Post by MHall on Jan 15, 2005 10:37:56 GMT -5
To me, one of the few things more exciting than a new episode of Battlestar Galactica TNS is the exploration of a new planet (or moon.) The exploration of Saturn's moon Titan is so exciting, because it has an atmosphere 1.5 times as thick as Earth's and it is the only other place in the solar system with liquid on the surface besides Earth, though there it is liquid methane and ethane.
The main website for the ESA mission to Titan is:
www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/index.html
One of the best places on the net for pictures of Titan is:
NASA's website
This looks to me (just me) like a volcano on the right next to the (liquid methane) sea on the left:
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07230
(The brightest white part would be the right edge of the volcano crater's outer wall, but again this is just my speculation. I haven't heard anyone else use the word "volcano" in the context of this picture.) I want to see this picture in color!
Given that the probe landed on land, I wish that it had landed on the sea, so we could perhaps see liquid methane sea slime creatures or something. I know life was not at all expected, because of the low temperature, but I hope to live long enough to see some sort of extraterrestrial life. If the probe had landed in the sea, and we saw featureless blackness, I would have wished it had landed on land.
Would it be possible to terraform Titan, perhaps assuming easy/cheap fusion energy? If you heated it up, would the elevated lands melt and it all become one big ocean?
The main website for the ESA mission to Titan is:
www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/index.html
One of the best places on the net for pictures of Titan is:
NASA's website
This looks to me (just me) like a volcano on the right next to the (liquid methane) sea on the left:
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07230
(The brightest white part would be the right edge of the volcano crater's outer wall, but again this is just my speculation. I haven't heard anyone else use the word "volcano" in the context of this picture.) I want to see this picture in color!
Given that the probe landed on land, I wish that it had landed on the sea, so we could perhaps see liquid methane sea slime creatures or something. I know life was not at all expected, because of the low temperature, but I hope to live long enough to see some sort of extraterrestrial life. If the probe had landed in the sea, and we saw featureless blackness, I would have wished it had landed on land.
Would it be possible to terraform Titan, perhaps assuming easy/cheap fusion energy? If you heated it up, would the elevated lands melt and it all become one big ocean?
