First-Ever Photo of Liquid on Extraterrestrial World

ok this is my first ever thread on any forum so sorry if i mess it up.

i found it interesting to find that this is the first time we have seen liquid on another planet. mars photos definitely show liquid erosion but no liquid. clouds on other planets can be made up of liquid droplets OR ice crystals. this seems to confirm that if there is currently life in our solar system besides earth, Titan would be the best place to look for it. (unless you think that the martians went underground when all the water disappeared.)

link: blog.wired.com...

p.s. can some on point me in right direction for some instructions on how to make one of those boxes with content from the source? thanks

reply to post by spin-FX


Yep, sure!

1. highlight the text from the webpage you wish to quote and copy it (CTRL+C on the keypad).

2. Click back into ATS and click on the yellow quote button (4th icon from the right). A small dialog box will come up asking you to enter the text you wish to quote.

3. Paste the text into the text field (CTRL+P on the keypad) and click 'OK'.

PRESTO!

IRM

[edit on 30/12/08 by InfaRedMan]

That's pretty cool and interesting. I wonder what the second arrow pointing to the rock is. I don't think it was mentioned in the article.



[edit on 12/30/2008 by octotom]

nice first post!
second line

Does this discovery lend any more credence to the theory that petroleum is a result of geologic processes? I mean, if hydrocarbons can form on lifeless planets, why not here too, in an abiotic manner? I have also read that scientists have detected traces of hydrocarbons on meteorites as well.

reply to post by spin-FX

i found it interesting to find that this is the first time we have seen liquid on another planet. mars photos definitely show liquid erosion but no liquid. clouds on other planets can be made up of liquid droplets OR ice crystals. this seems to confirm that if there is currently life in our solar system besides earth, Titan would be the best place to look for it. (unless you think that the martians went underground when all the water disappeared.)

I got two problems with this article. First of all, we've had pics of the petroleum lakes of Titan for a couple of years:
space.moonagewebdream.com... -property-on-titan-for-sale-part-ii/

Second, it's also assumed that the solid sheet of frozen whatever on Enceladus is some form of liquid as well:
Pic of Enceladus

The only catch is in both cases they know it's some type of liquid, they just don't know exactly what it is. In both cases, they pretty well know, they just can't say for sure. That is the same as what the pic on Mars is. So what exactly is the story here? I mean, they're so sure of frozen liquid crust of Enceladus they're pondering sending a probe to break through the crust with the assumed possibility it could be a liquid world underneath. It's not that I think finding a spec of moisture on Mars isn't neat, it's just that entire worlds of liquid have been found and for some reason pretty much ignored for the sake of today's "headline". What is happening with all of these headlines is that the argument is no longer researching the possibility that liquids exist beyond Earth ( absurd proposition in the first place ), it's that it's apparently a pretty common occurance.

Originally posted by Moonage
I got two problems with this article. First of all, we've had pics of the petroleum lakes of Titan for a couple of years:
space.moonagewebdream.com... -property-on-titan-for-sale-part-ii/

The image in your blog post was taken with radar by Cassini in 2006, this one was taken in visible light by huygens in 2005.

Second, it's also assumed that the solid sheet of frozen whatever on Enceladus is some form of liquid as well:
Pic of Enceladus

Frozen anything is not a liquid, it's a solid. It may be a liquid at room temperature and pressure, but it was not in liquid form in the image.

[edit on 30-12-2008 by ngchunter]

reply to post by ngchunter


This is the real reason India got into the space race.....

Slurpys

reply to post by InfaRedMan


Thanks IRM :-)

reply to post by ngchunter


The image in your blog post was taken with radar by Cassini in 2006, this one was taken in visible light by huygens in 2005.

It is liquid, regardless of the mode of photography. I don't see the relevance of how the pic was taken. If a probe lands in a sea of water but doesn't have a traditional camera on it, will that not count either? As for the dates, it doesn't really matter to me when the pics were taken, the "liquid" pic of 2006 was released immediately and I blogged on it a long time ago. Several years later, another pic is taken on a different orb, and claims to be a breakthrough in the fact that liquids definitely exist on other planets. I don't question the importance of finding liquids on other bodies, I just question the abuse of the headline claiming it's a breakthrough when in all reality it's not. The big story here is they are now finding liquids with regularity. Liquids are no longer an "if", they are fairly the norm. The search now changes to liquids that can sustain life under various circumstances. That's why I feel the Enceladus possibility of liquid is much more important than the moisture on the camera lens on Mars. Rather than pushing more stuff to Mars, I'd much rather penetrate the surface of Enceladus and see what's under it.

Could be dew on the camera lens

Good find S&F

The short-sightedness of NASA and other agencies never ceases to amaze me. The article stated that the probe took picture for an hour before running out of battery. Doesn't this strike anyone else as odd? They sent the bloody thing all the way to Saturn's moon, but didn't have the foresight to give it a slightly longer battery life. If only one of these eggheads would design a probe which lasted for more than a few hours, we might learn a thing or two.
Oh, wait. I forgot. I'm an uneducated rhube; you can't tell a PhD anything he or she doesn't already know.

Originally posted by Malfeitor
The short-sightedness of NASA and other agencies never ceases to amaze me.

Other agencies is key here, this was an ESA probe.

The article stated that the probe took picture for an hour before running out of battery. Doesn't this strike anyone else as odd? They sent the bloody thing all the way to Saturn's moon, but didn't have the foresight to give it a slightly longer battery life. If only one of these eggheads would design a probe which lasted for more than a few hours, we might learn a thing or two.

I think we learned a lot from huygens. Yes longer battery life would be nice, but the entire thing weighed a mere 318kg because it was just a piggyback mission on cassini. More batteries = more weight.