Could Titan’s seas harbor life?.

By Alan Boyle

A fresh photo from the Cassini orbiter shows the hydrocarbon-rich seas and dunes of Titan, a Saturnian moon that might be capable of sustaining life as we don’t know it.

The picture, published today on the websites of NASA’s Saturn mission and Cassini’s imaging team, shows the huge sea known as Kraken Mare as a dark spot on the northern edge of Titan’s disk. The dark Senkyo dune field is front and center. Cassini’s narrow-angle camera captured the view in near-infrared wavelengths from a distance of 1.2 million miles (1.9 million kilometers) on Sept. 14.

Titan is totally shrouded in smog, but Cassini’s camera filters are set up to pierce through the haze and spot details on the surface below. The cold condtions on the moon are such that hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane can exist in liquid form. This rare picture from Cassini shows the glint of sunlight off the sheen of Kraken Mare, which is larger than the Caspian Sea on Earth. (And yes, Kraken is named after the mythical sea creature. “Mare” is Latin for “sea.”)

Titan’s seas, lakes and rivers of hydrocarbons are among the reasons why the murky Saturnian moon ranks higher than Mars on a recently published list assessing planetary habitability. That may sound strange, considering that the typical temperature on Titan is 289 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-178 degrees Celsius). But Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Washington State University who helped put together the list, told me that it makes sense to rank Titan as the top prospect for extraterrestrial habitability.

“If you think about it, Titan has a thick protective atmosphere like Earth’s, similar to the early Earth atmosphere,” he said. “It has a lot of nitrogen and methane in it, and Titan has hydrocarbon lakes, energy sources. There’s a lot of possibility on Titan — if you objectively evaluate the possibility of life on Titan, I would agree.”

He cautioned, however, that life on Titan may not take the form of life on Earth. Titanian life would have to thrive on methane rather than oxygen or carbon dioxide. Last year, some researchers were wound up by reports that hydrogen was flowing down through the moon’s atmosphere and disappearing at the surface, and that acetylene was less abundant than expected. That could be consistent with the behavior of methane-based life forms. There are other possible explanations, however. It’ll be another decade at least before another probe can go to Titan to sort out the truth.

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NASA launches Mars rover

NASA sends its Mars rover toward the Red Planet.

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nbc-news/45444559

Also referred to as ‘anti Mars’ or ‘the rival of Mars’, Planet Antares has a vivid red hue reminiscent of the Red Planet, Mars. The Antares star and Mars can both be seen from both hemispheres of the Earth at this particular time. Due to the relative closeness of Mars, it will in effect appear to be almost twice as bright as the Antares planet. In factual terms, the distance from Earth to Mars is 191 million km while the Antares lies about 30 million times further away.

Similar to all planets, Mars has no light of its own and reflects the light of the Sun. Planet Antares on the other hand has 9000 times more luminosity, 15 times more mass and is roughly 700 times larger than the Sun. Planet Antares is however less dense than water with the outer layers being so thin that they are barely noticeable.

While there are still many unanswered questions about our solar system and the universe beyond, research has come up with theories that help us understand things much better every passing day. Frequently asked questions include – Is there life anywhere else except on Earth? How did the solar system come to be? How did the Sun and the planets come about? Is the system changing and what are the implications for planet Earth? Is the Planet Antares a planet or a Sun? Different people often have different theories which again change as new information is revealed.

While the common man may not always be able to name all the planets; most will name the zodiac signs without hesitation. Astrology and astrophysics are in some ways closely connected. Based on an understanding of the constellations of the zodiac like Scorpius (which is also known as Scorpio in Latin), astrology predicts likely temperament, character traits and even daily horoscopes. People follow their astrological predictions with great interest and often identify closely with their sun signs. There is also a great deal of Greek mythology regarding these signs and their significance. Unfortunately, pure science does not support any of these claims.

We are still in the process of learning and it is imperative that we do so for our own survival. Movies about life on other planets, aliens landing on Earth have provided entertainment to us for years. Could it be true? For students and enthusiasts alike, there are various sites that are dedicated to exploring these issues in details. They also make it their business to provide up to date news on all research and discoveries as they are made on Mars, Planet Antares and the solar system. There is much that we do not know or understand. It is only through constant endeavor into newer realms that we will better be able to understand how we came into being and if there are any threats to our survival. So make sure you stay informed by reading up.

