poetrychic

no real place to put this except here:

PARIS (AFP) - Astrophysicists in Germany say they can add evidence to bolster theories that water, one of the precious ingredients for life, exists on the Saturnian moon Enceladus.

A tiny satellite measuring just 504 kilometres (315 miles) across, Enceladus has become one of the most fiercely debated objects in the Solar System, thanks to close-up pictures taken by the US probe Cassini.

Enceladus has a brilliant white shell of ice that is untouched except for some strange-looking grooves and impacts from space rocks.

Cassini revealed plumes of water vapour that gush from surface stripes near its south pole, shooting crystal jets upwards for hundreds of kilometres (miles) into space.

Fuelling discussion about the origin of these strange "cryo-volcanoes" is the fact that icy particles of dust are also mixed in with the eruptions, but beguilingly travel far slower than the vapour.

A team led by Juergen Schmidt of the University of Potsdam, near Berlin, say they can now answer at least this part of the mystery.

Their theory is that water vapour and ice grains are blasted through funnels in the so-called tiger stripes -- and the grains, being heavier, rub against the rough sides of these holes.

The friction slows the particles down, which explains why they travel at a far lower velocity in the void.

For this to happen, though, liquid water would have to exist in equilibrium with ice and vapour beneath the moon's frigid crust, according to the model.

One hypothesis for the cause for Enceladus's cryo-volcanoes is a phenomenon called tidal heating.

The little moon suffers agonising gravitational pull from the giant Saturn and from the nearby satellites of Dione and Janus.

As a result, its interior is squeezed and stretched, causing friction that causes water to warm, this theory goes.

Enceladus has a surface temperature of -193 degrees Celsius (-315 degrees Fahrenheit) and the tiger stripes are -133 C (-207 F), which implies that its interior must be warmer still.

Heat and water are two of the essentials for life as we know it, although anything that exists in Enceladus's presumed sub-surface ocean is likely to be microbial at best, scientists add.

The new study appears on Thursday in Nature, the weekly British science journal.

Case builds for water on Saturn moon - Yahoo! News

sounds very mythological to me...

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Jonesy

Sounds like they base this theory on Newtonian gravity. By Einsteinian, shouldn't it be 'rocking and rolling' rather than 'stretching and squeezing'?

jowey

Cool water, seems like space is not so barren, something to explore, to grow into....
....need infrastructure......

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Jonesy

I'd say Einsteinian is correct, Newtonian incorrect.

Two-dimensional thinkers, I can explain it for your fairly well:

Gravity functions not in pull, but in decline. When we jump out of a building, we decline. In space, there is no inertia or friction, therefore objects continue moving at a constant velocity. This combined with the level of slope (decline), is what produces orbits. The closer you are to the object, the greater the decline (which is why the moon affects tides more than the sun).

It is easiest to understand if you are capable of three-dimensional thinking. Two-D to Four-D is a difficult jump.

Their theory could still be correct, mostly, but some details are not quite right.

Jonesy

This gravity thing is significant beyond large objects like planets. Every object has some degree of gravity. The sun's gravity stretches out to the edges of the galaxy; but the gravitational decline gets increasingly steep, the closer it gets to the sun.

What is your gravitational decline? How does your decline relate to others? When you 'fall' in love, do you fall towards someone who has a greater decline than yourself?

Jonesy

You see, when our moon is closest to the sun and farthest from the sun, there is little difference in the gravitational slope created by the sun. This is why the moon more greatly affects our tides.

The_Heretic

It's gravitational forces that keep Jupiter's moon, Europa warm enough for liquid water.

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Jonesy

Another part is relative mass. We can float around in space because there are no atmospheric conditions and we are tiny in relation to the planet (similar to the difference between a bowling ball and a feather). This means, it is possible to truly conquer gravity by creating objects of large enough density in relation to the planet and whatever we're trying to 'float'.

I'd have to think we could create some sort of extremely low-energy vehicle in this manner (maybe some kind of train-like system or possibly a system enabling vehicles to roll both toward and away from the core of the planet).

In addition to vehicles, we could likely create environment-friendly energy machines.

Jonesy

According to this theory, it should be extremely easy to manipulate gravity. And depending on how we do it, it should have no negative effect on the environment. Although, creating the dense objects could be tricky. Let me explain it a little bit simpler.

Because the decline of the slope is based on distance as well as density, the gravity object we create does not have to be nearly as dense as planet earth (because you can put the 'floating' object as close as you need - we are not as close to the core of the planet as we can get, so theoretically, we are not in the steepest decline). I don't know exactly how dense it would have to be. Probably dense enough to make it difficult to put high in the air; which is ok, because in astronomical terms, the decline of the Earth's slope shouldn't be much different over a mere 10,000-35,000 feet.

By putting these dense objects over, let's say, a road, and then building a road of sorts directly under them (tracks would be easier), and then attaching wheels to the tops of cars, you could hypothetically allow cars to sit in neutral and simply roll up and down. It would be like going downhill in neutral. You could achieve very high speeds at no energy expense. In fact, you could be gaining substantial energy by using the turning of the wheels to turn a generator rotor (which would give us all the free electricity we could possibly want, allowing us to dually use the car like an electric-car when we are 'off-road').

Jonesy

I should clarify, the 'slope' theory is my own. I don't know if Einstein or anyone else has already proposed it. I was just thinking about Einsteinian gravity (the 4th dimension stuff), trying to understand it completely and this 'slope' theory is what I came up with to explain how multiple objects interact.