The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Topic started by: Dexter on March 22, 2015, 06:08:37 pm
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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/aurora-shift-confirms-ganymede%E2%80%99s-ocean
Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, has solidified its membership in the growing cadre of solar system locales where liquid water flows beneath the surface.
“The solar system is now looking like a pretty soggy place,” Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said March 12 at a news conference.
The ocean showed itself not with plumes or pools but via subtle changes in Ganymede’s aurora, the moon’s version of the Northern Lights. Jupiter’s magnetic field should interfere with Ganymede’s, causing the moon’s aurora to rock back and forth by about 6 degrees. Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, however, showed that the aurora shifted by only about 2 degrees. Joachim Saur, a geophysicist at the University of Cologne, Germany, and colleagues deduced that an electrically conductive fluid beneath the surface — a saltwater ocean, for example — would create a secondary magnetic field that counteracted Jupiter’s interference.
Observations with the Galileo probe, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, hinted at Ganymede’s ocean, but the flybys were too brief to provide unambiguous evidence. Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus also hide subsurface oceans and researchers suspect that there may be water within Jupiter’s moon Callisto and the dwarf planet Ceres. “Every observation we make,” said Heidi Hammel, a planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., “takes us one step closer to finding a truly habitable environment.”
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I wonder if there's any prime beachfront property?
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I wonder if there's any prime beachfront property?
On a more serious note, is this not unbelievably interesting? The significance of finding multiple salt water oceans in our own solar system is huge. I think Neil Degrasse Tyson said it best when he pointed out that the elements necessary to create organic life are the most common elements in the universe. There is no reason to believe that life wouldn't exist anywhere it could feasibly flourish. I'd be willing to bet that life exists in one of if not all of those oceans.
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On a more serious note, is this not unbelievably interesting? The significance of finding multiple salt water oceans in our own solar system is huge. I think Neil Degrasse Tyson said it best when he pointed out that the elements necessary to create organic life are the most common elements in the universe. There is no reason to believe that life wouldn't exist anywhere it could feasibly flourish. I'd be willing to bet that life exists in one of if not all of those oceans.
I'm ready... Neil maybe an atheist doucebag, but he is right.. The only people that will stop us will be the greenies..
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I'm ready... Neil maybe an atheist doucebag, but he is right.. The only people that will stop us will be the greenies..
Neil Degrasse Tyson is an agnostic and an absolutely brilliant man. He takes no issue with religion whatsoever as long as it is not dictating politics.
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Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are so far in outer space they don't even need a rocket to propel them there. :tongue2:
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Neil Degrasse Tyson is an agnostic and an absolutely brilliant man. He takes no issue with religion whatsoever as long as it is not dictating politics.
Define "dictating politics"? Is it "dictating politics" when a person votes based on their religious beliefs?
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I think Neil Degrasse Tyson said it best when he pointed out that the elements necessary to create organic life are the most common elements in the universe. There is no reason to believe that life wouldn't exist anywhere it could feasibly flourish. I'd be willing to bet that life exists in one of if not all of those oceans.
Except for the fact that the chemical elements don't create life, you might have a point...
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Except for the fact that the chemical elements don't create life, you might have a point...
The elements don't create life but they are necessary for it to exist. There is no reason to believe that whatever sparked life here wouldn't also spark life anywhere it could.
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Define "dictating politics"? Is it "dictating politics" when a person votes based on their religious beliefs?
I really don't feel like getting into all of that, but I will say that in the end I think Neil just wants science and space exploration to get the attention and funding they deserve, and on that I completely agree with him.
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The elements don't create the life but they are necessary for it to exist. There is no reason to believe that whatever sparked life here wouldn't also spark life anywhere it could.
Bauxite doesn't create aluminum cans but it is necessary for them to exist. There is also no reason to believe that whatever sparked aluminum cans here wouldn't also spark aluminum cans anywhere it could...
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I really don't feel like getting into all of that, but I will say that in the end I think Neil just wants science and space exploration to get the attention and funding they deserve, and on that I completely agree with him.
If you don't feel like getting into it then don't start it. Crying about somebody's religion "dictating politics" is a very slipshod fault of liberals who ought to know better but don't.
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Bauxite doesn't create aluminum cans but it is necessary for them to exist. There is also no reason to believe that whatever sparked aluminum cans here wouldn't also spark aluminum cans anywhere it could...
The most educated and qualified people on Earth disagreeing with you does nothing to phase your view of the universe; I'm confident that I cannot change your mind either.
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If you don't feel like getting into it then don't start it. Crying about somebody's religion "dictating politics" is a very slipshod fault of liberals who ought to know better but don't.
I didn't start anything and nobody is crying about any religion. The point of my post was to dismiss the idea of Neil being some obnoxious atheist.
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You might not know this but we have already figured out how aluminum cans came into existence. Dan, I'm aware that the most educated and qualified people on Earth disagreeing with you does nothing to phase your view of the universe. I'm confident I cannot change your mind either.
Dexter, you might not understand this, but the two statements are equivalent and just as idiotic.
I'm also aware that an eminently qualified American evolutionary biologist and geneticist agreeing with me and admitting that naturalistic solutions are proffered, not because the evidence points in that direction, but because of an 'a priori' commitment to naturalism will do nothing to change your mind.
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."1
- Richard Lewontin
1 Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997.
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Dan, I'm not going to waste my time debating you. Your world is not run by logic and reason.
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Dan, I'm not going to waste my time debating you. Your world is not run by logic and reason.
Like I said...
I'm also aware that an eminently qualified American evolutionary biologist and geneticist agreeing with me and admitting that naturalistic solutions are proffered, not because the evidence points in that direction, but because of an 'a priori' commitment to naturalism will do nothing to change your mind.
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You win Dan; I concede to your superior understanding of the universe. If I ever need your deep insight I will let you know.
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You win Dan; I concede to your superior understanding of the universe. If I ever need your deep insight I will let you know.
It is unfortunate that you respond as if these are win-lose/superior-inferior exchanges...
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The elements don't create life but they are necessary for it to exist. There is no reason to believe that whatever sparked life here wouldn't also spark life anywhere it could.
Many disciplines believe there is an elementary "life force" in the universe that animates organic elements. Different religious and non-religious disciplines have different names for this primal, universal force. Some are comfortable calling this life force "God," others not.
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Hpefully it will be intelligent, hardworking life... otherwise we'll just have more illegals on the dole... :)
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Hpefully it will be intelligent, hardworking life... otherwise we'll just have more illegals on the dole... :)
:silly:
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You win Dan; I concede to your superior understanding of the universe. If I ever need your deep insight I will let you know.
:bigsilly: