronounce it YUR-uh-nus
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