This is something that we need to spend some time considering -- the dynamics of extraordinarily complex systems often *seem* to appear like intelligent, or at least intentional, behavior.

Earth does have a remarkable set of complex responses to stimuli -- and as such, *appears* to act like some kind of meta-organism. Even appears to be acting with intent, even.

I think the question that begs asking is how much of this is anthropomorphism (our perception of complex responses as intentional and/or intelligent), and how much is a real, objective phenomenon.

-the other Doug

I have a cousin who lives in England. After the explosion and fire, my mother forwarded to me some e-mails he had sent his own parents.

It seems that, every morning, my cousin would take a morning jog to the end of the local road and back -- and the end of the local road was the outer boundary of the fuel farm. From jogging it hundreds of times, he knows it's exactly 1.4 miles from his back door.

They had a little greenhouse attached to their main house. The frame still stands, but most of the glass shattered out. Many of the windows in the back of the house (facing the explosion) were also shattered, and one door frame was bent a bit.

Other than that, my cousin and his wife are fine. But it surely brought the thing home to me when I read his descriptions.

-the other Doug

Of all the entries, I think I liked "Rosie and Walt" the best. Hey, there are worse things to name a pair of rovers...

I just think it's a shame that they didn't have the guts to name them "Daffy" and "Marvin." That was the best and most appropriate set of names, and I wish NASA and JPL had been brave enough to go with those names.

-the other Doug

And, oddly, at that exact moment, Cassini sent the message "Adams lives."

-the other Doug

It's even better than "I have a terrific headache!"

-the other Doug

Yeah, but... like, wow, man!



-the other Doug

Yep! Although the shots were cut together from a variety of specific times, what's displayed on the monitors varies from shot to shot.

You were even talking going into the first shot with you in it, Jason!

It's sort of kewl to be watching a program on the TV and see someone you know. And I feel like I know all you guys...

-the other Doug

In re pressure suit gloves, John Young made a comment in the Apollo 16 debrief (back in 1972) that apparently still applies to this very day: "When it comes to having a glove on the pressure suit that allows you to do any kind of useful work in it, all I can say is, we ain't there yet."

-the other Doug

I recorded on my handy-dandy DVR a very nice special that ran last night on Discovery's Science Channel. It's entitled "Rendezvous with Saturn's Moon" and covers both Cassini and Huygens mission events and science results to date.

I think I may even have spotted our own Jason Perry in one shot, when they were talking about the ISS team. I could be wrong, but this one guy looked rather like the picture Jason linked to a few days ago. He was one of three people talking about a Titan image -- one of the other two people was identified as Elizabeth Turtle.

Was that you, Jason?

-the other Doug

In re the "good vs. evil" issue -- I think that human nature is basically not to be more attracted to (always subjective) standards of either good OR evil. I think people, by and large, will always take the easiest of the paths they see available to them. If the easiest path is deemed evil, fear of punishment might keep them off of it -- for a while. Depends on how afraid you can make them.

People are also most likely to lose their fear of punishment for "evil" deeds when acting in groups. This "mob mentality" phenomenon (which, by the way, works into most forms of military training) is responsible for more "evil" deeds than individual actions could ever possibly hope to match.

Now, don't get me wrong -- people do hard things. They have done hard things throughout human history, and every day, people do hard things. But they usually do them because doing those hard things are the easiest ways they can think of to accomplish their goals. In fact, a lot of people make things much harder than necessary, simply because they don't see the easier paths as being available to them... or can't admit to believing that any easier path exists at all.

Oh, and as for Bruce's comment that the ability to change an asteroid's trajectory might doom the race rather than save it? I think he's 100% correct. How many military machines, at the brink of losing a war, have implemented scorched-earth policies? It's not only conceivable that a "sore loser" in a conflict would direct an asteroid into a collision course, it's predictable.

What would be a tremendous shame would be if the losing side of a deep-seated conflict (say, an aeons-old religious conflict) were to place an asteroid on a course that would result in an Earth impact some 200 to 300 years hence, and that the resolution of the conflict resulted in the loss of the ability to re-direct this doomsday weapon. A human civilization slowly climbing out of the abyss of such a cataclysmic war would be wiped out by the ghost of the madness they had finally left behind them...

-the other Doug

Not quite, John. NH will *launch* 40 years and about six months after Mariner 4 encountered Mars, but it will arrive at Pluto nearly 50 years to the day after Mariner 4's Mars flyby. (1965 + 50 = 2015.)

There's a nine-plus-year travel time to Pluto, after all.... unless you know something about flying to Pluto that we don't know.

-the other Doug

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the various RADAR images I've seen, the long, straight dune-like structures seem to be arrayed mostly (if not invariably) longitudinally. Yes, there is some variation in the north-south axis, which seems to be topographically controlled. But for the most part, these dunes seem to run east-west.

This would fit in nicely with seasonal winds that blow off the poles emerging from their long winter darkness. As temps warm up at the erstwhile winter pole, ices and liquids with a low boiling point flash into gas and rise, pushing air into north-south wind patterns.

Which just happen to blow perpendicular to these major dune formations.

