@MTU #33, who says, “Rhea looks like the mother of all of Titan’s volcanoes there!”What the FLYING HECK are you talkiing about now?

In case you’re actually curious because it looks like Rhea is a volcanic plume erupting out of the Titanian surface. Think of the early shots of Io’s volcanic eruptions right on that moon’s limb.

I thought that reference was starkly obvious, guess I thought wrong.

[Complete with yet another face...in case nobody understands how sincere he is]

You don’t like emoticons, I do. You say “Tom-ay-to”, I say “To-mart-o”, we have differing styles and views, c’est la vie.

Oy. How tiresome and downright irksome can a body possibly get?

Oy veh!

Dunno, but do you see me being rude about *your* comments here for no apparent reason? Suggestion for ya, Anchor : Get over yourself!

Nevertheless a very cool shot.

[Complete with yet another face...in case nobody understands how sincere he is]

What the FLYING HECK are you talkiing about now?

Oy. How tiresome and downright irksome can a body possibly get?

another pedestal of the “world is ending tomorrow” paranoia is, well, wrong. Warming is happening, the idea that it is historic and we are going to die is as well founded as the group that called the rapture last month.

OK, tell me please who exactly is claiming that the world is ending tomorrow, or that we’re all going to die as a result of climate change? With full citations, of course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5hs4KVeiAU&feature=related

Youtube series and also, if you can find a copy, read this book :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees:_Our_Future_on_a_Hotter_Planet

which I recently finished reading myself which vividly examines the consequences of Global Warming degree by degree based on and citing good scientific studies.

Plus I’d urge you and those of like mind visit the Realclimate website among others. Do some research as I did and you may find you change your mind – as I have done also.

Oh & one last thing :

.. as well founded as the group that called the rapture last month.

Really? *Really?*

Harold Camping was just one old nutter whose erronous (multiple times erroneous actually) predictions were founded on his own idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible – a collection of sacred writings by a number of sources dating back to the bronze age. The truth or otherwise of Christianity itself is hotly contested and not easily subjected to scientific study – let alone Camping’s tiny sect within it!

The Anthropogenic Global Warming theory OTOH, is supported by well over a century of scientific papers setting forth the evidence (see links in #35 plus more) going back to Svante Arrhenius in 1896 and has hundreds even thousands of scientists and mountains of data in its favour. Ninety-eight percent of climatologists accept the scientific consensus on Global Warming with many noting the IPCC have been conservative and uder-estimated the problem. Contrastingly only Camping and his minuscule group – at least as far as I’m aware – ever accepted his personal version of the “Rapture” idea.

…who said that, I pointed to another article done using real science shows another pedestal of the “world is ending tomorrow” paranoia is, well, wrong.

See :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/10/26/climate-change-the-evidence/

No, the evidence compiled by people who have made studying the climate their lives and careers says that the Anthrpogenic Global Warming theory is correct.

Warming is happening, the idea that it is historic and we are going to die is as well founded as the group that called the rapture last month.

Well, of course we’re all going to die eventually. It’s the how and when and why of our deaths that we don’t know.

But see :

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm

for starters on why we have strong reasons to be concerned about the impacts AGW or Human Caused Global OverHeating (HCGOH) as I call it – will have.

Plus see :

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-1860-1880-and-1910-1940.htm

for how this current Global Warming differs from & is greater than some climate variations of the past.

BTW. The BA has posted several threads on the Global Warming issue before and no doubt will again, I suggest saving this discussion for those more appropriate threads.

I’ve sometimes wondered about this, but the discrepancy is really in the opposite direction. Jupiter has a much more dramatic size gap between the four Galileans and its smaller moons: the fifth largest moon is Amalthea, which isn’t even round.

Ken Croswell has an article on the ratio of Jovian versus Saturnian moons here :

http://kencroswell.com/JupiterBigMoons.html

which may be of interest here.

This site :

http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Moons/MoonsSolSys.html

gives the moon and moonlet tally close to this date although it is missing Plutonian moons Nix & Hydra.

This article :

http://www.space.com/10468-saturn-rings-remains-ripped-moon.html

via space – dot – com suggests Saturn’s rings may be the result of an earlier Titan-type satellite’s demise.

Rhea looks like the mother of all of Titan’s volcanoes there!

Or that it’s just been eaten by Titan which, given the mythology, would be kinda ironic I think!

