Latest from Enceladus

Historic planetary instability and catastrophe. Evidence for electrical scarring on planets and moons. Electrical events in today's solar system. Electric Earth.

Moderators: MGmirkin, bboyer

Locked
mharratsc
Posts: 1405
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2009 7:37 am

Re: Saturn System Moves Oxygen from Enceladus to Titan

Unread post by mharratsc » Tue Jul 13, 2010 4:29 pm

Energetic particles raining down from Saturn's magnetosphere -- at Enceladus, mostly electrons from Saturn's radiation belts -- can break up molecules within the surface
I laughed and laughed and laughed... :lol:

I bet it looks just like the rain of electrons we get all over the ground during Earthside electrical storms! :o Don't you hate having to go out after an electrical storm and mop up all the electrons puddles on your deck and sidewalk? Sigh... I hate that. :(

:lol: :lol: :lol:
Mike H.

"I have no fear to shout out my ignorance and let the Wise correct me, for every instance of such narrows the gulf between them and me." -- Michael A. Harrington

jjohnson
Posts: 1147
Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:24 am
Location: Thurston County WA

Re: Saturn System Moves Oxygen from Enceladus to Titan

Unread post by jjohnson » Wed Jul 14, 2010 12:00 pm

Cassini has detected ionized particles and radicals being ejected from Enceladus, not ice crystals or liquid water. This is to be expected under the EU framework, what with the rain of electrons (I mean electric current) incident upon the south polar regions. "Surface churning" — or ionization? I vote for the latter under electron bombardment. Electric field acceleration of these now-charged particles away from the surface of the little moon is as normal as coronal mass ejections from the surface of the Sun, albeit in a low-g environment. Those particles are at escape velocity from Enceladus, and are "bent" or steered into becoming Saturn's E-ring, the plasma ring in which Enceladus orbits.

Unanswered questions: Have these scientists conducted any experiments in electrochemical labs to see if fullerenes can pick up oxygen and safely transport it down through a methane atmosphere? ("The Smoking Lamp is lit, gentlemen!") Once there, what life-like conditions are created thereby? Is it water-based life, or has water ever been observed on Titan? Do fullerenes have a specific electromagnetic signature, such as reflecting or absorbing light at a particular frequency(ies) as a reliable signature, and have such signatures been observed at Titan? Why do the photographs of Titan's surface from the ground look so much like Venus's or Mars — dry, sandy, rocky, scarred? Any oxygen tied up in those silicates, etc.?

The authors of the papers quoted seem to "suggest" a great deal without actually having good observational data which points directly at their assumptions and ideas. Building a model which is mathematically or chemically plausible is not the way theories are (i.e., should be) developed using the scientific method. So far this is a bunch of so-far unsubstantiated assumptions and what-ifs. They could be right, but observationally so far there is little hard evidence apparent to qualify the positive tone taken by the article.

Business as usual. ;)

User avatar
Kapriel
Posts: 89
Joined: Sun Mar 23, 2008 9:17 pm

Re: Saturn System Moves Oxygen from Enceladus to Titan

Unread post by Kapriel » Sun Jul 18, 2010 9:04 am

Excellent post, Jim. I couldn't agree more. They've been putting the "water" tag on that process for years, the same way they've been doing in for Mars, and all in a very misleading manner.

I've wondered why "tiger stripes" are not found on more of Saturn's moons, or any of Jupiter's (that I know of?).I suppose that any moons that are be "electrically right" for that development would be eaten away fairly rapidly, until nothing or little remained to have striping on. Still, at least one of Jupiter's ought to show it. Strange. Just when you think you know how a mechanism works, you realize it only exists in one place, and that's not really enough of an occurrence to make it a "rule" It's the same with Earth--- no other planet in our system has water sufficient for life. I guess in the solar system, like anywhere else, it's location location location that matters.
Doubt is not proof.

Nail
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Aug 18, 2010 12:15 am

Re: Cassini Sends Back Images of Enceladus as Winter Nears

Unread post by Nail » Wed Aug 18, 2010 12:18 am

Thanks for share with us...

User avatar
nick c
Site Admin
Posts: 2483
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:12 pm
Location: connecticut

Re: Latest from Enceladus

Unread post by nick c » Wed Mar 23, 2011 4:01 pm

With the help of StefanR, who devoted a lot of time to gathering links, we are combining various threads on the Planetary Science board into selected topics. For instance this thread will be merged with those dealing with Enceladus, which is the topic of seven different threads. We combined topics each for Mercury and for Saturn, and will do Venus soon.

(So, the reason for this post is that I need to bump this thread so it will be easier to find the thread in order to select it for the merge.) 8-)

Thanks,
Nick

User avatar
neilwilkes
Posts: 366
Joined: Sat Dec 06, 2008 4:30 am
Location: London, England
Contact:

Cassini finds Electric circuit between Saturn & Enceladus

Unread post by neilwilkes » Thu Apr 21, 2011 12:35 am

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?r ... =8194938#4
April 20, 2011

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA is releasing the first images and sounds of an electrical connection between Saturn and one of its moons, Enceladus. The data collected by the agency's Cassini spacecraft enable scientists to improve their understanding of the complex web of interaction between the planet and its numerous moons. The results of the data analysis are published in the journals Nature

Scientists previously theorized an electrical circuit should exist at Saturn. After analyzing data that Cassini collected in 2008, scientists saw a glowing patch of ultraviolet light emissions near Saturn's north pole that marked the presence of a circuit, even though the moon is 240,000 kilometers (150,000 miles) away from the planet.