Science.nasa.gov is a site dedicated to better understanding the origin, evolution, destiny and nature of life in the universe. Areas of coverage go beyond our plan and include Planet Antares and Mars. For more information about Planet Antares visit the given link.

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Whiting New Jersey Feeds Water to Aliens on Mars; Read All About It!
By Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin

I was walking around the foundations of the old hotel near Docspond. You now the ones the Piney’s burned down in the late sixties. Ah you know the one, I seen you in the woods hiding when it was on flames with your ax in hand and the helmet you fought to keep slipping over your eyes. But that is years ago and neither hear nor there. But You want to know a bigger secret I found out than the local fire company burning out the nudist in town. MIB.

Yes that is right, MIB. Yep. I found one of those mind eraser thingies. You might think I am a bit nuts, but I found one for sure. Marked “Property of the United States Government”. All right it is a bit rusty and one end is missing, but the piece that slides up and out of the shaft is still intact.

Now Officially, it was first cleared and settled as an Iron forge and site for bog mining in the 1800′s. They missed the glory days when the bogs provided devil’s pills for the Revolutionary War, but no less viable. The hotel originally stood to house the employees in this industrial town. Three plots up some industrious young man even grew produce to feed these men of the forge. Up to 1944, being abandoned for years, up to that point, Misses Jeanie Epolito was forced to sell when the county foreclosed on all of Manchester Land Companies properties for tax evasion. This is when Mr Giovanni Enea, a doctor of sorts, owner of United Spring down the road snatched up that property for a nudist colony. To ride on his success of selling mineral water to NYC, why not have a spa that not only can you drink the water but bathe in it. Adding many years to your life.

Now you might not of liked Mr Enea, or the Doc as he was called, but you have to admit there was something of fortiture and propensity, if not fortunsity! Being a Doctor and genealogist in Biotech. Did he grow some monster Blueberries with Mrs. White of Whitesbog, the first woman or man to cultivate blueberries. She even made those little plastic baskets that all fruit comes in nowadays. I still eat them from the orchard and they are so juicy! But there was more to this Sicilian Doctor…

When I first moved to this house kitty corner from the colony, I used to see this strange star. It sat low in the sky. To high for a street light that sat on a small hill through the woods. But too low to be any star. Yes Fort Dix was shooting flares, but these were yellow and zig zaggged and fell within fifteen minutes. No this stood in the sky motionless for the whole night, right after sunset. I seen this star ever summer for four years. Then one summer it was gone.

I thought not much of it over the next five years, until! My parents went away when I was in High School and I had invited friends over for a party. Being a bit concerned, rough crowd, We sat outside on the porch. One named Shambo pointed up and looked us all in the eye in turn and spoke “Have you ever heard of the alien they shot trying to escape over a fence at Fort Dix!” I thought he was full of shit. “They captured his ship and they were examining him until one day he or it just had enough and excused himself. Well he made it to the fence alright, but not any farther.” I learned long time ago from Pugsley, or Peanut on the account he was the first to get caught shoplifting peanuts or anything else for that matter at the new food store, to listen to tall tales and not interrupt them with questions of validity as long as money and transportation was not part of it. So I listened, although non believing to Shambo until…

” Yep, they shot that alien five years ago!”

Five years ago? No it can not be. Has it been that long! Summer of 73, yes it has been. These are things that went through my mind at the time.

Now the window facing the north west from my room. It is a bit strange.. See now to the south west corner of it, is where I seen the star. We know now what happened to that. Below it is where the doctor got burned out. But to the north corner, that is where the tower stands that was suppose to connect to the Hindenburg. But we all know what happened before it could do that. The window of destruction.

Now back to yesterday. I found that MIB mind eraser thingie all right. I did some research on topographical and aerial maps. They were field inspected. Not only were they field inspected, but the 1947 aerial map is top secret. 1947 Roswell sighting and all. The USGS office does not even have access to it. Have you ever heard of Whiting, NJ ? So why should the army?

