Is the Jury back on Titan surface liquid?

[bad_drawing]

"bad_drawing - Well, I share your interest in the discoveries. I am simply trying to reign in the speculations to conform to known facts - as in the above facts in chemistry."<br /><br />...and I thank you for that. My knowledge of chemistry is pretty limited, so its great to see you and others discussing the meat of the situation. (the chemistry)

 

[Swampcat]

<font color="yellow">"At least thats my impression of what happend during the meltdown based on other threads that mention it too. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong."</font><br /><br />That's essentially correct. "The Great Forgetting" occured right at the beginning of the Fourth of July weekend last year. Uplink was down for about 2 weeks IIRC. When it returned, the entire database of posts was gone. Most of the members had to re-register and lost credit for previous posts (I was almost a "planet" at the time and had to start all over).<br /><br />For those of us who hang out here a lot it was a most distressing time <img src="/images/icons/frown.gif" />. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="3" color="#ff9900"><p><font size="1" color="#993300"><strong><em>------------------------------------------------------------------- </em></strong></font></p><p><font size="1" color="#993300"><strong><em>"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."</em></strong></font></p><p><font size="1" color="#993300"><strong>Thomas Jefferson</strong></font></p></font> </div>

 

[centsworth_II]

<font color="yellow">"I believe the "Meltdown" that Silylene was talking about was an event in the past when the SDC message boards went down and many threads were lost.... Somebody correct me if I'm wrong."</font><br /><br />You are correct. It happened, coincidentaly, about the time Cassini went into orbit around Saturn. In fact at first I though the crash was due to the heavy posting traffic discussing the images sent back during the traverse of Saturn's ring plane. The message boards were down a week or two. Virtually all threads were lost, and with rare exception everyone had to re-register and was reduced to quantum foam no matter how high they were before. It was horrible, I tell you, HORRIBLE!!!<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[centsworth_II]

<font color="yellow">"I certainly do not claim God could not have created some form of life on Titan or elsewhere in our solar system."</font><br /><br />I believe that God plays fair. That is, He set the rules of nature and even though He could cheat and create whatever situation He wants, He doesn't. He follows the rules -- His rules. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[telfrow]

<b>Rivers on Titan resemble those on earth</b><br /><br /><i>Recent evidence from the Huygens Probe of the Cassini Mission suggests that Titan, the largest moon orbiting Saturn, is a world where rivers of liquid methane sculpt channels in continents of ice. Surface images even show gravel-sized pieces of water ice that resemble rounded stones lying in a dry riverbed on Earth. </i><br /><br />Full article here: http://www.physorg.com/news8724.html <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[centsworth_II]

<font color="yellow">"I do believe the chance for Si-based lifeforms is quite remote, I can imagine just enough chemical variety to prevent me from claiming that silicon-based life is utterly impossible."</font><br /><br />Nature certainly knows a lot more than we do! The only way we know anything about life is by reverse engineering what nature does. We are continually finding organisms that do things we never imagined possible and asking ourselves, "how do they do that?"<br /><br />I suppose that one day the same could hold true for non-carbon life forms. If we find one, we will scratch our heads, ask "how does it do that?", and get to work finding out.<br /><br />But I do not insist that this will happen. The only reasonable course of action is to devise methods of looking for life as we know it and keeping our eyes open for anything else. <br /><br />But "eyes open" does not mean refusing to accept non-biological explanations that fit the data. I know you know this, Silylene. I add this last comment in reference to those who don't.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[centsworth_II]

<font color="yellow"><i>"Surface images even show gravel-sized pieces of water ice that resemble rounded stones lying in a dry riverbed on Earth."</i></font><br /><br />Those rounded stones do look a lot different than what we are used to seeing in images from Mars. On Mars there is certainly a lot of evidence of catastrophic floods forming rock-strewn plains. But the rocks are mostly angular with sharp edges. The smoothness of the Titan rocks seen by Huygens implies very long exposure to running liquid. I wonder if one day we will see a similar scene in an image from the surface of Mars. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[CalliArcale]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>You are correct. It happened, coincidentaly, about the time Cassini went into orbit around Saturn. In fact at first I though the crash was due to the heavy posting traffic discussing the images sent back during the traverse of Saturn's ring plane. The message boards were down a week or two. Virtually all threads were lost, and with rare exception everyone had to re-register and was reduced to quantum foam no matter how high they were before. It was horrible, I tell you, HORRIBLE!!! <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />And some twit registered most of the moderator names before we could reregister. It was indeed horrible!<br /><br />Some also call it "The Great Crash". Many treasured post counts were lost, reverting lots of veteran members to quarks in an instant. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[Philotas]

<font color="yellow">Interesting. Do you have a source for this?</font><br /><br />Unforunately not. <br />I read it in a magazin, so I tried to get a link from their website, but failed. Googling didn`t make me smarter either.<br />The only thing I know is that it was performed by a british biochemist.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[Philotas]

<font color="yellow">Philotas - OK, in your post can you link to the experiment or post more detail? Were those sugar-like molecules silicon based rather than carbon based?<br /><br />Now, liquid nitrogen, as in your post, is very cold - and most molecules are far more stable when in a freezer - so the result you refer to is not totally unexpected - however, can you specify exactly what sugar-like molecules?</font><br /><br />As I posted above, I cannot go more in detail. What I read about that experiment was just a small portion of the article I was reading.<br /><br />He experimented with two different sugarlike molecules, one was based on silicon and the other based carbon. The molecule based on silicon did it fine, whil the carbon base didn`t. That`s about as in depth I can go, I`m afraid. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[mikeemmert]

Thanks for the link, telfrow.<br /><br />Dr. Parker bases a lot of his conclusions on the methane either being methane or having dissolved hydrocarbons in it. That made a lot of sense from what was known prior to the release of the pyrolysis data revealing nitrogen compounds in the aerosols.<br /><br />If somebody knows - does ultraviolet or particle irradiation cause chemical reactions between carbon and nitrogen? Nitrogen is rather difficult to fix on earth.<br /><br />I didn't see anything about oxygen, silicon, or actually any other elements besides nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen in the aerosols. On the ground was presumed oxygen in the form of water ice. Winds were strong enough to loft particles into the atmosphere and distribute them vertically.<br /><br />All the posts about silicon chemistry and phosphine (I did that - :-/ ) is interesting, but we have what we have and I would hope discussions might center a little more on what was actually found on Titan. Sorry for my contribution to the wandering attention. Thank you for refocusing.

 

[micro10]

Search me with a suction cup!..Not up to date with this subject..