
Scientists discover evidence for a habitable region on Saturn’s moon Enceladus - ChuckMcM
https://phys.org/news/2017-04-scientists-evidence-habitable-region-saturn.html
======
bluedino
Even if it was habitable, isn't most of the problem with going to Mars the
fact that it takes a half of a year to get there - not a couple days like the
moon?

Saturn is YEARS away. Like 4-7 depending on where the planets are at.

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jerf
I figure that until we build one of the various nuclear-powered boost options
that have been proposed, we're not going very far in the solar system. Either
we get over our fear of launching OMGNuclear!!!1! stuff, or perhaps we can
loft a booster and figure out a way of launching the fuel in enough smaller
launches that nobody freaks out at the idea of a few dozen pounds of uranium
being dropped into several quadrillion gallons of ocean, or something.

Because the numbers just don't work for chemical rockets. The already-harsh
rocket equations get even worse when you have to carry along the mass to feed,
water, and breath, too.

~~~
kingkawn
You know how sometimes you've got the best possible people, really brilliant,
and all the resources, and still things go wrong? Rockets blow up for example.
The fear of that happening which you see fit to mock, is justified, and no
amount of self-righteous dismissiveness is going to help bridge that
difference.

~~~
jerf
The thing is, _even if_ a rocket blows up and a few dozen pounds of uranium
get strewn about, it isn't anywhere near the disaster people think it is.
Until we can rationally compute dangers instead of simply assigning infinities
to the dangers, we're not going to get anywhere.

There is _~4.5 billion tons_ of uranium already in sea water [1].

If that fact surprises you, you may just have not known it. If that fact
scares you or makes you want to deny it, you're probably still stuck in the
irrational fear I'm talking about. The world is not a pristine place with no
radioactivity in it until Man comes along and somehow, like, manufactures it
from nothing but his sheer Evil for the nefarious purpose of destroying the
environment, mu-hu-ha-ha-ha. It's a thing that's already out there. It's not
_that_ terrifying if we take basic precautions that, it turns out, we _already
take_ because you know what's way scarier than a few dozen pounds of uranium
falling near you? A _flaming exploding rocket_ falling on you. So we already
don't launch over cities and such.

And we _really_ won't progress as long as people can not only act irrationally
about the real dangers, but think they're being _more moral_ by being
irrational about the dangers than people actually using their brains and that
it's vital to yell at the people using their brains and attempt to socially
pressure them into just going with the herd and assigning infinite danger to
the scariness of OMGRadiation!!!1!.

[1]:
[http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/ferguson2/](http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/ferguson2/)

~~~
Kholo
This stuff has been studied for a long time and is still being studied -
[https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/ntrees.html](https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/ntrees.html)

So I don't know what you are raving about.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
He's talking about public perception, not about NASA research.

~~~
Kholo
Public perception has nothing to do with it. The Russians and Chinese don't
care about public perception. Why aren't all their rockets using nuclear
propulsion? This is very expensive research. Nuclear propulsion is definitely
going to be utilized it just isn't a budget priority right now.

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Animats
So there's this big hydrogen vent in a moon of Saturn. Where's the energy
coming from to drive that? Too far from the sun. Enceladus is tidally locked
to Saturn, so there are no tidal forces. Enceladus has very low orbital
eccentricity, a near-circular orbit, so there are very low tidal forces from
that. Some phenomenon must provide energy for the hydrogen jet.

~~~
scallycat
Orbital eccentricity gives rise to tidal forces in this case.

~~~
Animats
What orbital eccentricity? That moon has a nearly circular orbit. Much less
orbital eccentricity than Luna.

