Titan's surface organics surpass oil reserves on Earth

SpaceRef.com ^ | February 13, 2008 | ESA

[Izzy Dunne]

The pipeline is going to be a real bear, though.

[Tax-chick]

Economic opportunity? Kudzu farm?

[The Magical Mischief Tour]

New line of Super Tankers Coming!

[The Louiswu]

Wow just think of it, instead of $100 a barrel oil we can have $1 million dollar a barrel oil!!!

[Lurker]

There must have been a sh** load of dinosaurs and ancient plant life on Titan to have turned into all those hydrocarbons....

L

[Dreagon]

Wasn’t the Nostromo a hydrocarbon processing ship?

[Minn]

So does this have any bearing on the debate about whether oil comes from dead plants and animals?

[xkaydet65]

By the time we develop the technology to get there and bring it back we won’t need those hydrocarbons anymore.

[Toskrin]

Don’t light a match!

[cizinec]

Ummmm. Stupid question. How exactly is it organic?

[edcoil]

Future Outland site.

[Minn]

Wouldn’t Algore just love it if we started importing and burning carbon from other planets? It would almost be worth the trouble just to make him even more insane.

[A message]

We’ll be destroying the solar system.

No space exploration for oil. /s

[ClearCase_guy]

Nostromo was a tug. It was hauling an oil refinery. From wikipedia:

Commercial Towing Vessel Nostromo, an M-Class starfreighter property of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, is a tug, a towing vessel, hauling an enormous (some 1.5 miles in length) ore refinery and 20 million tons of raw ore, weighing many times the mass of the Nostromo.

[Brian S. Fitzgerald]

Wikipedia - "Organic chemistry is a specific discipline within chemistry which involves the scientific study of the structure, properties, composition, reactions, and preparation (by synthesis or by other means) of chemical compounds consisting primarily of carbon and hydrogen, which may contain any number of other elements, including nitrogen, oxygen, the halogens as well as phosphorus, silicon and sulfur.

The original definition of "organic" chemistry came from the misconception that organic compounds were always related to life processes. Not only organic compounds support life on Earth, as life as we know it also depends on inorganic chemistry; for example, many enzymes rely on transition metals such as iron and copper; and materials such as shells, teeth and bones are part organic, part inorganic in composition. Apart from elemental carbon, only with certain classes of carbon compounds such as oxides, carbonates, and carbides are conventionally considered inorganic. Biochemistry deals mainly with the natural chemistry of biomolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, and sugars.

[Tax-chick]

Yup ... until they were wiped out by the Titanian industrial revolution.

[bubbacluck]

I think this is some kind of attempt by a certain “alien” creature to lure us to Titan. I’m just sayin’.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Where do I have to go to stake my claim on Titan?

[william clark]

I’m sure Greenpeace is building a spacecraft as we speak.