Lakes on Titan!

That is awesome.

That is awesome.

That is awesome

— buddha

Yeah, praise Jesus!

Some YEC organisation somewhere (probably AIG) will have an article which will claim "Lakes on Titan confirm creation (or a young solar system) !" or something similar !

I think astronomers did predict this though. Is there any evidence of waves ? This was a discussion topic in a recent Open University astronomy course that I did recently.

That is awesome

— Anonymous Coward

Yeah, praise Jesus!

Can Jesus walk on liquid methane?

MMMmmm...Slushies.

That might be one greasy slushie ...

Some of the dark patches and connecting channels are completely black, that is, they reflect back essentially no radar signal, and hence must be extremely smooth.

Comment #114615 Posted by Anonymous_Coward on July 25, 2006 06:53 AM (e) | kill Can Jesus walk on liquid methane?

Laser: Can someone explain to me why this is so? Very smooth surfaces reflect visible wavelengths well. Why is that not the case with radio waves?

I think if they are black images this means that they reflect very well. This is counterintuitive, but it is the case as far as I can tell.

Can someone explain to me why this is so? Very smooth surfaces reflect visible wavelengths well. Why is that not the case with radio waves?

For example:

If you are in a darkened room with a mirror and you shine a light beam onto it at an angle, you would probably not see the mirror.

If instead the mirror was replaced by a piece of paper, you would probably be able to see the piece of paper because some of the roughness would reflect part of the beam back to you.

I'm guessing it would be much more exact in the real case since the lake seems to be large and would have a slight curvature to it.

But I'm just taking a wild wild guess.

Specular vs Diffuse Reflection

Okay, I tried to read it, but I think I have a reading problem.

How close was I?

Comment #114645 Posted by Anonymous_Coward on July 25, 2006 09:24 AM (e) | kill Okay, I tried to read it, but I think I have a reading problem. How close was I?

You can tell the lakes are evidence of design by the way the shorelines are designed to maximize the amount of water--er, methane--front property.

WWJD = What Would Jesus Drink?

OK on the reflection thingy radio waves reflect off a flat conductive surface, such as sea water, almost perfectly.

However depending on the wavelength and the angle of incidence the reflection can be practically nil.

Allied bombers during WW2 used the lakes around Berlin with X-band H2S Radar (10Ghz /3cm ) as a guide to identify targets. The resolution of a 3cm wavelength radar is + or - a couple of wavelenths and a flat surface is plainly visable on a display weather it reflects or not, compared to rough surroundings.

The Germans when they discovered this quickly covered the lakes with antennas configured to reflect the signals (I'm guessing at different heights) so the lakes could not be used to guide the bombers.

If something is very smooth, then the reflection should be perfect. That would mean you need to calculate the exact angle to get a reflection to a sensor. Rough surfaces would diffuse(?) the light, which would mean that we would have a better chance of receiving a reflected signal just from the diffused reflection alone.

Correct; this is why stealth fighters (F117) have no rounded surfaces. You would need to hit them at a very specific angle to bounce radar off of them.

Regarding the lakes being black in the images, several people of figured it out, but here is a summary of why it works this way:

* The only "light source" for these images is the radar beams (= radio waves) that the Cassini satellite is shooting out.

* The satellite shoots out some radio waves, and then waits for the radar signal to bounce back. This signal is called backscatter.

* Backscatter depends on the chemical structure of materials but more importantly on the "roughness" of the surface. Rough surfaces will always have some surfaces directly perpendicular to the radio beam, which will bounce the signal directly back to the satellite

* Because the radar is being shot down to the surface at an angle, radar aimed at very smooth surfaces will "bounce away" from the satellite rather than bounce back to the satellite. Therefore low return is recorded for smooth surfaces, and when this is turned into image pixels smooth surfaces appear black.

(smooth surfaces are known as "specular", i.e. mirrorlike)

In conclusion, these images mean that there are large specular reflectors down on Titan with lakelike shapes. It also may mean that there is not enough wind to produce much in the way of waves or "chop" (which radar can also detect under some circumstances). Placid hydrocarbon lakes evidently.

As much evidence exists for the demise of evolution as exists for rational design in biology.

I like the struggle to stretch out the "inevitable collapse" of evolutionary theory. Apparently evolution happens rather more rapidly than evolutionary theory collapses.