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dmitrygr
A lot of articles like this overlook a lot of physics that actually matter a
lot. Not only would it be incredibly difficult to get humans up there, much
more so than Mars, but even once we get there we have serious problems. Just
like Mars, we can solve many problems with electricity. We can create water
and many chemicals, provide shelter and even ways to grow food. On Mars you
can get electricity vs solar, which is perfectly doable. You can take some
solar panels with you, over provision for damage, and build-out capacity over
time. Saturn is too far for solar to be of any use. The only power source
there is probably geothermal, unfortunately there's no lightweight way to
convert geothermal energy into electricity. At least there isn't any that I'm
aware of. This is quite a problem, as without electricity most modern
conveniences cannot be bought. In fact, modern human life might be very
difficult without electricity on a place that is not earth.

~~~
daveguy
The article has nothing to do with human habitability. The potential is that
there could be microbes found on a planet other than Earth for the first time.

From the article:

"The amount of molecular hydrogen we detected is high enough to support
microbes similar to those that live near hydrothermal vents on Earth," said
SwRI's Dr. Christopher Glein, a co-author on the paper and a pioneer of
extraterrestrial chemical oceanography.

~~~
zardo
The link was switched to phys.org. Previous source was scientifically
illiterate.

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ancarda
I couldn't read this on iOS as I kept being forcibly thrown into the App Store
by some advert. If anyone else is having trouble, you can read the article
here: [https://archive.is/tPvTT](https://archive.is/tPvTT)

~~~
throwanem
Purify is an excellent ad blocker for Safari on iOS. I recommend it without
reservation.

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Numberwang
"Update: An earlier headline read that signs of life were found on Enceladus.
We regret any misunderstanding this headline may have caused. NASA has
discovered that Enceladus is habitable, not inhabited. "

Wow. Maybe basic transport is not the first area where intelligent machines
will make their human counterpart superfluous. I'm sure machines can do better
than this.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Nope, machines would optimize for number of views / clicks, not for
correctness.

~~~
Pica_soO
Im sure, if we had better telescopes, we could see a tentacle-frozzen alien
Galileo drifting in the gas fountain, who until his last moment exclaimed "the
sky beyond the sky is not solid".

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devnonymous
Just a thought for everyone discussing human settlement - habitable doesn't
necessarily imply humans _should_ go there, robots growing stuff far far away
would be great as well. I'd say having farming planets (or in this case moons)
is worth a sci-fi book at least.

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libeclipse
This is quite old news, not sure what it's doing here now, and with a
clickbait title too.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
survival of the clickbait-est.

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mirimir
Right, about as "habitable" as areas around mid-ocean ridges. Quite the
temperature gradient there.

Probably similar are Europa and Triton.

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rrm1977
Nothing definite in here, just theories needs more research. Just a shinny
news title

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ekianjo
Nothing new at all the same thing was said almost word to word about Titan 20
years ago.

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mcv
This article seems written to sound as spectacular as possible while hiding
anything that might lead to real understanding.

"Habitable" makes it sound like we could move there and live there without too
much trouble. That's not true. What has been discovered is that microorganisms
might be able to live there, near hydrothermic vents that seem to create free
hydrogen, which could support primitive life. That life could be similar to
life living around hydrothermic vents on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. No
sign of life itself, though, just a process that could theoretically sustain
life without requiring sunlight.

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speps
Better link : [https://phys.org/news/2017-04-scientists-evidence-
habitable-...](https://phys.org/news/2017-04-scientists-evidence-habitable-
region-saturn.html)

By the way, it's already a month old, there's nothing new since Cassini's last
trip.

Also, can't believe Newsweek did a mistake like that if not for clicks...

"Update: An earlier headline read that signs of life were found on Enceladus.
We regret any misunderstanding this headline may have caused. NASA has
discovered that Enceladus is habitable, not inhabited."

~~~
ekianjo
Yeah well you cant trust nothIng out of newsweek anyway. Its been as reliable
as reading the Daily Mail for most of it.

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em3rgent0rdr
HN needs to adopt a [clickbait] tag to flag articles like this with misleading
titles.

~~~
shimon_e
Even better, HN should hide the real title until hover to reduce the number of
clicks clickbait articles get.

~~~
ekianjo
Even better, ban newsweek which is nothing but a tabloid these days.

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Arizhel
If you're going to ban anything that's basically a tabloid these days, doesn't
that mean there won't be any news sites left?

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ekianjo
I don't really like the NYT that much, but I don't think you can classify it
as being a tabloid. At least it's usually well researched and substantiated
for a good amount of articles.

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rzzzwilson
"a force of 800 miles per hour"

It's Newsweek, but still...

~~~
ge96
slugs

