

NASA's Cassini Spacecraft Finds Ingredient of Household Plastic in Space - anigbrowl
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-295

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codeflo
Please, dear future Hacker News submitters, edit those dumbed-down public
press release titles and add some actual information. The "household plastic
ingredient" they found is (mono)propylene, which is quite interesting!

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ordinary
This discussion takes place about once a day. The HN guidelines state "don't
editorialize titles". This is one of the guidelines that is most visibly and
aggressively enforced by the moderators. For better of for worse, it's what
we're stuck with.

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anigbrowl
That's to stop axe-grindey headlines like 'discovery shows why NASA needs more
funding,' which injects the submitter's _opinion_ into the title without
providing any information whatsoever about the story. Over-literal enforcement
of this rule by people who can't tell the difference between editorializing
and factual economy is actually making HN less informative to its readers.

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galaktor
Can someone elaborate on the relevance of this? I remember reading that
scientists hope to find methane on Mars as an indication for life at some
point in the past. How does all this petroleum/methane (now propylene) in
Titan's atmosphere fit into that?

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Udo
As far as indications of life go, we're looking for substances that might have
been freshly produced by a biological organism. That's not as easy as it
sounds, since we're always discovering new abiogenic processes that make even
complex hydrocarbons.

Methane is abundant in the universe at large. You can find it in huge
quantities in gas giants. There is evidence for seasonal methane deposits on
Mars, but so far none of the observations suggest that it has been put there
by a life form.

Chemistry in space is interesting, because it sheds some light on the early
conditions on Earth and other habitable worlds. It was first thought that
planets start with only simple elements and more complex molecules would have
to be generated by the environment. Now we see increasingly that more complex
chemistry is indeed going on in space as well and this in turn means planets
do get seeded with more higher-order stuff than previously thought.

Spectroscopy suggests that compounds as complex as linked amino acids can and
do form in deep space! This is also interesting for biologists since a non-
biological origin for these molecules drastically improves the likelihood and
timeframe for the formation of carbon-based lifeforms. It also means we're
likely to find more amino acid-based life out there, which is nice.

Propene in itself is not that surprising of a find, it's more like another
piece of the puzzle falling into place.

Of course, this all has nothing to do with plastic. That's just bad copy
writing in a weak attempt to draw public interest.

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jwr
I expected to read about a plastic bowl of petunias and was mildly
disappointed.

