Lake On Titan Winks From a Billion Kilometers Away 139
The Bad Astronomer writes "NASA's Cassini spacecraft took an image of Saturn's giant moon Titan earlier this year that serendipitously provides proof of liquid (probably methane) on its surface. The picture shows a glint of reflected sunlight off of a monster lake called Kraken Mare (larger than the Caspian Sea!). Scientists have been getting better and better evidence of liquid methane on Titan, but this is the first direct proof."
Liquid Methane Eh? (Score:1, Funny)
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Where's the TMI mod when you need it?
Re:Liquid Methane Eh? (Score:4, Funny)
Read the name of the "lake", - Kraken Mare.
It's just a big puddle of sea-monster piss, nothing exciting at all.
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If you have a decent 8" reflecting scope here on Earth, you can easily observe that Titan looks like a rusty sheriff's badge.
Aren't sheriff's badges typically the same color as a trombone?
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Way to explain the joke, asshole.
billion kilometers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:billion kilometers (Score:5, Funny)
Mod parent +1E0 Informative but Pedantic.
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I think ‘terameter’ (or Tm in short) sounds cool.
I think we should start to expect from others, to know, what a Tm, a Gm, a Pm, etc, are. I will certainly, from now on. :)
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Mod parent +1E0 Informative but Pedantic.
I'll show you pedantic; it's spelled terametre.
It's spelt "spelt", not "spelled", if you insist on using British English, my pedantic friend.
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my pedantic friend.
I much prefer pedantik. Has a more Teutonic flair, you see.
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Both work [wiktionary.org]
I, at least, prefer reducing the sheer number of irregular verbs out there.
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Re:billion kilometers (Score:4, Informative)
Just be glad it's not "Lake on Titan Winks from 621 Million Miles Away"
Or "Lake on Titan Winks from 4.97 billion Furlongs Away"
Or "Lake on Titan Winks from 10^-12 Diopters Away"
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A billion kilometers sounds like it went through a news source and was dumbed down for someone who doesn't understand powers of 10 (eg That's a one followed by 12 zeros!).
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Even if Diopter was a proper measure of length (and it isn't), it would actually be 1/(10^-12 Diopter) as Diopter is the reciprocal of a focal length to measure optical power. Still, it's an interesting way of putting it.
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No, the unit of 1 Diopter is equivalent to 1/meter, thus 1^-12 Diopter^-1 would be equivalent.
Re:billion kilometers (Score:5, Informative)
No matter how you say it, it's wrong. It winks from 200,000 kilometers away. The rest of the distance was just data transfer.
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Re:billion kilometers (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it's one and a half hour away. At light' speed, I mean.
I happen to have been tech resp. of the european Huygens probe that Cassini brought to Titan, and what I remember the most from the time of Huygens descent and landing years ago, is this feeling that all the active descent has *already* happened, while here on Earth we didn't yet have received the first bits of info, radiowave that were still into the travel.
Indeed that was a very real way of measuring distance. Saturn definitely is not close...
Hervé S. (now back on more conventional Earth observation spacecraft designs ;-)
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Had it really happened by then? If it hadn't been observed, wasn't the lander really a 'Schodinger's cat', although in a really really big box?
Martians! (Score:2)
You are raising a very interesting question, at least for the average engineer I am :-)
What you are suggesting is, while Schrödinger was dealing with microscopic events (the cat's box was explicitly only an analogy), one may turn it large scale by replacing the request for isolation by a request for distance only.
Now, I'm not sure an actual quantum physicist wouldn't answer you that because of the presence of possible alternate observers, the Huygens module quantum state probably would have to collapse
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Depends on whether those are British billions or normal billions.
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwords/billion?view=uk [askoxford.com]
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Exactly; if they used a metric prefix, there would not be that ambiguity.
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Thankfully the British billion is well and truly dead now.
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That unit would scare away readers. "Yikes! A terameter-high terrorist!"
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A terameter is a tool for measuring teras.
A terametre is a unit of distance.
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I'm afraid you are being pedantic. Both are acceptable. The "-re" suffix is an influence from French. If you look at French words for measuring devices as well as units of measure, you will understand this.
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Of course. And so is "1 inch = 25.4 millimeters"
Let's face it, this isn't rocket science, is it?
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Apparently, mixing them up is.
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I'm afraid you are being pedantic. Both are acceptable.
If both are correct, it's not really pedantic, is it?
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I'm afraid you are being pedantic. Both are acceptable.
If both are correct, it's not really pedantic, is it?
That's pretty pedantic.
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Its called a terameter. What is the point of the metric system if you don't use the other scales?
Because then everyone would have to look up teramer and google would crash under the /. rush.