(Assuming I’m using the word ‘ironic’ right there as apparently it is often misunderstood with many things commonly held as being “ironic” being, well, not-so much.)

I could not find the particular image sequence that Phil pulled this image from, but to my mind, there is an incredible diversity of shots that are comparably if not more dramatic, for examples, if one only chooses to look:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawimagedetails/index.cfm?imageID=238930

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawimagedetails/index.cfm?imageID=236764

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawimagedetails/index.cfm?imageID=232928

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawimagedetails/index.cfm?imageID=238926

…which anyone can easily access and explore here:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/

EXPLORE!

Coral reefs may be slightly more resilient to temperature change and ocean acidification than we previously thought. Thus, all of climate science is hereby refuted.

Well done, JUSTSOMEGUY31167!

Saturn has one moon in the Galilean class, Titan, and a lot of smaller moons as well; but there are also these in-between-sized iceballs, of which Rhea is the largest.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3053361/

Phil, there is absolutely positively nothing whatsoever wrong with waxing ‘philosophical’ or, to my mind, poetically.

You are expressing your IMPRESSIONS.

That’s a good thing.

More of it* is definitely indicated and desired.

-
*”it” of course is the simple ability to react as you will. “IT” is ALWAYS cool!!!!

What I’m saying is that it is interesting – and that I have never previously seen such a discrepancy in previous images.

Also, the hypothesis I’ve aways heard for the dryness of Mars was that water molecules were broken up by solar charged particles, with the hydrogen then being light enough to get kicked out into space by said particles.

Atmosphere loss is probably a function of both magnetic field and gravity. The bigger a planet, the more of its atmosphere it’ll be able to retain by gravity alone, and the less it will need to rely on a magnetic field.

The closer it is to it’s parent star, the more intense the solar wind it will face blowing away it’s atmosphere as well.

Wow, I never knew that. I always chalked it up to CO2′s density.

Also, the hypothesis I’ve aways heard for the dryness of Mars was that water molecules were broken up by solar charged particles, with the hydrogen then being light enough to get kicked out into space by said particles.
If you’re right, and magnetic fields aren’t important for atmosphere maintainance, this would seem to bode well for long-term terraforming efforts of planets like Mars
(I know, so sue me, I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy and now I have terraforming on the brain!)

“Rhea was almost two and a half times farther away than her big sister” Dang… I’ve always pictured Titan has a male moon… Btw how do you figure moons’ gender? You play peek-a-… erm

I think all moons are considered more or less feminine? Seeing as how our own has usually been seen as a Goddess in the polytheistic mythologies.

Kochira Says: While the lack of a protective magnetic field would indicate that erosion of ?atmosphere is likely, I don’t think we can make the inverse statement that the presence of a magnetic field ensures the presence of an atmosphere, at least in the case of moons. As a result it does still seem likely that the Saturn’s magnetic field is, at least partially, responsible for the presence and maintenance of atmosphere on Titan.

I was wondering about that – my understanding was that solar wind causes atmospheric erosion. Does this erosion follow the inverse square law with distance, like radiation? Also, does the low temperature and more complex gases (hydrocarbons, etc) also have something to do with it? Might Mercury have a thicker atmosphere if it were as far out as Saturn, even lacking Saturn’s magnetic field to protect it?

The few data points we have from solar system bodies don’t support the idea that magnetic fields signifcantly hold in atmospheres.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought that. Still, I think this particularly high level of pareidolia indicates that I really really really need to get laid

On the sizes and formation of moons, Robin Canup pretty well seems to have it wrapped up:

http://www.livestream.com/2011lpsc/video?clipId=pla_5dff90fa-d72b-445c-a33a-4e61773ac83d

Current research into Mars indicates that when it was young it had a liquid core and as a result a magnetic field that would have protected its atmosphere but it cooled and solidified, which resulted in the erosion of atmosphere.

While the lack of a protective magnetic field would indicate that erosion of atmosphere is likely, I don’t think we can make the inverse statement that the presence of a magnetic field ensures the presence of an atmosphere, at least in the case of moons. As a result it does still seem likely that the Saturn’s magnetic field is, at least partially, responsible for the presence and maintenance of atmosphere on Titan.

No doubt terrestrial processes on the moon also play a part as Titan appears to have some processes that produce gasses occurring.

The lack of atmosphere in Jupiter’s moon would be more indicative that those moons never had or developed atmospheres rather than show that Saturn’s magnetic field has no relation to Titan’s atmosphere.