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from the extraterrestrial-white-'water'-rafting dept.
The aptly named Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is remarkably Earth-like. Its diameter is only about 40% that of our planet, but Titan's nitrogen-rich, dense atmosphere and the geological activity at the moon's surface make comparisons between the two bodies inevitable.
Aside from Earth, Titan is the only other body where we have found evidence of active erosion on a large scale. There are seas, lakes and rivers filled with liquid hydrocarbons – mainly methane and some ethane – that etch the moon's surface, in much the same way water erodes Earth's.
A striking example is Vid Flumina, the Nile-like, branching river system visible on the upper-left quadrant of the image. The river, in the moon's north polar region, flows into Ligeia Mare, a methane-rich sea that appears as a dark patch on the right side of the image.
Researchers in Italy and the US analysed Cassini radar observations from May 2013 and recently revealed that the narrow channels that branch off Vid Flumina are deep, steep-sided canyons filled with flowing hydrocarbons.
Do Titanians worry about too much oxygen in their atmosphere?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @08:38PM
I used to get so excited about Titan and Europa: finally, a place with a reasonably non-deadly atmosphere, and another one that may harbor a salty ocean.
More than a decade back, while a student in my teens, I heard the story about the biodiversity eruption during the Cambrian: exotic, spooky and mysterious "monster-like" animals like the Anomalocaris. I immediately did the extrapolation and placed in my mind's eye similar organisms under the "ices of Europa". I like art, so I tried sketching those and then did some math to scale them to the "gravity" field of Europa: "they would have to be bigger", I reasoned.
In retrospect, those years were not a waste: after all, this was part of the journey that made me able to see past this Copernican garbage, and helped me get rid of (at least) part of this constant and systematic brainwashing.
A lot of people still falls for this "space" hoax, but thankfully this is coming to an end. It will be amusing to watch the desperate last measure of NASA Circus et al. to "confirm alien life" soon- or even bow to some "alien overlords".
When this happens, bear in mind this easily proven fact: the Earth IS NOT a spinning ball, trivially proven with a telescope and a gyroscope.
Alternatively, you can keep swallowing the blue pill, and continue believing whatever you were programmed to believe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @09:03PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpg [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 22 2016, @11:11AM
Oh really? Let's see.
wget " rel="url2html-10727">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpg
gimp NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpg
Colors > Levels... > Adjust Color Levels
Oh look: someone pasted in a picture of the "Earth".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @09:05PM
Sorry about that.
You were getting close to learning the truth so I had to replace it with that garbage you spouted. Hope you can forgive me for the unauthorized brain implant.