[X] My Assistant

[sgendreau]

"Several Species of Variously Sized Icy Chunks Gathered Together Around Giant Planets and Evolving Over Time"

Indirect evidence of the authors' ages (and ours, too )

[Phil Stooke]

There's a very interesting abstract on the Spirit area here:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2010/pdf/2566.pdf

One thing I'm not sure I agree with - they suggest the Columbia Hills are part of a central peak of Gusev. I think they may be all that remains of the rim of a small interior crater similar to Thira. But there's lots of good stuff on other possible 'Home Plates', several landslides etc. I would have added another 'Home Plate' partly buried by the foot of the McCool Hill landslide.

Phil

[rlorenz]

I don't know how those attending the conference this time will appreciate the way the sessions are organised, but as a lay abstract hunter with a particular interest in Titan I found the absence of a dedicated Titan session this time quite annoying. Who came up with this for a session title? Is it supposed to be making some kind of point, humorous or otherwise?

You would not be alone in being disappointed at that. I have my own conspiracy theories, of
course, but I guess the intent/pretext was to make the meeting more 'process-oriented'
(though if that were really the case, then why the heck do they have a 'Mars Fluvial'
session instead of a 'Fluvial' session.....?

[nprev]

I still think that many people are flat-out intimidated by Titan. Everyone's trying to derive analogies to explain much of the complexity, and that's risky.

[volcanopele]

You would not be alone in being disappointed at that. I have my own conspiracy theories, of
course, but I guess the intent/pretext was to make the meeting more 'process-oriented'
(though if that were really the case, then why the heck do they have a 'Mars Fluvial'
session instead of a 'Fluvial' session.....?

I agree, I think the intention is to make the meeting process-oriented.

Bah, Ralph, conspiratorize away (hey that's a perfectly cromulent word). I suspect that they are trying to get people to stay for the entire week, rather than just the days the Titan, or Galilean satellite, or other sessions will be run. For Mars and the Moon, because there are SOOOO many (people clearly not prioritizing research right, otherwise there would be Umbriel sessions every day of the conference) , they don't have this problem.

[ngunn]

many people are flat-out intimidated by Titan

It my not have its own session at this year's LPSC but it will eventually have its own university (maybe many). Trubba not, Ralph.

[peter59]

I just found materials from the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (128 PDF files). It is hard to even casually browse the material. It is a true mine of knowledge. This may be the source for many interesting discussions on this forum.
ftp://ftp.lpi.usra.edu/pub/outgoing/lpsc2010/

[pjam]

T'was a fun meeting! I have half a bookful of notes from the talks and posters I *could* get to!

For me, some of the highlights were:

1) NEOWISE -Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer invesitgation of Near Earth Objects. Very entertaining talk by Amy Mainzer, who introduced us to the newly-launched spacecraft and the project goal to mine the WISE database (now building at 60 Gb a day!) for eventually ~90 000 main belt asteroids and ~200 new NEOs + new comets. Especially fun were her comments on the "pesky" stars being limited to the shorter wavelength bands, whereas the fun stuff tends to be redder; "Stars are the vermin of the sky!" got a big laugh & round of applause.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2010/pdf/2534.pdf
Mission site: wise.astro.ucla.edu

2) Young <1 Ga lunar thrust faults (lobate scarps) seen with LROC ..Watters et al (talk given by Mark Robinson)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2010/pdf/1863.pdf

3) Rapidly rotating monolith 5404 Uemura "death star" in the main belt. This was a poster by Vishnu Reddy and others which documents a possible coherent fast rotating body of >1 km dia that by its extreme IR spectral reddening looks like it might have a lot of metal. This object exceeds the observed "spin barrier" for asteroids over ~200m diameter, implying that it is a coherent and maybe has a density >4 g/cm3. Cool! ...sorry, that's my small bodies bias showing, I guess.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2010/pdf/1227.pdf

4) A postulated "E-belt" of enstatite chondrite type parent bodies that are now mostly removed from the inner part of the main belt, leaving just a small remnant Hungaria population. This talk was by Bill Bottke, always a font of provocative ideas, enthusiastically delivered! Here the idea is that these bodies may be the source of the Late Heavy Bombardment and also be of the right `exotic' composition to match what is expected from lunar impact melts. He acknowledges that it is difficult to test this one ...but fun nonetheless and maybe fruitful.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2010/pdf/1269.pdf

That's a good start anyway!
Cheers,
-pjam
Phil McCausland

[Stu]

And the award for "Best line in a post for a loooong time" goes to...

(opens envelope)

'Rapidly rotating monolith 5404 Uemura "death star" ' by pjam!!

(applause)

[nprev]

Hear, hear!!!

That paper also may have identified one of the richest metal deposits in the entire Solar System. Very interesting object for a variety of reasons; always wondered if really big chunks of NiFe actually existed in the Belt.

[Stu]

That paper also may have identified one of the richest metal deposits in the entire Solar System.

...or may have confirmed that the Cylons have finally found us...