The patch occurs at the end of a magnetic field line connecting Saturn and its moon Enceladus. The area, known as an auroral footprint, is the spot where energetic electrons dive into the planet's atmosphere, following magnetic field lines that arc between the planet's north and south polar regions.

"The footprint discovery at Saturn is one of the most important fields and particle revelations from Cassini and ultimately may help us understand Saturn's strange magnetic field," said Marcia Burton, a Cassini fields and particles scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It gives us the first visual connection between Saturn and one of its moons."

The auroral footprint measures approximately 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) by less than 400 kilometers (250 miles), covering an area comparable to California or Sweden. At its brightest, the footprint shone with an ultraviolet light intensity far less than Saturn's polar auroral rings, but comparable to the faintest aurora visible at Earth without a telescope in the visible light spectrum. Scientists have not found a matching footprint at the southern end of the magnetic field line.
Jupiter's active moon Io creates glowing footprints near Jupiter's north and south poles, so scientists suspected there was an analogous electrical connection between Saturn and Enceladus. It is the only known active moon in the Saturn system with jets spraying water vapor and organic particles into space. For years, scientists used space telescopes to search Saturn's poles for footprints, but they found none.

"Cassini fields and particles instruments found particle beams aligned with Saturn's magnetic field near Enceladus, and scientists started asking if we could see an expected ultraviolet spot at the end of the magnetic field line on Saturn," said Wayne Pryor, a lead author of the Nature study released today, and Cassini co-investigator at Central Arizona College in Coolidge, Ariz. "We were delighted to find the glow close to the 'bulls-eye' at the center of our target."

In 2008, Cassini detected a beam of energetic protons near Enceladus aligned with the magnetic field and field-aligned electron beams. A team of scientists analyzed the data and concluded the electron beams had sufficient energy flux to generate a detectable level of auroral emission at Saturn. A few weeks later, Cassini captured images of an auroral footprint in Saturn's northern hemisphere. In 2009, a group of Cassini scientists led by Donald Gurnett at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, detected more complementary signals near Enceladus consistent with currents that travel from the moon to the top of Saturn's atmosphere, including a hiss-like sound from the magnetic connection. That paper was published in March in Geophysical Research Letters.

The water cloud above the Enceladus jets produces a massive, ionized "plasma" cloud through its interactions with the magnetic bubble around Saturn. This cloud disturbs the magnetic field lines. The footprint appears to flicker in these new data, so the rate at which Enceladus is spewing particles may vary.

"The new data are adding fuel to the fire of some long-standing debates about this active little moon," said Abigail Rymer, the other lead author of the Nature study and a Cassini team scientist based at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "Scientists have been wondering whether the venting rate is variable, and these new data suggest that it is."
The article is also accompanied by various graphics, including one of the torus around Saturn.
How long until the circuits elsewhere are "discovered"?
You will never get a man to understand something his salary depends on him not understanding.

User avatar
Siggy_G
Moderator
Posts: 501
Joined: Sun Dec 21, 2008 11:05 am
Location: Norway

Re: Cassini finds Electric circuit between Saturn & Enceladus

Unread post by Siggy_G » Thu Apr 21, 2011 2:32 am

Interesting! And great to see proper terms like "electrical connection", "electrical circuit" and "plasma" being repeated throughout the press release. Just the fact that they are searching for the complex web of interaction between the planet and the moons, corresponding Birkeland currents and auroral footprints, is good news.

From one of the images in the article:
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has spotted a glowing patch of ultraviolet light near Saturn's north pole that marks the presence of an electrical circuit that connects Saturn with its moon Enceladus.

User avatar
tayga
Posts: 668
Joined: Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:54 am

Re: Latest from Enceladus

Unread post by tayga » Thu Apr 21, 2011 12:23 pm

This is also appearing on the BBC newsite where the terminology is also encouraging:
the fields created by Jupiter and Saturn envelop the planets' moons, and what is known as electrodynamic coupling brings particles directly from the moons, completing what is actually an electrical circuit.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13131537
tayga


It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

- Richard P. Feynman

Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.
- Thomas Kuhn

mharratsc
Posts: 1405
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2009 7:37 am

Re: Latest from Enceladus

Unread post by mharratsc » Sun Apr 24, 2011 9:20 am

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer
German philosopher (1788 - 1860)

(From the article:)
Scientists previously theorized an electrical circuit should exist at Saturn.

To which scientists do you suppose they are referring to? Wal Thornhill and who was the second scientist?? :P

These NASA guys just knew it all along, didn't they? :roll:
Mike H.