When I was little walking the swamps behind Docspond, I found PVC piping coming from the center of the swamp. Ventilation? A young five year old mind goes towards underground silos. Could there be men sneaking out here in the middle of the night with lunch boxes going to work; “Hey Joe” :Good Night Frank.”; in the swamp. We do have a known silo just three miles away. It has been closed since June 7, 1960. A BOMARC missile at McGuire Air Force Base, [near Trenton,] New Jersey in ready storage condition (permitting launch in two minutes) was destroyed by explosion and fire after a high pressure helium tank exploded and ruptured the missile’s fuel tanks. The warhead was also destroyed by the fire although the high explosive did not detonate. Nuclear safety devices acted as designed. Contamination was restricted to an area immediately beneath the weapon and an adjacent elongated area approximately 100 feet long, caused by drain-off of the firefighting water. Well the next town up in Toms River has Radionuclide or something in the water, but not to worry.

The New York Times reported the 47-foot missile “melted under an intense blaze fed by its 100-pound detonator TNT…THe atomic warhead apparently dropped into the molten mass that was left of the missile, which burned for forty-five minutes.” The radiation “had been caused when thoriated magnesium metal which forms part of the weapon, caught fire,… the metal, already radioactive, becomes highly radioactive when it is burned.”

I think the aliens did this on purpose. To mark the spot. You know as a sign post seen from the stars. A beacon. Was the Doctor’s nudists Earthlings, or not. Was Giovanni Enea more than a recent alien from Sicily, or was he from the stars. They might say that New Yorkers might be out of this world, but was he selling his mineral water to Mars? As all scientist know, there is no water on Mars. So who else would need it more than them?

I do not know how in 1947, three years after Nature’s Rest Nudist Colony opened, how they came to come across these aliens. MIB, how did they find out. Was it spied during normal aerial photographing that they seen something strange. Up Devil’s mountain from the colony in the woods sits a circle of trees blown over like Dominoes. In the Periphery for a sixteenth of a mile in thick brush, trees have been felled. Now was this there landing spot?

But what brings them here in and around 1940′s. Well in 1938 the Hindenburg was the first internationally transmitted news disaster in the world. Now those waves bounce in space forever. Did they listen to it. Did it take them six years to hear it and travel here? In that report it was heard, ” In the resort town of Lakehurst a boro of Manchester outside of Whiting at ..”. Maybe all they cared about was the mention of a resort town. Could this be all that was needed. Did some cosmic Lief Erickson sell some aliens on traveling to Whiting NJ? Did scouting parties report back about United Spring Co that got water from one of North America’s largest aquifers, the Cohansey-Kirkwood aquifer. 17 Trillion tons alone in the Cohansey. Where else would you go if you were from Mars and you needed water? Have you ever heard of Whiting?

So Doc Enea was not only hated for his car with the Black devil of a hick Hood ornament thumbing his nose at you, or his optional clothing style, his intellectual snobbery, or his dangerous choice of fauna for nudists ( Honey Locust and Holly trees), but was hated for allowing in illegal aliens.

That explains all the military transports flying low, real low, over the site all hours of the day. You Know!

Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin is propietor of Docspond Life Coach Services providing Individual Counseling, Group facilitation, and key note addresses that speak to the heart of the mission while delivering the bottom line finacial growth. Helping millions find their bliss and return meaning to success! Guaranteed 20% improvement in your quality of life aftre the first meeting!

Also is the propietor and designer at Norgeforge Illumination Studios that will SEO illuminated design giving Aesthetics to traffic driven sales.So get out of the cold and get Norgeforged!

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The Canals of Mars
By Steve Challis

Discovery

In 1877, Giovanni Schiaparelli of Italy was looking at Mars through his telescope and saw what he described as canali. I cannot speak Italian, and would probably guess that this meant canals. This is what many English speaking people did at the time, but apparently it means channels, not specifically canals.