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I think it's mostly for astronomy, not really navigation in space. 1 AU = 149.6 Mm
We have the Light Year for measurement too. 1 LY = 9.5 Pm
Maybe it's because Astronomy was around before the metric system existed? Or maybe we need a scientist to sit down and explain it to us... not everything makes sense at first glance. Like, why does the world use the Knot unit? 1 Knot = 1.852 km/h. Yet it is an accepted international unit because "a vessel travelling at 1 knot along a meridian travels one minute of ge
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Its called a terameter. What is the point of the metric system if you don't use the other scales?
Plain ol' familiarity. Same reason that I would say that I weigh 90 kilograms instead of 0.09 megagrams. Well, maybe that and what it implies. :-O
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Re:billion kilometers (Score:4, Interesting)
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That part you still have to memorize just like 5280ft in a mile.
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That part you still have to memorize just like 5280ft in a mile.
At least you don't have to memorize the names 3 times, once for distance (inch, foot, mile, etc), once for mass (ounce, pound, etc) and once for volume (fluid ounce, pint, gallon, etc).
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It is generally accepted to try to use the prefix that will best keep the number of units between 1-999. More people might still speak parts of Latin if people used the correct terms. Also Slashdot is a technical crowd and I would bet that less than 1% doesn't know what a Tera means.
True, however, it's best to often represent a measurement in terms of what people already know. I know roughly how long it takes me to get through 1 km, but there is still the calculation, however quick, of changing a terameter into something I would be able to relate to easily, which is a billion km.
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I would bet that less than 1% doesn't know what a Tera means.
Of course we know what it means. 2^40.
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1 x 10^12 m (Score:2)
It's called scientific notation. Nobody really uses metric prefixes.
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Just be glad the headline wasn't "Lake On Titan Winks From a Giga Kilomoeter Away"
How do they know it's methane (Score:2)
How do they know it's methane, couldn't it be any liquid?
Re:How do they know it's methane (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How do they know it's methane (Score:5, Funny)
ALL THESE FARTS ARE YOURS. USE THEM WISELY, AND DON'T LIGHT ANY NAKED FLAMES.
EXCEPT TITAN. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE, BECAUSE IT BLOODY STINKS.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Yes, right, I'm sure Stanley Kubrick told Arthur C. Clarke the same thing when they were finalizing the screenplay. So now I'm reduced to typing a lot of mindless garbage just to get around the lousy Slashdot filter.
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The text parent is paraphrasing belongs to 2010: Odyssey Two, directed by Peter Hyams. No Kubrick around.
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Although to be pedantic, methane doesn't smell.
The purest farts are silent, and not deadly, unless lit.
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How do they know it's methane, couldn't it be any liquid?
At that temperature, anyway. It can't be water.
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indeed on Titan the ground rocks are constituted of almost pure water ice, and over there ice just will be rock-hard forever.
The pebble on these Cassini-Huygens lander photos are ice: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/SEMEMY71Y3E_0.html [esa.int] (visible on the orange vertical image that is the "last photo" Huygens took once on ground)
Hervé
Where do the hydrocarbons come from? (Score:2, Interesting)
Methane is an organic material. Organics are one of the key building blocks of life. In fact, it is one of many byproducts of life processes. An abundance of organic material bodes well for finding life (probably bacterial) on Titan.
The question is whether life arose there on its own or was seeded by wayward asteroids and comets.
Re:Where do the hydrocarbons come from? (Score:5, Informative)
Methane is the precursor to organic molecules, in a more general sense, not the result of biological processes. When you're the simplest combination of carbon (what, the fourth most abundant element in the universe?) and hydrogen (the most abundant element), it's hard to argue that your existence requires biological processes. (Particularly as methane is found everywhere volatiles can be found in our solar system and outside of it.)
Perhaps you're confused by the fact that methane on Earth is usually the result of biological activity? That's because in our peculiar atmosphere, methane can't survive long before oxidation.
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Re:Where do the hydrocarbons come from? (Score:5, Interesting)
Methane is an organic material. Organics are one of the key building blocks of life. In fact, it is one of many byproducts of life processes. An abundance of organic material bodes well for finding life (probably bacterial) on Titan.
I doubt it. "Organic" is an artificially created classification. It just means anything that is prevalently composed of carbon atoms. There happen to be a lot of carbon atoms in the universe, due to its relatively low atomic mass. There's also a ton of helium. It is not really surprising that these common elements might be found, in combination, in large quantities. We have large deposits of hydrocarbon here on Earth as well. Yes, these compounds are, according to our own definitions, "organic", and in fact originated from living matter, but we do not see organisms thriving in the deep oil wells.
