Titan, the largest of Saturn's more than 60 moons, has surprisingly intense rainstorms, according to research by a team of UCLA planetary scientists and geologists. Although the storms are relatively rare—they occur less than once per Titan year, which is 29 and a half Earth years—they occur much more frequently than the scientists expected.
"I would have thought these would be once-a-millennium events, if even that," said Jonathan Mitchell, UCLA associate professor of planetary science and a senior author of the research, which was published Oct. 9 in the journal Nature Geoscience. "So this is quite a surprise."
The storms create massive floods in terrain that are otherwise deserts. Titan's surface is strikingly similar to Earth's, with flowing rivers that spill into great lakes and seas, and the moon has storm clouds that bring seasonal, monsoon-like downpours, Mitchell said. But Titan's precipitation is liquid methane, not water.
"The most intense methane storms in our climate model dump at least a foot of rain a day, which comes close to what we saw in Houston from Hurricane Harvey this summer," said Mitchell, the principal investigator of UCLA's Titan climate modeling research group.
[...] On Earth, intense storms can trigger large flows of sediment that spread into low lands and form cone-shaped features called alluvial fans. In the new study, the UCLA scientists found that regional patterns of extreme rainfall on Titan are correlated with recent detections of alluvial fans, suggesting that they were formed by intense rainstorms.
The finding demonstrates the role of extreme precipitation in shaping Titan's surface, said Seulgi Moon, UCLA assistant professor of geomorphology and a co-senior author of the paper. Moon said the principle likely applies to Mars, which has large alluvial fans of its own, and to other planetary bodies. Greater understanding of the relationship between precipitation and the planetary surfaces could lead to new insights about the impact of climate change on Earth and other planets.
Methane hurricanes. Smoking not advised.
S. P. Faulk et al. Regional patterns of extreme precipitation on Titan consistent with observed alluvial fan distribution, Nature Geoscience (2017). DOI: 10.1038/ngeo3043
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Flat spots on Saturn's moon Titan may be the floors of ancient lake beds
Peculiar flat regions on Saturn's moon Titan could be the dry floors of ancient lakes and seas. The suggestion, published June 16 in Nature Communications, may solve a 20-year-old mystery [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16663-1] [DX].
[...] "Titan is still currently the only other place in the universe that we know to have liquid on its surface, just like the Earth," says planetary scientist Jason Hofgartner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. But the lakes and seas are concentrated near Titan's poles, not the tropics. The regions where the specular reflections show up are bafflingly dry.
[...] The researchers considered whether rainfall, dunes or dry lake beds could be responsible for the reflections, and found that only lake beds explain the timing and locations of the signals. It does rain on Titan, but not frequently enough to explain the reflections, and Titan's dune fields are in the wrong spots. And the specular reflections come from two specific regions that look like other empty lake basins near Titan's poles (SN: 4/15/19).
[...] So if the reflections come from lost lakes, where did the liquid go? One possibility is that it moved from the equator to the poles as part of a Titan-wide methane cycle (SN: 12/8/17). Another is that the liquid evaporated and was destroyed by sunlight striking Titan's atmosphere.
Related: Titan's Flooded Canyons
Tiny Waves Estimated in Titan's Hydrocarbon Lakes
Extreme Methane Rainstorms Appear to Have a Key Role in Shaping Titan's Icy Surface
Acetylene and Butane Could Form Crystals on Titan
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday October 16 2017, @12:04AM (4 children)
So when are we gonna get this for Occulus or other VR? Know why we don't already have this for Occulus/VR? Right, you guessed it, because programmers are autistic retards and VR and other things that are really neat about computing are only afterthoughts because greedy Silicon Valley cares only for censorship and data-mining rather than actually making things that are awesome.
Hell, with all of the big-name and independent gaming studios you'd think this would mature pretty quickly. But that takes effort, documentation sucks, and there is little to no literature. Big Data ruined computing. The Silicon Valley cancer has outlived its usefulness and must be pulled out by the roots. A new place outside of California must assume its place.
As somebody who is now actively developing this kind of shit, I reveal the dirty truth to you all!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Monday October 16 2017, @12:21AM (2 children)
Only one camera [wikipedia.org] has ever touched down on the surface of Titan. It lost half of the photos and the rest of them look like they were taken by an early 2000s dumbphone camera.
One of the earliest demos [theverge.com] for the Microsoft Hololens AR headset was MARS.
Space Engine [spaceengine.org] is adding VR support. It's not what I would call a game, so excitement can fade quickly unless you are in the zone. VR + procedural content could become a volatile mix. If you get it just right, unemployed nerds will not be leaving the basement or bedroom ever again and then we have to talk about universal basic income.
I challenge the notion that the public thinks VR is neat. Is it too expensive with stuff like HTC Vive + high end desktop setup, or is it an antisocial and sweaty experience that will only be adopted by a handful of enthusiast gamers? Remember, this is a peripheral where human sweat sticking to it is a top engineering concern. And although there has been talk of mixed reality AR/VR headsets that you could wear outside and walk around with, it will not be socially acceptable to do so. Wearing a VR or AR/VR headset on the subway will be seen as wacko and will make you a mugging target, white boy. However, all is not lost. If more headsets add AR capability then we could make an app that "nudifies" the women you look at on the subway. This will allow you to exude an anti-personnel field that will increase your safety (while you pleasure yourself).