"I have no fear to shout out my ignorance and let the Wise correct me, for every instance of such narrows the gulf between them and me." -- Michael A. Harrington

larryduane100
Posts: 48
Joined: Sun May 25, 2008 11:22 am

Re: Latest from Enceladus

Unread post by larryduane100 » Sun Apr 24, 2011 1:10 pm

All electric plasma knowledge and theory will be absorbed by the body-just like Landru of Star Trek fame. http://www.startrek.com/database_articl ... rchons-the

One of the recurring phrases in press releases is the old "scientists always knew that...." and insert whatever. But I can't help but be amazed that the mainstream is coming around in my lifetime!
Larry

MrChristopherSea
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2011 11:53 pm

Electrical current between Saturn and its moon discovered

Unread post by MrChristopherSea » Wed Apr 27, 2011 11:56 pm

http://www.discoveryon.info/2011/04/ele ... vered.html

I'm new to this forum and pretty new to the whole electrical universe concept, but I'm fascinated by it. I just saw the above news article tonight and thought I'd share.

Chris

User avatar
D_Archer
Posts: 1255
Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 4:01 am
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Electrical current between Saturn and its moon discovered

Unread post by D_Archer » Thu Apr 28, 2011 1:52 am

TPOD about the connection:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2011/ ... eladus.htm

Regards,
Daniel
- Shoot Forth Thunder -

User avatar
StefanR
Posts: 1371
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:31 pm
Location: Amsterdam

Ocean-like Spray at Saturn Moon

Unread post by StefanR » Thu Jun 23, 2011 5:19 pm

Image
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered the best evidence yet for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft's direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon.

Data from Cassini's cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and predominantly low in salt far away from the moon. But closer to the moon's surface, Cassini found that relatively large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes. The salt-rich particles have an "ocean-like" composition [(?)] and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt water. The findings appear in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

"There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus's icy surface," said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and the lead author on the paper. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them.

The Cassini mission discovered Enceladus' water-vapor and ice jets in 2005. In 2009, scientists working with the cosmic dust analyzer examined some sodium salts found in ice grains of Saturn's E ring, the outermost ring that gets its material primarily from Enceladean jets. But the link to subsurface salt water was not definitive.

The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 mph (23,000 and 63,000 kilometers per hour), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.

The data suggest a layer of water between the moon's rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.

"This finding is a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life can be sustained on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets," said Nicolas Altobelli, the European Space Agency's project scientist for Cassini.

Cassini's ultraviolet imaging spectrograph also recently obtained complementary results that support the presence of a subsurface ocean. A team of Cassini researchers led by Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., measured gas shooting out of distinct jets originating in the moon's south polar region at five to eight times the speed of sound, several times faster than previously measured. These observations of distinct jets, from a 2010 flyby, are consistent with results showing a difference in composition of ice grains close to the moon's surface and those that made it out to the E ring. That paper was published in the June 9 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

"Without an orbiter like Cassini to fly close to Saturn and its moons -- to taste salt and feel the bombardment of ice grains -- scientists would never have known how interesting these outer solar system worlds are," said Linda Spilker, NASA's Cassini project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/newsrel ... e20110622/
Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed "tiger stripes" near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The tiger stripes are fissures that spray icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds.

More than 30 individual jets of different sizes can be seen in this image and more than 20 of them had not been identified before. At least one jet spouting prominently in previous images now appears less powerful.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/image ... ageId=3852
The illusion from which we are seeking to extricate ourselves is not that constituted by the realm of space and time, but that which comes from failing to know that realm from the standpoint of a higher vision. -L.H.

User avatar
StefanR
Posts: 1371
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:31 pm
Location: Amsterdam

Saturn Electric Link With Enceladus

Unread post by StefanR » Fri Jul 01, 2011 8:36 am

Just putting the images here, as the article was cited earlier on this page:
ImageThis artist's concept shows a glowing patch of ultraviolet light near Saturn's north pole that occurs at the "footprint" of the magnetic connection between Saturn and its moon Enceladus. Image credit: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL/University of Colorado/Central Arizona College/SSI http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassi ... 13765.html
ImageNASA's Cassini spacecraft has spotted a glowing patch of ultraviolet light near Saturn's north pole that marks the presence of an electrical circuit that connects Saturn with its moon Enceladus. Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Colorado/Central Arizona College http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassi ... 13763.html
The illusion from which we are seeking to extricate ourselves is not that constituted by the realm of space and time, but that which comes from failing to know that realm from the standpoint of a higher vision. -L.H.

User avatar
StefanR
Posts: 1371
Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:31 pm
Location: Amsterdam

Re: Latest from Enceladus

Unread post by StefanR » Fri Jul 01, 2011 8:37 am

Image Icy spray in space: The different shades of blue show the calculated fraction of the salt-rich ice particles in the plumes over the southern pole of Saturns moon Enceladus (top left). The bright supersonic jets from three vents which Cassini has traversed (grey vertical line) are clearly recognisable. The red curves correspond to different average particle radii – with the largest close to Enceladus.
© NASA/JPL / University of Potsdam
http://www.mpg.de/4352064/seewater_ence ... -A%2CPA-AP
The illusion from which we are seeking to extricate ourselves is not that constituted by the realm of space and time, but that which comes from failing to know that realm from the standpoint of a higher vision. -L.H.

Locked

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 26 guests