Percival Lowell

This meant that people looking at Mars tried to make out the network of canals. The most famous of those who succeeded was Percival Lowell. He was looking at Mars from Arizona. Mr. Lowell made maps of the canals. Not everyone could even see them, but some other astronomers confirmed the observations. In some cases, people who had not seen Mr. Lowell’s maps drew ones of their own with definite similarities to his.

It was realised that for the canals to be seen from the Earth, they would have to be huge. This was engineering on a vast scale, bringing water from the poles of Mars to the warmer equator where the water could be used for irrigation.

Alfred Wallace

Not everyone was convinced. Alfred Wallace was a man of many talents. He was the co-proposer of the theory of evolution by natural selection with Charles Darwin in 1859. He also researched the border between predominately Asian animals and mainly Australasian ones. This line is called the Wallace Line.

Mr Wallace did calculations based on the knowledge of the time of the conditions on Mars. His conclusion was that all the water would have evaporated long before reaching the equator of the planet, and far from being the work of highly intelligent engineers; if the canal existed it would have been a work of insanity.

Micro-organisms

Mr. Wallace was excluding the possibility of canal building engineers, but was not commenting on the possibility of micro-organisms on Mars.

Mars Probes

The first successful flyby of Mars was in 1964 by Mariner 4, and the first successful orbiting of Mars (or of any planet other than Earth) was by Mariner 9 in 1971. These and other missions sent back much more detailed pictures of the Martian surface than had been obtained from the Earth, and there were no canals in the pictures.

How did it happen

For nearly a century, many astronomers had been reporting nonexistent canals on Mars. One theory about this is that they had been connecting up unrelated features into an apparent network. The trouble with this theory is that the Mars missions do not show features than could have been mistakenly joined together on the maps.

My Explanation

The Human Brain is very good at seeing patterns, and we frequently see patterns that are not even there. This applies to numbers as well as pictures. If you give untutored people a group of random numbers, they will often be able to see patterns in them.

The Astronomers, even the ones who had not seen Mr. Lowell’s maps, knew that there was a network of canals taking water from the poles to the equator, so they looked until they found it. The similarity to other people’s maps is probably just that these were logical places for canals.

Steve Challis has articles on a diverse range of subjects at http://www.bettatrading.com.au; these include Fish Fact Sheets, but there is also a rapidly expanding section on Astronomy and Space Travel. To see a short story involving space travel, see http://www.bettatrading.com.au/Tiffany-Rat.php.

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Is the American Space Program Coming to an End?
By Thomas Ajava

The cold war was not good for much, but it was a great time to be in the space program of either the USA or USSR. The governments were racing to be the first in space in this way or that, which led to the funding needed to do things like walk on the moon and send probes around our solar system. The question is whether this golden period is now winding down.

I’ll start off by mentioning that I am a science fiction fan and huge proponent of space exploration. If I had my druthers, we would already be vacationing on Mars! Alas, nobody is willing to hand me that checkbook, which is probably a good thing. The question these days is whether the space program as we know it is going to exist in another decade or two. We assume so when discussing the future, but a practical problem may bring that vision to an end.

The problem is economics. As a nation, we are facing a huge national debt problem. The cost of Medicare, Social Security and just paying the interest on our national debt is estimated to be as much as 80 percent of our total yearly budget by 2020. How this has happened is a subject for another article, but it raises the very simple question of whether there government will have money to pay for things such as the space program. Well, you’ll notice that the cost of the military was not mentioned above. This would seem to suggest that the cost of space exploration is one that cannot be easily carried.

We are already seeing cost shortfalls having an impact in the near term. President Obama has taken a beating for canceling a proposed second trip to the moon. The truth of the matter is there really isn’t any funding available to do it in the current economic environment. When the government is running a $1.9 trillion dollar deficit each year, the idea of setting aside money to go back to the moon is not exactly going to get a lot of play. This trend will certainly continue for the next decade at least.

So, will humanity ever expand upon its efforts to explore the universe around us? It seems that there are really only two options. One would be a private group that starts doing it or the rise of another country that has the financial basis to do it. Until either group appears, the idea of space exploration is going to take a back seat compared to the focus on paying our bills.

Thomas Ajava writes about subjects like 10 Mars facts and other factual topics for FactsMonk.com.

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