Btw, "inevitable demise", you apparently aren't very bright, since you seem unable to differentiate between a post about evolution and one about Titan and its lakes.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

Although this blog mostly deals with the biological arguments by creationists latest guise ID, YEC's also deny things like stellar evolution. I often wonder how creationists like Dr Jason Lisle interpret Hertzsprung - Russell diagrams for example. If Dr. Lisle's version of astronomy were to be adopted in American Universities (as AIG hopes will happen one day) would these become obsolete, since according to them stars don't evolve. I've often wondered about that.

All very good folks, but what has all this got to do with lakes on Titan ?

And your presuppositions of antisupernaturalism are less than impressive.

All very good folks, but what has all this got to do with lakes on Titan ?

Re #114776. More interesting photos Bruce. As I was saying, the OU course speculated about the existence of waves on these areas of liquid methane/ethane. As far as I can remember, there was also a prediction of Methane rain/snow. Can anyone confirm what type of weather (if any) is present on Titan ?

This thread confuses me. Truly, it appears we have angered the Jupiterians.

Re#114772: Just because we don't know how life arose from no-life now doesn't mean we'll never know. At the moment it is beyond our understanding. However, there were many things that were meta-physics several hundred years ago which can now be explained by science.

I would hazard a guess that if we were able to physically able to explore every planetary body in the solar system, we would come across microbial life in quite a few of them, even in the most harshest of environments.

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Life/archaea.html

Update: I have moved the copious off-topic comments to the Bathroom Wall. Please talk about Titan, stealth figher anti-radar technology, and other related topics that are actually interesting.

We've got a winner here. He even sounds more retarded than AFDave!

Just out of curiosity: how old is the Earth, Mr fanatic?

Thanks, Nick, for scooping up the poop before I even got here. Makes for a much more pleasant/interesting read.

Please talk about Titan

Anyone who is interested in a detailed summary of Titan's chemistry can read this paper from the European Space Agency:
http://www.rssd.esa.int/SB/HUYGENS/docs/SP1177/raulin.pdf

The author suggests that UV light could create interesting products in the atmosphere, which would exist in aerosols, or precipitate. Liquid oceans might be very important for protecting the precipitated complex organics from UV photolysis, keeping them soluble, and allowing more chemistry. The accumulation of interesting organics in a ethane/methane sea seems pretty cool....

Ever since the possibility of liquids on the surface of Titan was raised, I've thought that any serious Titan lander should include a fishing pole. Who knows what might 'bite'....

"such lakes may wax"

Such witticisms make me melt.

"Can anyone confirm what type of weather (if any) is present on Titan ?"

It seems to be cold with some liquid methane clouds and perhaps rain. If the sun wasn't so weak, I would like to buy a beach property along one of those calm lakes. Googling I found these descriptions for example:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/titan_weather_001020-1.html
http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1759.html
http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/1/wa/MainStoryDetails?ArticleID=11870
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/SEMAXTMZCIE_0.html

How long before Exxon sends a probe to pump the lakes into a spaceship and carry it back here?

;>

Lenny: ... or just use it for fuel to go even farther.

Further?

Use it for further explorations.

Farther.

Never mind. It would be cool.

Lenny: ... or just use it for fuel to go even farther.

LAKES ON A MOON!

I can't believe I'm the first person to make a "Snakes on a Plane" joke.

We got Mothaf%cking Lakes on the Mothaf%cking Moon

Ever since the possibility of liquids on the surface of Titan was raised, I've thought that any serious Titan lander should include a fishing pole. Who knows what might 'bite'....

...I often wonder how creationists like Dr Jason Lisle interpret Hertzsprung - Russell diagrams for example. If Dr. Lisle's version of astronomy were to be adopted in American Universities (as AIG hopes will happen one day) would these become obsolete, since according to them stars don't evolve.

— Peter Henderson

Can you see Rumfoord's house?

It's cooler by the lake.

Longer chain hydrocarbons are present in Titan's atmosphere but oxygen exists only as a minor constituent limiting hopes of remedying the butter shortage.

Delta Pi Gamma (Scientia et Fermentum)

The weather report now also includes ice crystals, rainfall and fierce polar storms ( http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=mg19125623.600&feedId=online-news_rss20 ).

I wonder if Rachel Scwartz a.k.a. John Griffin a.k.a. all the other theorusts are trying to populate PT with this garbage so that in a year they can refer back to it and say "Look at all the controversy!"

I guess the hope is that the debunking/exposing will be lost over time.

LAKES ON A MOON! I can't believe I'm the first person to make a "Snakes on a Plane" joke.