[X] My Assistant

[Steffen]

Which device made the Huygens probe spin underneath its satellite?
I read that's the way how 360° images were made during descent...

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Unconvincing. Take a look at those three mass spectral graphs from the "Nature" article, and it's clear that the concentration of benzene relative to nitrogen -- AND methane, AND argon-40 -- was much lower at 120-130 km altitude than at the surface, which is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect if the GCMS was sniffing whiffs of benzene given off by a still-attached heat shield. And the ratio of acetylene to those gases -- although it's harder to read that part of the graphs -- seems roughly the same at high altitudes as at low ones. Also note that one thing which DID precisely follow the expected pattern was Huygens' temperature/altitude profile of the atmosphere, which is hardly what one would expect if a heat shield was still attached that was hot enough to convey whiffs of its own vaporized ablatives to the Huygens instruments.

It seems to me, though, that -- given both our lack of expertise on this subject, and our lack of knowledge of the most recent conclusions of the Huygens researchers themslves -- at this point, when we speculate on what these graphs may say about Titan's surface composition, we're just spinning our wheels. It's time that I wrote directly to Niemann and/or Lorenz and asked them directly what THEIR current opinions are on the subject.