Drudge headline! Too good to be true, I'm sure. But that would kick ass.
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March 9th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Central Florida News-13 apparently broke the story this morning, but their server is now suspiciously down for "upgrade." There's some great pictures of Enceladus' south pole geyser Here.
So all the announcement would be is a confirmation of what was already strongly suspected (a.k.a. already known by the ground crew) for over a year. It's just that Cassini has just enjoyed another fly-by, so now's the time to release the information. This will have strong implications for Jupiter's ice-moons, since its environs are quite a bit warmer than Saturn's.
And per Saturn's assortment of moons, my personal favorite for display of gross anomalies is Iapetus, but mostly because I'm a big Arthur C. Clarke fan and Richard Hoagland is such a fun tale-spinner…
"A Moon With A View" §;o)
Comment by Joy — March 9, 2006 @ 1:57 pm
March 9th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Looks like it was too good to be true. Central Florida News-13 added a little poetic flair to the initial press release.
Comment by bipod — March 9, 2006 @ 3:16 pm
March 9th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
Well, according to CNN NASA has indeed confirmed the presence of liquid water on Enceladus, and this does in fact raise "the tantalizing possibility that [Enceladus] harbors life."
It's all in tomorrow's issue of "Science." While this doesn't mean life is present, it does mean that the below-surface temperature on this moon ~800 million miles from the sun is warm enough to allow liquid water to 'erupt' to the surface.
Comment by Joy — March 9, 2006 @ 4:10 pm
March 10th, 2006 at 5:05 am
Bad Astronomy Blog:
Comment by Krauze — March 10, 2006 @ 5:05 am
March 10th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Hi, Krauze. You're right that that the announcement jumps the gun, but I'd bet it's NASA's spin rather than News-13's. That outlet apparently got their info from an advance AP report (it didn't hit the wires until ~4 PM). And the AP report makes the same claim, which I am suspecting comes from the article in "Science." Anybody have access to "Science" online to find out?
Still, it's budget time, and NASA is of course seeking continued and increased funding for its projects. In order to get it, they have to hype their incoming information as worth the cost. Life is the ultimate boost for that purpose, and NASA's been dancing to the tune for decades - all its most publicized discoveries are spun toward life. Ancient seabeds on Mars, ice under the lunar poles, fissures on ice-moons of the gas giants, and now the geysers on Enceladus.
…which really only offers one of the standard a priori assumptions about what is necessary for life to exist. Archaeon and extremophiles don't necessarily need it (so life could be just about anywhere), but appeals to ocean-born life resonate strongly with the public. My older sister wanted to be an exobiologist before she decided we weren't going to have use for that field in her working lifetime and went into plant physiology instead. Perhaps we'll have use for the field in the next generation, who knows?
Comment by Joy — March 10, 2006 @ 12:15 pm
March 10th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
> Anybody have access to "Science" online to find out?
Yes.
From a "perspectives" article by J.S. Kargel:
"If a wet domain exists at the bottom of Enceladus' icy crust, like a miniature Europan ocean, Cassini may help to confirm it. Might it be a habitat? Cassini cannot answer this question. Any life that existed could not be luxuriant and would have to deal with low temperatures, feeble metabolic energy, and perhaps a severe chemical environment (16). Neverthess, we cannot discount the possibility that Enceladus might be life's distant outpost. "
The technical paper on the water plume by C.J. Hansen et al., does not seem to include any speculation about life on Enceladus, and a quick keyword search ("life") of some of the other articles didn't turn up anything.
Kargel's non-technical article is pretty clear that with regard to the possibility of life, the Enceladus discovery is no more exciting (and possibly less exciting) than the older discoveries on Europa. It looks to me as though a little speculation in a non-technical essay was blown out of proportion by successive news reports, until we get to the somewhat hysterical Drudge headline. It;'s kind of like that children's game "telephone" where a message is hopelessly garbled after being transmitted through several different players.
Comment by Nick — March 10, 2006 @ 2:21 pm
March 10th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Thanks for that response to my question, Nick. Still, the AP, CNN and today's NYT all emphasize the "possible life" aspect. It's just your basic sell-job by NASA at budget-crunch time (they do this every year). Which also explains why NASA chose to release the information now rather than last January [2005], when it came in.
The Times' headline reads:
Saturn Moon Has Geysers, Hinting Life Is a Possibility
And today's CNN front page has yet another NASA fluff piece building interest through anxiety on the latest attempt (4:24 pm today) to insert a ship into Mars orbit (2 out of the last 4 attempts have been expensive failures, and we all know how things are going with those deadly shuttles lately).
The news releases emphasize what they're told to emphasize, for the reasons NASA figures they need to emphasize certain issues. It's nice to know that the actual science isn't harping strongly on the life longshot, but it's a little silly to conclude the media hasn't done its job on this. They're doing it fine. You don't see mainstream media reporting anything 'off-the-cuff' these days - they're not allowed to do that, and control keeps on tightening. NASA wants more money, and they can only get it if the public polls well on their share.
It's just life in Modern America, circa the first decade of the 21st century.
Comment by Joy — March 10, 2006 @ 2:55 pm
March 10th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
"NASA is planning to make a huge announcement today, about possible life in our own solar system."
The announcement:
"We're pretty sure at least one of the planets in our solar system has life."
Comment by Douglas — March 10, 2006 @ 7:13 pm
March 10th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
Yeah, but is it intelligent?
Comment by Joy — March 10, 2006 @ 8:52 pm
March 11th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
It ain't Enceladus, but in other news"¦ I want to publicly congratulate my little brother (The runt, or "Ribs" as I nicknamed him.) for actually getting it right this time. After crashing into a planet (Contrary to what I assumed, its actually easy to crash into a planet"”a 100 freakin' million miles away!) and then missing the planet entirely!, I had delivered to his office a beautiful framed lithographic of a train wreck. He did think it was humorous, in a way. (It hangs in his basement "wreck-room" and not his office though.)
I love you, Rome! What a freakin' achievement! I am so proud of you"”Rocket Scientist. [Stifles guffaw.]
If only my nieces could hit the target. (I'm a SOB for a brother"”aren't I? LOL)
Comment by Rock — March 11, 2006 @ 3:53 pm