Quote:
|
Originally Posted by papageno
(Please let me do this wordplay.)
Are you going to jerrypick the evidence as you did with Huygens, which did not crash nor missed Titan, as you had predicted?
|
I made a very rough prediction that Huygens would be ~800km off-target and be moving faster upon entry than expected - It's all on the Potential Threat to Huygens' thread. The preliminary data (Elias posted references to) has visual graphs that indicate Huygens was 1100 km off-target, and moving more than 30m/s faster-than-expected and continued to accelerate for almost two minutes after first detection!
The rest of the Doppler data is completely consistent with a much faster than expected descent and deceleration.
So I don't see anything inconsistent with my hypothesis EXCEPT for the landing time. In any case, the data are all preliminary, and we are not likely to have hard numbers until June.
I don't have any problem waiting for the data. In the extended Cassini mission, they hope to do a lot of Doppler ranging and gravitational/mass measurements. If I am right, every time they collect ranging data during a close pass, Cassini will record a high (positive) gravity anomally that does not correlate with surface features, only with time of closest measured approach.
I can't think of anything more exciting than making a prediction based upon a completely new and original concept of science, and having a mission actively testing and constraining that hypothesis. Even if it turns out to be wrong!