I do not see how an excess of methane would indicate the likelihood of finding "bacterial" life. What would the cell walls be composed of? It would have to be something like a lipid bi-layer, so that the membrane wouldn't just dissolve into the methane. But then, what's INSIDE the cell? Probably, it would be more hydrocarbons. These non-polar materials are ill-suited as stages for complex, biological chemical reactions. They cannot dissolve ions. Without soluble ions, hell, without soluble polar compounds, there isn't a whole hell of a lot of interesting chemistry that can take place.
If we found tons of water that would be far more indication of the potential for life. Water has dozens of extremely unusual properties all of which make it conducive to life.
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There happen to be a lot of carbon atoms in the universe, due to its relatively low atomic mass. There's also a ton of helium. It is not really surprising that these common elements might be found, in combination, in large quantities.
Carbon in chemical combination with helium would be exceptionally interesting. Unfortunately, what we have here is carbon and hydrogen in the form of methane [wikipedia.org] and ethane, a combination that would hardly raise an eyebrow except for the observation that it's in liquid form. If it were frozen solid like the tonnes of water ice on Titan, things would look much less likely for any sort of complex chemistry. As it is now there are at least some possibilities.
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> There's also a ton of helium. It is not really surprising that these common elements might be found, in combination, in large quantities.
I don't think you'll find helium combining with anything much ;-) I think you meant 'hydrogen' :-P
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Lets try to find life that has nothing to do with the life we know and endure on this planet and would die if it tried to live amongst us.
No. What you are saying is basically, "We should be looking for something we can't imagine." I'd like to point out that this is basically the same as saying "Let's find some shit," and doesn't help whatsoever in directing us WHERE we ought to be looking for life. If you want to find life, you need some kind of strategy to narrow down the billions of possible places to l
Titan life bleak. (Score:4, Insightful)
The odds for life on Titan are bleak because it is so damned cold. How cold is Titan? Well, when your methane is liquid, as in, liquified natural gas, that's pretty damned cold. The other problem, I think, is a lack of oxygen. I think the basic blocks for life would be nitrogren, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and I think a splash of sulfur, plus some form of energy. When you really think about it, life is basically a set of chemical reactions that go against the grain of entropy and produce a set of molecules that arrange things in a higher energy state. Like, the outcome of most dead things is to easily burn.
Mercury is big metal blob and way too hot.
Venus has too much carbon.
Earth is nice.
Mars is missing nitrogen.
Jupiter / Saturn / Uranus / Neptune big hydrogen blobs.
Pluto, other deep objects, are near absolute zero.
Maybe Jupiter's moon Europa might luck out.
But honestly, I would bet that if you included some terms in Drake's equation to allow for the probability of having all the elements in the right mix at the right distance from a star, then, it may well turn out that we are certainly alone in at least a 100 light year radius.
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About Drake’s equation: Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com].
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The other problem, I think, is a lack of oxygen.
There's plenty of oxygen on Titan. The whole crust is made out of water ice. True there is no free molecular oxygen, but neither was there on Earth before about a billion years ago.
As for life on Titan, the suggestion is that there might be an opportunity when the liquid water beneath Titan's 50-km-thick ice crust bubbles to the surface (a "cryovolcano"), or when a meteor impact leaves a patch of melted local bedrock (which is water ice, so the patch would be a lake). When liquid water from one of these
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Venus has too much carbon.
No more than Earth has. The problem with Venus's surface is that it's just too hot and it has lost its water. The fact that the carbon (dioxide) is more in the atmosphere than Earth is a by-product of these facts.
Mars is missing nitrogen.
It's not clear you need much and I don't think Mars actually lacks nitrogen in particular. It's just quite chilly and has a thin, thin atmosphere. It lacks everything, really.
You seem to have defined "habitable" as "just like Earth", which yields predictable results. The more generally accepte
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Mercury is a big metal blob? WTF? Its a rocky planet.
-molo
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Mercury has a large iron core. Larger than a small planet should, in fact, have. This doesn't particularly alter the surface composition (which is rocky), but it can be fairly characterized generically as "metallic".
"Blob" however is silly.
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Helium, not hydrogen. And true, but planetary scientists don't tend to be that broad in their use of the term "metal".
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it may well turn out that we are certainly alone in at least a 100 light year radius.
Which is still pretty small on the scale of the galaxy.
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Due to the frigid temperatures on Titan, scientists are not very optimistic about finding life there; without the heat input of the sun to speed up chemical reactions, it would take an incredible amount of time, if ever, for even the simplest structures to develop.
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indeed the reason for the Cassini/Huygens mission over there was to analyse what was called a "frozen Earth" at the prebiotic stage.
Titan's size and atmosphere thickness is definitely comparable to ours (and the only one in the solar system), it just never got the necessary energy to start things up...
