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Mike Brown, who goes by the name plutokiller on Twitter — for good reason — has written a lengthy but interesting post about Saturn’s moon Titan. Why do I like it? Because it involves people, and the people are important to the story. I could write about clouds on Titan here on the BABlog, but I don’t know the people involved. Mike does, and that’s why his post is fun to read.
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The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
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August 12th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
An excellent read. Some other most excellent posts on other topics too.
August 12th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
This is why I love astronomy. Thanks for sharing Phil, amd of course thanks to Mike Brown for taking me on Sarah’s journey on Titan’s clouds.
August 13th, 2009 at 2:34 am
Thanks for sharing that. Great insight on how our knowledge of the solar system is being painstakingly pieced together. Must be incredibly rewarding.
August 13th, 2009 at 5:46 am
How very cool is all this? Really enjoyed the post. Thanks, Phil.
August 13th, 2009 at 5:46 am
I frequently experience methane outbursts, but they are without cloud and rain formation. Thankfully, these are highly unlikely to occur in my case because of the much higher ambient temperature and the much smaller volume of methane involved.
Still, I can emphathize with Titan, and imagine I myself would be mortified if visible clouds and precipitation resulted. No wonder Titan withheld its outburst all of these years while it was being closely watched. As Titan was eventually overcome by the inevitable, it learned the lesson that holding back pressure can often make things worse.
Titan, it’s okay — we understand.
August 13th, 2009 at 5:58 am
A lengthy post on Twitter? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?
August 13th, 2009 at 7:12 am
Kevin, reread that first sentence. Even though Phil left out a comma, it’s reasonably clear that:
Mike Brown wrote a Blogger post on the storm on Titan.
Mike Brown is known as plutokiller on Twitter.
August 13th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Did other people recieve emails, erroneously, from Mike Brown’s computer a few months ago (say, around 8th July)? When I got mine, I checked Mike’s website and also searched Twitter for recent mentions of Mike Brown, but found no mention of such a thing. However, if I got one, then hundreds of people must have got them too.
Basically, it was one of those automated replies that say “I’m out of the country and will respond when I get back”, except that the email it was a response to was from years and years ago (when the Pluto thing had only just happened).
I’m just curious about how big of a hiccup it was.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Eris – which Mike Brown found back when it was still UB313 aka “Xena” is still the one & only object out there in the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt that’s larger than Pluto. Not larger by very much either.
I think – & I certainly hope – that Pluto’s “death” will not be permanent – that Pluto & Ceres will regain their planetary status and be joined in planetary ranks by Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Sedna & maybe a few others.
I think of Mike Brown not as Pluto-killer but Eris-finder.
—–
Planets : the more, the merrier!
August 13th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Awesome image of Saturn & Titan in UV-looking blue there. Magnificent!
Infra-red light photo looking like the glow you see from ultra-Violet lights. Trippy.
No clouds on Titan for ages? I read that thinking – what do you call that orange stuff that hides the surface? Then – Oh yeah, haze!
Will it rain on Titan soon?
I picture oily blobs of methane rain drifting slowly from the sky,
trickling over slush-ice pebbles, creeks flow soft and with sound carried in the Titan’s zephyrs.
I see a landscape of Titan “drought”* changed with the fifteen year long seasons to a landscape of Titan’s “flooding rains”* with black filling lakes so chill that water is like granite and liquid methane bubbles slowly to the flat slick surface where long, languid waves with no whitecaps cross the pitch-black surface of these darkest, most distant lakes of all. **
And I am awed.
Thankyou Mike Brown & the BA for posting this.
—–
* Allusion to the Australia national poem “I love a Sunburnt country” by Dorothea Mackellar. If you’re curious, see :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Country
** There’s an idea for a painting for those Experience the Planets artists.
PS. I also think again of reading Stephen Baxter’s ‘Titan’ an excellent, evocative and scientifically plausible if rather gloomy and pessimistic novel. Worth a read if you haven’t already – I’m trying now to recall how accurate it is -but it does seem close. Baxter had tholin “gumbo” slush and ethane lakes on Titan which were stunning in abittersweet way although he took too long to get there IMHO.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Pluto is not dead, not even as a planet. Brown can use any name he wants, and he should stick to discussing Titan because he is completely disingenuous when it comes to Pluto, denying that there remains any ongoing debate about the definition of planet and the planetary status of Pluto, Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. I do know a lot of the people involved in astronomy, and many are fascinating. Many also do not accept the controversial IAU planet definition and simply do not use it. The issue is still being discussed in many professional forums such as the American Geophysical Union and the European Geophysical Union. Brown’s claim that the whole thing is over and that there are only a few holdouts in the scientific community and the general public who do not accept the IAU’s planet definition is just plain wrong and smacks of denial.
The”plutokiller” thing, along with Brown’s obsessive talk about nails and coffins regarding Pluto and how he singlehandedly “reshaped the solar system” is just plain over the top. Why doesn’t he use the name “3planetdiscoverer” instead?
August 13th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Um? Plural of anecdote isn’t data.
And anyway, science isn’t decided by vote.
August 16th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Weirdly the latest episode of our podcast deals with this very issue. http://www.monstertalk.org/wordpress/?p=121 – a nice bit of synchronicity, if there were such a thing.
This is no new argument and we talk to a guy who has been defending evolution and explaining the facts about the evidence for plesiosaurs and how even finding a live one wouldn’t falisify evolution – for more than twenty years.
August 19th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
@Torbjörn Larsson This is not “anecdote.” Listen to the very much ongoing discussion among scientists at this three-day event: http://gpd.jhuapl.edu/