if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
War of the Worlds
by Lee
You might have noticed this headline over at Drudge.
Orlando Channel 13: Big NASA Announcement Set For Today… // NASA is planning to make a huge announcement today, about possible life in our own solar system…
Well, according to Nasawatch, don’t get your hopes up.
I just spoke with Doc Mirelson at NASA HQ PAO. He was not aware of any specific “huge announcement” that NASA would be making today but suggested that the reporter who wrote this story might be referencing a 2:00 pm Cassini update. NASA does have a habit of alerting the media ahead of time when something big is going to be announced. No such alert has been sent out.
However when I spoke with Eric Hupp a few minutes later she did say that there would be a “large announcement” (as opposed to “huge” I suppose) from the Cassini Team - and that press releases will be issued by NASA and a number of universities today at 2:00 PM EST.
This announcement is in reference to a paper that will appear in Science magazine - and that magazine has it under embargo. I have not seen any of these embargoed press releases but from what I have pieced together the references to “life relatively close to the earth” may be a bit of a stretch to say the least. This announcement is a follow-on to previous announcements about discoveries on a moon in the Saturnian system - and the ramifications for life cannot be totally ignored - but that claim is not the thrust of the discovery.
Of course, this is now spreading like crazy. Drudge Report now has this top banner: “Orlando Channel 13: Big NASA Announcement Set For Today… // NASA is planning to make a huge announcement today, about possible life in our own solar system” which of course means that Channel 13’s webserver is being bombarded - and indeed, when you try and get to this article you often get a server error.
In the end, however, the annoying thing about all of this is that NASA did not send a heads up that an announcement would be made (as they regularly do - often with out any details other than “stay tuned"), that there is no press event on NASA TV, and that the agency repeatedly allows itself to have embargo regulations dictated to it regarding the release of results of taxpayer funded science by a magazine.
The little green men won’t be here any time soon.
Update: Drudge has the scoop.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon.
“We realize that this is a radical conclusion - that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold,” said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. “However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms.”
Cool discovery, but hardly earth-shattering news.
Comments
It’s going to be about water on Enceladus, a small 350-mile wide moon that is mostly water ice. Cassini went by last year and photographed ice water vulcanism on the surface.
My question is this: If the only places that have warm liquid water are in volcanically active sites, what are the chances that a stable environment can be achieved that would offer a refuge for fragile life forms? Wouldn’t they either be cooked, blown into the -275 F. environment on the surface, or cooked because of Saturn’s radiation/magnetic field?
Just some thoughts.....and, yes, astronomy and planetary meterology are hobbies of mine
I don’t care if Nasa discovers a pack of pigs living in a grove of huge redwoods on Mars. You know why? Because it is a different fucking planet. Let’s just cancel all of this crap.
Wouldn’t they either be cooked, blown into the -275 F. environment on the surface, or cooked because of Saturn’s radiation/magnetic field?
Not necessarily. They have found living microbes on “dead” space rock, at the bottom of the ocean (under temperature and pressure conditions that would kill any of us in a hot second), and even found that some viruses don’t actually die, they just enter a hibernation period until the conditions are ripe for reproduction again, whereupon they blossom again as if the time intervening never happened.
so its safe to leave my underground bunker?
Only if you have to make a beer run,LandoGriffin,otherwise stay put.
Wouldn’t they either be cooked, blown into the -275 F. environment on the surface, or cooked because of Saturn’s radiation/magnetic field?
Based on what we know of US here on earth yes, but life out there may NOT be as we know it.
We’ve got to get them before they get us.
It would be fun to detonate several nukes in Saturn’s rings, just to see what would happen. Would we get a new pretty pattern?
I’m sure we’ll have some ignorant nutters dismissing whatever scientific discoveries are made regardless.
Well, this fits. I think one of my cats is a Venusian. I used to think he was a Martian, but alot I know! I realized he sucked up to my wife for affection and, IF he were an alien, he’d have to be from the planet of the Goddess of Love. He’s a Venusian.
I’ve been waiting for the black helicopters to appear and take him away for a decade.
Drudge is pretty much a has-been.
After falling victim to his own hype and overweening self-importance, all he does now is provide headlines from other sources and bash Streisand.
Drat, i was hoping that they would reveal that Enceladus, was the DEATHSTAR........... oh well.
I don’t care if NASA discovers a pack of pigs living in a grove of huge redwoods on Mars. You know why? Because it is a different fucking planet. Let’s just cancel all of this crap.
Sure, and we should have all stayed in Europe and Asia too...no sense in going clear over there, over the horizon..
Wouldn’t they either be cooked, blown into the -275 F. environment on the surface, or cooked because of Saturn’s radiation/magnetic field?
Life if it takes hold anywhere is dammhard to kill off, there are places on Earth deep in the ocean trenches, in volcanic seams and rarefied air where life THRIVES....
As for the radiation, Jupiter’s magnetic field is FAR more intense than Saturn’s, all 4 of the galien moons are bathed in it, and Europa and Io are prime candidates for life.
I don’t care if Nasa discovers a pack of pigs living in a grove of huge redwoods on Mars. You know why? Because it is a different fucking planet. Let’s just cancel all of this crap.
Yeah, no.
The universe is far too beautiful for mankind to stay put.
I don’t care if Nasa discovers a pack of pigs living in a grove of huge redwoods on Mars. You know why? Because it is a different fucking planet. Let’s just cancel all of this crap.
You don’t want the Islamists to land on Mars first, do you?
*twitch*
AHAHHHAHHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHA!!!!
The universe is far too beautiful for mankind to stay put.
And too dangerous. There’s stuff out there that can tear our solar system to shreds
There’s stuff out there that can tear our solar system to shreds
Oooh to harness that power into a weapon… And then, victory is mine!
</Stewie>
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Sez you.....
I took off my tinfoil hat for a moment today ( regularly scheduled maintenance) and the buzz around the ‘verse is that we have had the “little green” concept all wrong and the truth is they are more ragu-colored,and they can fly.They find this hilarious BTW.