And given the possibility of life... (Score:5, Informative)
Prior to this, the main evidence that Titan might have liquid methane was based on the reflection of radio waves detected by the Cassini probe. In particular, there were discrepancies between what one would expect and what was observed in the percentage of reflection in the ELF range (about 2 to 30 Hz). This discrepancy suggests some form of boundary layer, such as a boundary between liquid and solid methane or between liquid methane and some other solid substance. There's also a lot of evidence for a large internal methane sea under the solid surface. We still know very little about Titan. We've only sent a single probe (Huygens) actually dedicated to investigating it. However, even Huygens wasn't much and was just a part of the larger Cassini mission. The next scheduled mission is the TSSM (Titan Saturn System Mission) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission [wikipedia.org] http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=44033 [esa.int]) which will focus a lot more on Titan. Hopefully a lot of the mysteries about the moon will then be answered.
Titan is routinely used as an example of a moon that might have life. Unfortunately, if there is any life, it is almost certainly microbial. So no one is appreciating the view from the planet.
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The Huygens probe was actually designed to float in liquid in case it encountered a pond, lake, or ocean. It would have been interesting if it did, but alas it landed on just dry land (or at least frozen-solid land). However, the rocks (possibly water-ice) it imaged at the surface were rounded off, suggesting that they used to be embedded in liquid.
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> Unfortunately, if there is any life, it is almost certainly microbial. So no one is appreciating the view from the planet.
UNFORTUNATELY? Uggh. I'd call it a relief. I'm quite happy here on Earth with no natural predators. Sure, it's just because we humans taste aweful, but aliens may have a different sense of taste.
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Saying that Huygens "wasn't much" and "was just a part of the larger Cassini mission" is pretty misguided thinking and borders on insulting the scientists and engineers who put this amazing probe together, IMHO.
Are you saying that designing a probe that survives, dormant, for almost 7 years in interplanetary space and then turns on perfectly "isn't much"? Are you saying that making a fully-autonomous descent and soft landing on an outer planet's moon and sending back a stunning image of the surface "isn
Proof (Score:2)
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A bright light out around Saturn has to be the sun. So if your camera is not pointing at the sun it must be pointing at a reflection of the sun.
Re:Proof (Score:4, Informative)
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Not only that, but the reflection matched up with a large area they suspected was a lake in previous surface images.
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Proof is for mathematics and alcohol.
Definitely stealing this line.
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I suspect it merely looks fuzzy because of haze rather than distance or camera movement. Even close up, the photos of the atmosphere usually appear fuzzy or hazy clear back to the Voyager days. Its atmosphere extends pretty high into space because of low gravity.
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That's because Titan wasn't winking at Earth. He was winking at Venus, who is, like, way hotter.
Fossil Oxidisers (Score:3, Interesting)
If it was possible to mine or drill for oxidizers under the surface of Titan, then you would have a complete energy economy.
Frozen Nitrous Oxide anyone?
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Frozen Nitrous Oxide anyone?
Pssshh. Don't make me laugh.
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You actually don't need an oxidizer.
If you just take the methane, and a big solar reflector, you should be able to
cook the methane molecules (like ants under a magnifying glass).
Then use the expansion to drive turbines on zero g.
Transmit the energy back to Earth or moon for storage and distribution.
We wouldn't need to use any energy resources from Earth after that.
Using the moons of Jupter or Saturn as gravitational generators would probably be more efficient though....
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Wouldn't that depend on if you were collecting the radiant energy from the sun?
As I understand it, Saturn and Jupiter emit lots of blackbody infrared energy from their own gravity causing atmospheric friction events.
Failing that, one could also utilize the tidal forces of the gas giant as an energy source, since even at it's distance from it's parent planet, the gravitational mass-energy of the system would be immense. (Saturn may be smaller than Jupiter, but it's no midget either. It's got plenty of mass.)
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Wouldn't it take as much (or more) energy to boil the methane as you would recover from the turbines? The laws of thermodynamics apply on Titan too.
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Right, so you don't think it would be more efficient to collect solar energy here on earth? There's no need for some convoluted scheme involving boiling methane if all you are doing is collecting solar energy.
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Geologically, Sulfate is most likely as far as oxidizers are concerned. NOw in so far as reacting the two together, you'd have to have a very well insulated system that uses the reaction its self to bring the reactants to a high enoug htemperature that chemical reactions can take place efficiently. Then there's the problme of mining the materials: THe reaction probably doesn't give out enough energy to make mining Sulfate as an oxidizer energy efficient.
Let Loose... (Score:1)
The Question is...which Sea is It? (Score:1)
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Is that an African or European sea?
Fake. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Or intelligent life on earth! Now that would be serious bullshit! ^^
Your friendly dimensional overlord.