Cassini Discovers First River On Another World 230
AbsoluteXyro writes "NASA's Cassini orbiter, which has been dutifully exploring the Saturn system since 2004, has captured images of the first river ever observed on another world — and it's a biggun. 200 miles of flowing hydrocarbons meandering down a valley in the north polar region of Saturn's moon Titan, emptying into the awesomely named Kraken Mare — itself a body of liquid roughly the size of the Mediterranean Sea back on Earth. But don't think of going for an extraterrestrial skinny dip quite yet, temperatures on Titan average a brutally cold 290 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit)."
Fahrenheit? (Score:0, Insightful)
The reason for reporting temperatures in Fahrenheit is because they have intuitive meaning for us Merkins.
Minus two ninety doesn't fit that description; shoulda been Celsius.
Conspiracy can begin (Score:5, Insightful)
Let the conspiracy theorists begin making up stuff.
Surely they will claim something about extra-terrestrial cities and FBI secrets.
Re:Fahrenheit? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is one of the few times that I'd rather see the temperature in the Rankine scale over Fahrenheit!
Essentially, they had 4 systems to choose from (Kelvin would be ideal), and they picked the very worst choice!
Re:Metric system, please (Score:2, Insightful)
... are you stupid? Of course they use proper units.
This is a press release intended for the general public.
Re:How could water be flowing (Score:5, Insightful)
So, instead of reading the article, you decided to search wikipedia instead? That's so messed up....
Slashdot.txt (Score:2, Insightful)
Awesome science stuff happens, queue 300 posts of retards bitching about the unit of measurement a writer chose to use so the public he writes to can relate easier.
If you have an issue with the measurement don't bitch and moan, do the conversion and move on. That's what those of us raised on the imperial scales do when we see metric stuff posted (unless we were those fortunate to have grown up learning both)
Re:Fahrenheit? (Score:4, Insightful)
It'll be hard to pry away from us, too. There's more integers between 32 and 212 than between 0 and 100. So if you don't use decimal points, Fahrenheit is of a higher precision. Even still, when you're talking about temperatures never seen on earth, Kelvin or Celsius still make far more sense.
Re:Metric system, please (Score:5, Insightful)