Bright Patches on Saturn’s Largest Moon Are Dried-Up Lake Beds
by Alex Fox/Smithsonianmag.com
Research suggests mysterious bright spots seen at the equator of Saturn’s moon Titan may be dried up lake beds, reports Lisa Grossman for Science News. The new research, published this week in the journal Nature Communications, offers an explanation for a phenomenon first observed in 2000.
Titan is the ringed planet’s largest moon and is the second largest moon in the entire solar system. The mega-moon is also the only one known to have a substantial atmosphere.
Between 2000 and 2008, radio telescopes at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia identified roughly a dozen spots at Titan’s equator that were bouncing anomalously bright radio signals back to Earth, reports Mike Wall for Space.com. Such signals, called specular reflections, happen when radio waves bounce off a surface at the same angle they went in at, like the sun glinting off a mirror, explains Grossman in Science News.
At the time, the prevailing wisdom was that Titan’s equatorial specular reflections were essentially sun glints on the surface of large bodies of liquid, which researchers had long suspected existed on the moon’s surface, Jason Hofgartner, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the study’s…..read more:
Carol graduated from Riverside White Cross School of Nursing in Columbus, Ohio and received her diploma as a registered nurse. She attended Bowling Green State University where she received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History and Literature. She attended the University of Toledo, College of Nursing, and received a Master’s of Nursing Science Degree as an Educator.
She has traveled extensively, is a photographer, and writes on medical issues. Carol has three children RJ, Katherine, and Stephen – one daughter-in-law; Katie – two granddaughters; Isabella Marianna and Zoe Olivia – and one grandson, Alexander Paul. She also shares her life with her husband Gordon Duff, many cats, and two rescues.
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The space program needs to commit to drones and forget human travel. The new data showing brain damage, was easily predicted and common sense. So, get a drone to verify , instead of filling a speculative news cycle with new hypothesis to keep the funding going.
The shortest path to majority support of a space program is landing a drone ship on one of these bodies and collecting samples people can see at the local exhibit. Titan would be a great designation. My prediction of the new human space travel market is, “underwhelming for the money”. We are wasting time and resources.
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