Silicon Valley programmers/autists/VCs/data-mining giants (Facebook) are actually the ones pushing VR. So you have it exactly backwards. Facebook wants to wow you with enough 360-degree video content and games to keep people glued to the platform for more minutes per day. Advertisements can be slipped in there, and if the screen is covering 100 or even 200 degrees of your field of view, there are more opportunities for subliminal advertising and product placement. Social feature integration + chat is a lubricant to keep the addicts from completely losing their humanity and offing themselves.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday October 16 2017, @12:53AM (1 child)
Excellent comment.
But I'll put my dick in the mashed potatoes here and state first that one need not have actual eyeball-footage of a planet or moon to be able to accurately deduce its environment. The challenge is finding a person who isn't an autistic retard to collect known data and accurately format (maybe, embellish) it such that the layman could understand without outright deception.
Regarding your general gist, yeah, AR/VR isn't cost-effective now, which means that there's no literature. It's still the wild West and all who do know something useful are holding tightly their knowledge, they worked their asses off to figure this shit out and from their perspective the "F" in "FOSS" stands for "Freeloader." In a pure world this knowledge would gradually trickle out.
As for your final paragraph? I knew that, but talking and doing are two different things. Bad Goys know when they're being swindled by the Jew, so you make them wait and have the integrated solution ready all at once so they don't have the chance to compare previous versions (and are allowed the chance to understand how they are being manipulated, albeit subtly).
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday October 16 2017, @01:19AM
Ok, I'll admit that the surface of Titan basically looks the same as the surface of Mars and that was a remark that was made at the time (except for the cool methane lakes/shorelines which we have not photographed closely).
Here's some Space Engine stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F0fSjG7SVo [youtube.com]
It is free but closed source, but people have made mods for it. It has a flight sim mode, that video is just the default fly through mode. It isn't limited to the 5,000 or so known exoplanets, it can also procedurally generate stars (IRL, only a few hypergiant extragalactic stars are characterized) and exoplanets and you can give a location to someone else and they will see the same thing. So the application can let you look at like, quintillions of planets. Just without any gameplay modes like No Man's Sky.
The Google Earth application added Mars/Moon/etc. imagery years ago. There's also support for VR [techcrunch.com].
I have never wanted to be an early adopter for stuff like VR, so I'm not very concerned about the content drought other than to worry that it might cause VR momentum to spontaneously abort. The content is coming; there is stuff like VR180 [soylentnews.org] and 360-degree cameras. I think tethered VR is a load of crap, so the solution is to either pack CPU/GPU hardware inside the headset, or use something like WiGig for high speed communication between a headset and desktop computer. At the same time you want 6 degrees of movement in your untethered headset which is apparently not feasible for $200 models. The low field of view of current headsets is also crap: don't settle for less than a 200 degree field of view [soylentnews.org].
So I am fine with a trickle. Wait 5 years and all this shit will be much better. Wait until 2025 and you can grab a 40 TB hard drive to hold your 360-degree content.
It will be interesting to see if we get highly addictive VRMMOs as predicted by science fiction and more recently animays. I'm talking about the whole shebang with medium-strong AIs in there for greater immersion. Machine learning and AI research in general could lead to some interesting trends in gaming where NPCs become more interesting and more of a challenge. If it succeeds, some people will be stuck right up in that basement sucking the inevitable UBI tit.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @12:23AM
So when are we gonna get this story for Occulus or other VR? Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of awesome directed against silicon valley? [scitechdaily.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @12:06AM
Must be a case of global warming. I'm at lost, however, on what greenhouse gases they may be using...
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Monday October 16 2017, @12:20AM (5 children)
I wouldn't worry about that, in 98% nitrogen.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 16 2017, @12:22AM (4 children)
You need oxygen to burn methane! Phoenix666 how could you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/699/why-does-titans-atmosphere-not-start-to-burn [stackexchange.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 16 2017, @12:43AM (3 children)
Yeah you know a guy can't win with you nerds. On a planet full of methane a puerile joke can only go one of two ways, fire or fart. Had it gone fart someone else would have quipped, "but methane is odorless!"
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @12:59AM
...unless they were a fart cupper!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 16 2017, @01:21AM (1 child)
Add a little sulfur and there is hope for your fart jokes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry [wikipedia.org]
Also consider underwater farts on Enceladus and Europa.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 16 2017, @12:41PM
Actually Io would be the best place for sulfur, plus there are geeky possibilities with I/O.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday October 16 2017, @01:16AM (3 children)
Your mom gave me an extreme methane storm last night, after I took her to Taco Bell for dinner and home for the "nightcap".
/ why does Taco Bell get the bad rap?
// tasty food, good prices
/// unlike your mom, whom the internet loves to hate more than Taco Bell
Relationship status: Available for curbside pickup.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday October 16 2017, @01:39AM (1 child)
Taco Bell is shit food and has always been. Now, Del Taco is where the real men eat. They're deluxe chili-cheddar fries, their Macho Combo Burritos, are heavy and cheap.
Well, this being California, the mom-and-pop burrito joints are the best and most authentic when you want to eat as Beaners do. But if you're gonna eat crap, eat good crap.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 16 2017, @12:05PM
In NYC the place to get that is the food trucks next to the soccer fields in Red Hook, Brooklyn, on the weekends. (It's about a block away from the Ikea.) They cater to the Latino families who gather to play and watch the matches, so it's authentic. Andrew Zimmer and Anthony Bourdain covered it in a show [youtube.com].
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @02:30AM
I am not messing... One taco bell I used to goto the managers name was Latrina.