The Swirling Vortex of Titan

sighted writes "New images from the robotic spacecraft Cassini show the ongoing formation of a massive vortex in the atmosphere of Saturn's planet-sized moon Titan. (See also this animation.) The same moon has recently provided tantalizing hints of an underground ocean as well. Future missions, if any are ever funded, will have plenty to explore."

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[Anonymous Coward]

Cut taxes, starve the government. Live free or die hard!

ftfy

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[Stirling Newberry]

Because corporations realize that it is more profitable to make pain pills for old people, and enforce IP on movies than explore new worlds. A wise government opens the ways which private enterprise will follow, collecting taxes on the successful businesses to recapture the costs of exploration, education, and research. However, as long as minting billionaires is our economic priority, neither government, nor private enterprise, will be interested in new worlds, since all the money is here on this old one

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[PaulBu]

Note that when I am an old person (and I am not required by the government to spend a portion of my income on pain pills! But that would get us totally off-topic), I will be free to contribute that money to something like space exploration voluntary, oh, heck, sign up for a one-way trip to Mars! ;-)

But, I guess, I am already old enough by now (and lived under too many nominally different governments) not to have high hopes for having a "wise one" anymore any time soon...

Also, "all the money is here on this

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[Stirling Newberry]

Note to the troll mods, in economic theory, this is called dynamic inconsistency and future welfare discounting in intergenerational transfers.

And in the question of space exploration, the questions of how much we discount the welfare in the future, and what the curve of dynamic inconsistency looks like are essential in deciding at what point it is worth while to invest in an expensive project with very long term payoffs.

Mod offtopic

[fiannaFailMan]

Please mod this entire fucking thread offtopic before it engulfs a potentially interesting discussion about Titan.

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[Iskender]

Can the condescending attitude please. Threading doesn't matter if 90% of it all is off topic politics and pushes the on topic talk into an unmoderated corner.

agreed

[circletimessquare]

And my positive contribution to a serious thread:

The dipole moment of water, the dipole moment of anything, ammonia for example, is necessary for life

Because life has to have something to work with chemically, a way in, a way that can lead to more complex chemistry.a dipole moment supplies this way in and way up

Therefore, I am voting against life on titan, as a bunch of hydrocarbons with no dipole moment offer no stepping stone to more advanced chemistry

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[bdabautcb]

Thank you for your positive contribution. Not being sarcastic, I have a question for you: can't hydrocarbons react to form molecules with pretty serious dipoles? I'm not a chemist, I'm an ecologist, and I don't remember a lot of organic chemistry. I might be totally wrong, but I thought that hydrocarbons on their own can form some dipolar molecules, and some especially strong dipoles in the presence of other elements, especially flouride, chloride, etc. I'd appreciate a response, I don't really know!

Evidence of life

[rossdee]

Maybe theres a trailer park there

Titan is becoming a more amazing world

[Stirling Newberry]

with each discovery. Would that space exploration were the priority, we could have robots swarming the solar system, including permanent orbiters around the gas giants and landers on the ice worlds.

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[bandy]

Except Europa ... Attempt No Landings There.

Re:Titan is becoming a more amazing world

[Stirling Newberry]

Sadly 2010 didn't arrive by 2010, though 1984 is half way here.

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[bandy]

All the elements for the latter are in place, except for private ownership of printed material. However, if no-one reads them, then it really doesn't matter what they say. As to being about to get humans out of Terra's g-field...sigh. And Hard AI is so much harder than what anyone had imagined. And is much harder than what the Transhumanists and Singularists could possibly imagine.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Titan is becoming a more amazing world

[bandy]

Read and watch "2001: A Space Odyssey". (The book and the movie were developed simultaneously and you really need one to fully understand the other. I'd read the book first.) Then read "2010: Odyssey Two". Both written by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Psychedelics optional where permitted by law, sitter who knows and loves the story highly advised.

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[lennier]

Eu-ro-pa??? Too 'good' for the rest of the solar system now, are we, huh??

Twelth of never on the sand
We'll be the pirate twins again....

(ta republique [youtube.com])

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[MickLinux]

I wouldn't trust any images from JPL at the moment. Yes, the pictures are interesting, so are pictures from Star Trek.

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[similar_name]

I wouldn't trust any images from JPL at the moment. Yes, the pictures are interesting, so are pictures from Star Trek.

Why? I haven't heard anything so I searched for fake JPL images and this [youtube.com] was the first thing that came up. I'm assuming you're not talking about that so I'm curious.

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[MickLinux]

I wasn't aware of any of that.No, I don't find junk like that convincing, either. I probably shouldn't have posted that comment anyhow. I was only aware of one specific instance of a publication/ documentation of some ...er, questionable material by JPL, but it was something else, later, that made my mind up.

Maybe a more reasonable person than me would assume that the one instance was a fluke. Or if not a fluke, perhaps brought about by claims like the one you posted.

I wish there were more comments

[strikethree]

I wish there were more comments in stories like these. I always get a sense of child-like wonder when I see new things like this and I always find myself wondering how/why/what is going on. With the physics stories, we usually see some experts or at least some clued-in non-arrogant people having discussions that REALLY enlighten me. Stuff like this, not so much. It makes me feel kind of sad.

I wish I knew more about this subject or at least enough to know where to go look. I will probably have to start with cloud formations and vortex mechanics and work my way out from there, but by the time I finally have a general idea, the wonder will be lost... but at least the information will still reside in my brain and I can apply it to Jupiter or somesuch. I am getting too old and the universe is too big for me to do original research on everything. That is the only reason I wish I could live forever. :)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Nyder]

I agree with you completely. Isn't it cool!? I'm 52 now, and as a kid, before the moon landing, many people then thought it quite possible that the lunar lander might sink into the 'green cheese' surface of the moon! I know that sounds crazy to anyone born after 1969 reading this, but that was people's thinking back then. We couldn't be sure what the moon was made of. We really didn't know! We've come so far since then in our knowledge of the universe, and every pic of anything we haven't done or seen before always makes me feel so awed. Awed, and grateful. Grateful for being alive in this amazing time of discovery we live in. And I wonder how far we'll eventually go.....

I don't think most people have gotten smarter since then, sure, most know the moon is rock, but that's only because they believe everything that is told to them.

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[qwidjib0]

Agreed, people suck. The fact that we've barely touched the tip of the iceberg in discovering things like this is something to genuinely be excited about. I can't say that about many things in today's society.

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[RaceProUK]

A moon is a satellite of a planet. Note that this is different to the Moon (note the capital). So Titan is a moon, but not the Moon.

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[spidercoz]

Luna is the name of Earth's only natural satellite, it is 'a' moon.

TiME = Titan Mare Explorer

[Darth Snowshoe]

NASA is due (this month?) to make a final selection between three competing Discovery-class proposals. Among them is the Titan Mare Explorer, the first attempt to put a boat on an extraterrestrial sea. How cool would that be? Good overviews of the proposal are here;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Mare_Explorer [wikipedia.org]
http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2011/08/time-and-updates.html [blogspot.com]

A more detailed description is here;
http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/workshops/titan2010/presentations/aharonson.pdf [caltech.edu]

Disclosure: If the TiME mission is selected, I am hoping to work on it.

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[Darth Snowshoe]

In fairness, a description of the other two competing Discovery proposals is here,

http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2012/05/and-discovery-nominees-are.html [blogspot.com]

along with links to NASA quad charts for each, and to larger articles discussing each proposal in detail.

Looks more like the eye of a hurricane...

[PatSand]

except the hurricane is most/all of the planet!

I think it is an area of relative calm around the swirling bands...but that's my 2 cents of scientific insight/guessing...