Huygens News Thread, News as and when we find it |
Huygens News Thread, News as and when we find it |
Jan 14 2005, 09:57 AM
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Nasa TV will be starting coverage in about 3 mins - but I'm watching multiple TV channels to see if any carry coverage - and will post any news thru the day as it happens
Doug |
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Jan 16 2005, 04:51 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 809 Joined: 11-March 04 Member No.: 56 |
QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jan 16 2005, 02:22 AM) The revelation last night that the heated inlet of the GCMS after landing evaporated some liquid methane from the "soil" of Titan in the dark drainage area where it landed suggests to me that Titan's surface may be an eerie analog of Earth's deserts, with water ice serving as the sand and rock, and the drainage channels being its arroyos -- channels carved by occasional light rains of liquid methane coming down from Titan's small clumps of clouds, with the liquid then evaporating or soaking into the porous water-ice regolith (pulverized by the rain of meteor impacts over the eons) to form drying "mud". Why do we need to invoke rainfall at all, except as a source to replenish the methane with which, it sounds like, the ground is soaked? [Not exactly parallel to a desert.] Most rivers on earth are fed either by the melting of a permanent snow and ice cover, or by springs from which excess groundwater emerges. Why couldn't the channels we see be fed by an underground "methanifer"? |
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