Comments on: Huygens Succeeds http://www.sciscoop.com/2005-1-14-10360-2176.html Scooping up science news and dropping it on your desk Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:03:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Anonymous http://www.sciscoop.com/2005-1-14-10360-2176.html/comment-page-1#comment-4879 Anonymous Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:15:49 +0000 http://localhost/~arielschwartz/wordpress/sciscoop/?p=2221#comment-4879 Naah, can't be life as we know it on Titan- no water many of the stories on the news feeds say. But there's plenty of water on Titan. Sure its frozen solid like rock, but so what?- rock breaks down to minute particles here on earth, and then dissolves in liquid water. Might not solid water do something similar on Titan? Even solid water can be catalytically useful, especially if given large surface area. There could be water fibers, water membranes, and weirder structures as parts of living organisms, whose aqueous/organic roles have been inverted. It is the interfaces that matter when it comes to structure and catalysis.<p> So if there is life on Titan expect bulk nonpolar organic phases in "cells"- and the best counterpoint would of course be polar phases.<br> It would be interesting to know what other oxides, halides, etc. are floating around out there- even ammonia would work nicely. Metals? Chelate 'em.<p> Codemaniac Naah, can’t be life as we know it on Titan- no water many of the stories on the news feeds say. But there’s plenty of water on Titan. Sure its frozen solid like rock, but so what?- rock breaks down to minute particles here on earth, and then dissolves in liquid water. Might not solid water do something similar on Titan? Even solid water can be catalytically useful, especially if given large surface area. There could be water fibers, water membranes, and weirder structures as parts of living organisms, whose aqueous/organic roles have been inverted. It is the interfaces that matter when it comes to structure and catalysis.

So if there is life on Titan expect bulk nonpolar organic phases in "cells"- and the best counterpoint would of course be polar phases.
It would be interesting to know what other oxides, halides, etc. are floating around out there- even ammonia would work nicely. Metals? Chelate ‘em.

Codemaniac

]]> By: Anonymous http://www.sciscoop.com/2005-1-14-10360-2176.html/comment-page-1#comment-4677 Anonymous Sat, 15 Jan 2005 04:41:45 +0000 http://localhost/~arielschwartz/wordpress/sciscoop/?p=2221#comment-4677 Just visited the ESA web pages- their Titan pics are more updated than on the JPL site (guess cause they're out of bed already). One of the photos taken from 7km up shows a shoreline at maybe @30-40 degree angle- the kind of thing one would see on Earth during a plane flight. Some of the "channels" are dead straight or nearly so-perhaps they've got superhighways? Couple of small elongated blobs near shore look like ships. Too bad the resolution is still in the dozens of meters, might be interesting if one could make out things on a human size scale from this elevation.<p> Wonder if they're getting the same picture quality from their probe to Earth. Enough undeveloped territory here that after landing their probe might just see a bunch of rocks too.<p> Codemaniac Just visited the ESA web pages- their Titan pics are more updated than on the JPL site (guess cause they’re out of bed already). One of the photos taken from 7km up shows a shoreline at maybe @30-40 degree angle- the kind of thing one would see on Earth during a plane flight. Some of the "channels" are dead straight or nearly so-perhaps they’ve got superhighways? Couple of small elongated blobs near shore look like ships. Too bad the resolution is still in the dozens of meters, might be interesting if one could make out things on a human size scale from this elevation.

Wonder if they’re getting the same picture quality from their probe to Earth. Enough undeveloped territory here that after landing their probe might just see a bunch of rocks too.

Codemaniac

]]> By: barakn http://www.sciscoop.com/2005-1-14-10360-2176.html/comment-page-1#comment-4424 barakn Fri, 14 Jan 2005 20:33:02 +0000 http://localhost/~arielschwartz/wordpress/sciscoop/?p=2221#comment-4424 is the <a href="http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/index.html">original source</a>. is the original source.

]]> By: barakn http://www.sciscoop.com/2005-1-14-10360-2176.html/comment-page-1#comment-3695 barakn Fri, 14 Jan 2005 13:52:47 +0000 http://localhost/~arielschwartz/wordpress/sciscoop/?p=2221#comment-3695 <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/">JPL</a> has already put some on its website. JPL has already put some on its website.

]]> By: Sweetwind http://www.sciscoop.com/2005-1-14-10360-2176.html/comment-page-1#comment-3163 Sweetwind Fri, 14 Jan 2005 12:49:30 +0000 http://localhost/~arielschwartz/wordpress/sciscoop/?p=2221#comment-3163 Thanks kryptothesuperdog! Great news!!<p> Let's all raise a toast tonight to Boris Smeds, the engineer who prevented a failure. In the <a href="http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/23.65.html#subj4">RISKS Digest</a> last week there was a link to a <a href="http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/oct04/1004titan.html">fantastic article</a> by James Oberg about an engineering flaw in Cassini's receiver which would have prevented the Huygens data from being relayed. GREAT piece for all systems engineers and test engineers to read!<p> Thanks kryptothesuperdog! Great news!!

Let’s all raise a toast tonight to Boris Smeds, the engineer who prevented a failure. In the RISKS Digest last week there was a link to a
fantastic article by James Oberg about an engineering flaw in Cassini’s receiver which would have prevented the Huygens data from being relayed. GREAT piece for all systems engineers and test engineers to read!

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