Posted on 11/09/2010 7:46:10 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Since 2005, when the Cassini spacecraft first observed icy plumes spewing from the south pole of Enceladus (SN: 5/6/06, p. 282), researchers have speculated that an ocean may lie buried tens of kilometers beneath the moon's fractured, icy surface. Now, Cassini scientist Dennis Matson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and his colleagues propose adding a bit of effervescence to the watery hypothesis. Circulating, bubbly seawater containing 1 or 2 percent dissolved carbon dioxide and other gases could supply water, gas, dust and heat to Enceladus' polar plumes, the researchers say. It can also explain why some of the ice grains expelled by the plumes carry sodium and potassium salts.
Noncarbonated seawater circulating from the moon's solid core to the surface would stall rather than seep though cracks in the ice because seawater is denser than the icy carapace. If the seawater were fizzy, however, gas bubbles would form in the liquid, reducing the ocean's density. Once the seawater became less dense than the ice, the water could rise to within 10 to 15 meters of the frigid surface. That's close enough to fill chambers in the icy crust with water that feeds the south polar plumes.
In addition, as the bubbles popped they would spray the plume chambers with tiny droplets containing dissolved salts from the seawater. Those droplets would emerge from the plumes as salty grains like those that have been observed by Cassini (SN: 8/30/08, p. 10). The bubbly water would also warm large areas of the icy south polar crust, Matson notes.
After the water transferred its heat and grew colder, the bubbles would dissolve and the water would once again become denser than the surface ice. The liquid would sink back through the cracks and rejoin the rest of the subsurface ocean.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
“I think I’ll hop on the PS3”
Hop? Is that a beer joke now? ;’)
Speaking of the PS3, do you have one of the older ones that can have Linux installed on it? I seriously considered getting one of those instead of the BluRay player, because A) it has a BluRay built-in (as do the new PS3s); B) it is a game system, which could become important from time to time; C) it can run Folding@Home all the time I’m not using it for other stuff, and D) it would have served as a new CPU, running Linux. Ah well.
Wow!
We need to send him there to check on it. One way.
Yo quiero Enceladus.
I guess he really was “foiled again”. ;’)
Yes, actually you CAN run Linux on it. There’s a flavor of Linux called ‘Yellow Dog’ that was developed for it. I tried it once, but the partition ate up too much HD space for my liking(I only have a 40). I’ve also heard of other OSs being installed on the PS3. I haven’t looked into it much.
Well, just damn.....
I just did some reading and found that Sony removed the ability to install operating systems on ALL PS3s with a system update earlier this year.
I went in and check, and sure enough the “Install Other OS” was removed as an option.
That sucks! I never used it much, but it was nice having the option there to use it as a networkable ‘computer’.
Oh well.....
They neither warned anyone about that, nor gave any explanation as to why they were doing it. Crippled not only the PS3, but also all future sales of all Sony products, in particular their game systems. Complete idiocy.
Yeah, the Yellow Dog Linux used to be front-and-center on the website of the company which had produced it; then Sony did its move, and YD was moved off somewhere, and the product line (Cell processor upgrade and co-processor boards) went with it. I haven’t checked in a while.
Probably a rare scenario, but just imagine if someone would have had a PS3 with an OS installed with very important or even sentimental data saved. That update would have wiped out everything they had. That can get rather serious for some people. I’ve worked on computers for folks who have a dead machine. Literally every photo they have of their kids from birth is stored on the HD, and they have no backups.
Quietly releasing an update that could wipe data isn’t something Sony should have taken so lightly.
They should have at least warned people. What they did was ruthless. I doubt I would have installed the update, because I at least liked having the option to install an OS, even though I wasn’t doing so at the time. (you can’t have too many computers in the house, IMO)
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