Needs a picture



Lake Superior figures:

LENGTH: 350 miles / 563 km.
BREADTH: 160 miles / 257 km.
WATER SURFACE AREA: 31,700 sq. miles / 82,100 sq. km.

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Now, I know everyone will scoff at this, but you have to wonder at the chances of little fishies swimming in that sea.

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There is a growing tendancy to think of Man as a rational, thinking being, which is absurd.- Marvin the Martian.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

I know we don't have the complete image in yet, but would posters here agree this new lake encompasses approximately the same area on Titan as the Meditteranean covers on earth?

It doesn't seem likely that there would be complex, multicellular life in freezing lakes of liquid hydrocarbons. However, there have been numerous occasions on this planet alone in which we've had to reexamine our preconceived notions regarding what is and what is not suitable for life.

It would be cool to see whether or not there is any geothermal activity going on beneath those liquid bodies.

Does anyone know when newer pictures of the
straight trench and scorchmark on Dione might
be coming in? One is eager for more detail!

Pretty much everything on this planet is suitable for life, the extremes in which it is found are beyond imagination. Of course, that says nothing about Titan, which is totally different.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

The only places on this planet that don't have life are places that don't have water (which are few and far between). Everywhere we've looked where there's water, there's life in some form or another.

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Strange, how such a simple substance can mean so much .

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Water is a pretty a useful little molecule. It's a great facilitator for chemical reactions.

Needs another picture. The Lake Superior-sized possible-sea is apparently next to a larger one.



Exploring the Wetlands of Titan

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This cropped image of Pan sweeping majestically through the Encke gap and tiny Daphnis was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on March 24, 2007
The image was taken using the CL1 and CL2 filters.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

http://www.androphile.org/preview/Li...nd_Daphnis.htm

Attached Images

DaphnisPan80001.jpg (127.9 KB, 10 views)

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This image of Titan was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on March 27, 2007, when it was approximately 267,288 kilometres away.

<Attachment 1 > (119kb, 1024 x 1024)
Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The image was taken using the CL1 and CB3 filters.


This image of Titan was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on March 27, 2007, when it was approximately 253,968 kilometres away.

<Attachment 2 > (90kb, 1024 x 1024)
Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The image was taken using the CL1 and CB3 filters.

Attached Images

	436375183_4ae5b4aad1_o.jpg (118.1 KB, 15 views)
	436375185_2b05a30204_o.jpg (89.0 KB, 10 views)

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

This (cropped, 49kb, 1024 x 768) image of Titan was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on March 26, 2007, when it was approximately 181,433 kilometres away.
The image was taken using the CB3 and IRP0 filters.

Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Attached Images

TITAN26719.jpg (48.8 KB, 19 views)

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

amazing pics, have those lakes been named yet ?

No, the only named lake-like feature, Ontario Lacus, is located near the south pole.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

It takes a long time for names of planetary surface features to become official: the discovering team has to propose them, and then their proposal has to be approved. Look how long it took "Eris" to get a real name.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Naming of Eris was complicated by the definition of planet issue.

Based on Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature, many surface features have been named on the same year they're found.

Naming of a Solar System body requires that its orbit is known well enough. In the case of new satellites it often takes a couple of years. That wasn't true always; for example, the eight irregular moons of Jupiter discovered before the Voyager flybys were named as late as in 1975. Himalia, the first of them, was discovered 70 years earlier. They didn't carry names probably because astronomers used to call all Jupiter's moons only by their numbers (like "Jupiter I" in the case of Io).

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

This is a natural colour view of Dione's south pole taken by the Cassini spacecraft on April 8, 2007.

<Attachment #1>
(139kb, 1024 x 768)
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create the natural colour view. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 268,000 kilometres from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft angle of 92 degrees.
Image scale is 2 kilometres per pixel.


This image of Dione was taken by the Cassini space probe on April 24, 2007, when it was approximately 107,675 kilometres away.

<Attachment #2>
(141kb, 1024 x 768)
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The image was taken using the CL1 and IR3 filters.

Attached Images

	dione08938.jpg (138.6 KB, 7 views)
	dione81677.jpg (140.8 KB, 12 views)

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

<Attachment> (137kb, 1024 x 768)
Expand (558kb, 3914 x 3225)
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Read more

Attached Images

titanT28_2.jpg (136.9 KB, 4 views)

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Coasts and Drowned Mountains

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Hopefully, at least, they won't stick them with names like "Scooby-Doo" and "Yogi Bear" (shudder)

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"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Now if this was a water sea, it would be quite "nuts". But a (likely) methane/ethane sea still is very nice. If only for nice pics like this one.

Large danger of fire, or do the environmental conditions keep it from easily igniting?

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Hey, Asimov said that poly-lipids are soluable in liquid methane, so who knows?

Weren't we supposed to know if there was light glinting off the surface by now, and thus whether these flat areas are indeed liquids?

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There is a growing tendancy to think of Man as a rational, thinking being, which is absurd.- Marvin the Martian.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

No gaseous oxygen, relax.

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The sea is near the north pole and currently mostly in the dark.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

OK now this may seem like a sort of wacky idea but maybe when people in this forum talk about looking for life on Titan they should not be looking on the surface.

From what I read it seems that when one draw analogies between Titan and earth (and there seem to be many) we need to move things down a level.

On Titan the surface liquids and rain are made up from chemicals that would normally exist as gases on earth. The solid surface that is analogous to rock on earth is made up from a water which is mostly liquid here. Therefore like on earth where deep below the surface rock becomes liquid we must assume that on Titan deep down the ice becomes water. It is also postulated that there may be volcanoes on Titan that erupt water rather than rock - so in effect on Titan liquid water becomes analogous to Lava. Surely the area around any such water volcanoes would be an interesting one as that would be an area in which the liquid water could interact with the liquid and atmospheric hydrocarbons - if there is going to be any strange form of life in those frigid conditions then surely that would be the best place to look.

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Ah, the end of my insomnia.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Careful, this is not an established fact. The data-in hand (refractive index and such), are inconsistent with a surface of primarily water-ice. This is quite a contrast with Enceladus, where the surface is clearly water-ice, both in terms of the visual wavelength color, thermal emissivity, and the radar signature.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Cite, please, Jerry?

CJSF

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See the constellation ride across the sky
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