Unfortunately, I don't see that Cassini has a real ability to chart surface wind directions during and through the coming equinox. And, as I understand it, that equinox will occur quite late in any Cassini extended mission (if, indeed, Cassini survives to see it). So I don't know whether or not the resources we have in place are capable of settling the question of how Titan's winds blow as the poles alternate being in continual daylight and continual darkness.

-the other Doug

And on this, Richard, we must agree to disagree. I am of the opinion that basic human nature is immutable; that, as a race, it cannot be changed via *any* degree of education or training.

Individual examples of behavior modification exist, yes. But they are accomplished by using the very traits (fear, mostly) that must be eradicated for any real, lasting change in human nature to come about.

I'm sorry, but I am of the very definite opinion that *any* plan or architecture to bring about an improvement in the human condition that begins with "all we have to do is change human nature" is just plain doomed to fail, and pursuing such goals is, basically, a waste of time. Time that could be better spent working *within* the limitations of human nature to do the best possible job at keeping as many people happy as possible...

-the other Doug

That may have been the idea when the USSR was first founded, but the Revolution was betrayed, quite early on, by a self-styled "ruling class" in that supposedly classless society which had absolutely no interest in preserving the environment.

If you want some really true ecological horror stories out of the 20th century, almost all of them occurred in the former Soviet Union. Industrial wastes were regularly dumped into streams and rivers, and there was no regulation (or enforcement) to stop them. Since in the USSR the industrialists were also the State, anything that saved industry time or money was "good for the People." Regardless of how many of the People were killed or sickened by it.

And, as far as "becoming selfless" is concerned, Richard, you're suggesting what almost every human civilization has tried to accomplish since the beginning of Mankind itself -- changing human nature so that we don't have reason (rational or not) to hurt each other, or ourselves. Every attempt has proved fruitless. Human nature just cannot be changed to make Mankind selfless. It's a goal beyond the reach of accomplishment. IMHO.

-the other Doug

I think I heard somewhere that the very, last, final message received from Galileo was "HGA deployed"...



-the other Doug

Actually, as I've said before, if you could break a large (2-10km in largest extent) asteroid into millions and millions of chunks no bigger than your fist, the resulting meteor storm would cause *some* damage -- but it wouldn't be a major extinction event.

The key is that you would be increasing the surface area of the mass by more than a millionfold. The more surface area it presents to the atmosphere, the more of it is ablated away -- it's the only way you can get such a large mass to mostly burn up in the atmosphere.

Yes, it would have a definite impact, and you'd probably get a large numbr of car-sized chunks get through that would create pretty large craters. But overall, it would be far more survivable than an extermination-event-type impact, which would be the alternative.

-the other Doug

If that picture was taken in the afternoon, then it's looking to the south-southeast. And that would be in the direction of Victoria.

But if it was taken in the morning, it's looking to the north-northwest, and it would be looking in the direction of Endurance.

Looks a little large for Endurance, doesn't it?

-the other Doug

I would think that would be rather harder to do than to just aim it away from a collision course. However, lunar scientists would just about come in their pants if given the opportunity to observe the collision of a fair-sized asteroid with the Moon, I bet.

Of course, then you would have a fair number of people insisting that we were planning to do horrible things to the Moon's natural environment...

-the other Doug

Ummmm... it's Oppy's arm that has a problem, not Spirit's, as far as I know.

-the other Doug

So.... are they excluding the possibility that the magnetic effects are being caused by an Enceladan intrinsic magnetic field (caused by a hot metal core)? And if they are, is it because the magnetometer readings don't indicate an intrinsic field, or because they don't *expect* Enceladus to have a magnetic field, so they're just not thinking that we could be seeing one?

A lot of our perceptions are bounded by our expectations, after all.

-the other Doug

I spent a week driving through Texas one day a few years ago. For hours on end, you would see no more signs of advanced life forms (with the *possible* exception of the road itself) than you see in the MER images...

-the other Doug

So, they're saying that the deflection of Saturn's magnetic field lines around Enceladus is due to the cloud of water ice particles jetting out of the south polar region? And not due to anything intrinsic about Enceladus' magnetic properties?

I wonder -- they talk about it being caused by "a cloud of steam" or water vapor. And yet, isn't the cloud actually ice particles and *not* vapor? Would ice particles have the same effect on magnetic fields as vapor?

And since when does water ice or water vapor have that kind of effect on magnetic fields? I thought water, and ice, were rather neutral when it came to magnetism. They're not metals, after all.

This picture hasn't come together yet...

-the other Doug

OK -- it certainly must have been the gamma-ray spectrometer I was thinking of. Just a lack of sensitivity, eh? I had heard something about the surface layer discussed... though, of course, upon reaching a half-century upon this Earth, I suppose my memory could fade on me, here and there...

-the other Doug

You got all the way up to 15? We got up to about 12...

I really don't mind living in Minnesota -- but there are times I wouldn't mind living somewhere just a touch warmer.

-the other Doug

OK, I was wrong -- it's *not* in "Exploring Space with a Camera," I just checked the online edition...

Anyone know which image I'm talking about, and/or have a link to it?

-the other Doug