Radar images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft display assured new curiosities on the surface of Saturn's sinister moon Titan, as well as a forcefully encompassing item that resembles a giant hot cross bun and shorelines of ancient seas. " NASA's Cassini spacecraft obtained this image of a item produced thrill a hot cross bun in the northern district of Titan (gone) that bears a marked semblance to a blockade item on Venus (maxim) [Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI]"The have a fight were open today at the American High-level Society's Defining moment of Cosmological Sciences conference in Reno, Nev.Spray from burning repeatedly causes the top of cash to raise and decipher. Scientists assume assured blockade series flanked by high temperature may be at fake on Titan. The image transmission the bun-like escalation was obtained on May 22, 2012, by Cassini's radar tool. Scientists stand seen blockade put in at on Venus, everyplace a dome-shaped district about 20 miles (30 kilometers) on both sides of has been seen at the high-level of a large volcano called Kunapipi Mons. They infer that the Titan cross, which is about 40 miles (70 kilometers) desire, is whichever the descendant of fractures caused by elevate from underneath, plausibly the descendant of rebel magma."The torrid cross bun is a type of item we stand not seen by means of on Titan, transmission that Titan keeps weird us durable after eight natural life of notes from Cassini," assumed Rosaly Lopes, a Cassini radar merrymaking scientist based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The bun may be the descendant of what is proverbial on Hollow out as a laccolith, an intercession fashioned by magma pushing up from underneath. The Henry Mountains of Utah are standard examples of this geologic phenomenon."Latest group of Cassini scientists, led by Ellen Stofan, who is based at Proxemy Inquire into, Rectortown, Va., has been scrutinizing radar images of Titan's southern hemisphere. Titan is the on your own lay other than Hollow out that has resolved mushy on its surface, on the other hand the liquids on Titan are hydrocarbon preferably than water. So far, outgoing seas stand on your own been seen in Titan's northern hemisphere.A new analysis of Cassini images unruffled from 2008 to 2011 suggests offer were after outgoing, come out seas at Titan's south plunk as well. Stofan and generation stand found two fine candidates for dry or fundamentally dry seas. One of these dry seas appears to be about 300 by 170 miles (475 by 280 kilometers) on both sides of, and almost certainly a few hundred feet (meters) powerful. Ontario Lacus, the chief current lake in the south, sits clothed in of the dry shorelines, thrill a shrunken kind of a once-mighty sea.Scientists led by Oded Aharonson, unlike radar merrymaking member based at the California Foundation of Gear in Pasadena, assume that cycles equal to Earth's Croll-Milankovich cycles, which pardon coarsen changes in provisions of the way Hollow out orbits rudely the sun, are at fake on Titan, too. Such cycles on Titan would turn stable transmission of mushy hydrocarbons from plunk to plunk. By this model, the south plunk may possibly stand been covered near generous seas less than 50,000 natural life ago."The seas on Titan are brief hosts for experiments in prebiotic chemistry, and we differentiate they are cycling from one hemisphere to the other over 100,000 natural life," assumed Stofan. "I'd similar to get a earlier confront at the seas of the north or these dry seabeds to review the extensiveness to which this prebiotic chemistry has grown."The Cassini merrymaking has confirmed assured of the durability of Titan's northern seas by looking at radar images from Cassini hard-working about one Titan embellish (in this case, six Hollow out natural life) cool. The newer images, from May 22, 2012, on the precise flyby as the hot cross bun images, show the shorelines stayed about the precise, indicative of the northern lakes are not quick weather deeds, in modify to the brief darkening of parts of the equator after a outburst in 2010.The Cassini-Huygens payment is a obliging project of NASA, the European Size Headquarters and ASI, the Italian Size Headquarters. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a entity of the California Foundation of Gear in Pasadena, manages the payment for NASA's Science Orders Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was meant, grown and assembled at JPL. The RADAR tool was built by JPL and the Italian Size Headquarters, recital near merrymaking members from the US and assorted European countries. JPL is a entity of the California Foundation of Gear in Pasadena."Source: NASA [October 16, 2012]"
Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. Here's today's news:
g STARS - Astronomers are closing in on proof that a supermassive black hole is the source of mysterious radio waves at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. See article.
g ABODES - Saturn's moon Titan is notable both because it is the largest moon in our solar system and because it is the only moon in the solar system with a significant atmosphere. Early this year, NASA's Cassini orbiter, currently orbiting Saturn, released the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which descended through Titan's atmosphere and landed on the moon's surface. Recently, Chris McKay, a planetary research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, gave a public lecture, sponsored by the Planetary Society, in which he talked about the scientific results of the Cassini-Huygens mission. In this first of four parts, McKay discusses Titan's atmosphere. See article. For related stories, see "Cloudy Skies Storm Titan"; and "Iceball among snowballs".
g LIFE - We need a tricorder- the convenient, hand-held device featured on "Star Trek" that can detect life forms even from orbit. Unfortunately, we don't have a clue how a tricorder might work, since life forms don't seem to have any observable property that distinguishes them from inanimate matter. Furthermore, we lack a definition of life that can guide a search for life outside Earth. How can we find what we can't define? An answer may lie in the observation that life uses a small, discrete set of organic molecules as basic building blocks. On the surface of Europa and in the subsurface of Mars, we can search for alien but analogous patterns in the organics. See article. Note: This article is from 2004.
g INTELLIGENCE - A new study suggests that changes in gastric physiology perform better than standard polygraph methods in distinguishing between lying and telling the truth. The University of Texas study demonstrates a clear link between the act of lying and a significant increase in gastric arrhythmia. See article.
g MESSAGE - Quote of the Day: "This time is unique in our history, in any civilization's history: the moment of the acquisition of technology. The moment when contact becomes possible." - Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), "Contact"
g COSMICUS - According to a NASA report that evaluates the risks of sending a manned mission to Mars, Martian dust poses as one of the biggest potential problems. See article.
g LEARNING - The world's oldest observatory, dating back about 4,100 years has been discovered in North China's Shanxi Province, Chinese archaeologists have announced. See article.
g IMAGINING - Like stories about alien biologies/environments? Be sure to scour your favorite used bookstores for Clifford Simak's "Way Station" (1963), which examines many different kinds of potential aliens.
g AFTERMATH - If we establish communication with a civilization even as close as 100 light years from Earth, the round-trip time for a message and its reply is 200 years. What will be the psychology of a civilization that can engage in a meaningful conversation with this sort of delay? How is such a conversation to be established? What should the content of such a conversation be? These are the questions which motivate our title: "Minds and Millennia: The Psychology of Interstellar Communication".
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