Drudge: NASA to Make Announcement About Life in Our Solar System Today

[tritsofme]

Orlando Channel 13: Big NASA Announcement Set For Today... // NASA is planning to make a huge announcement today, about possible life in our own solar system...

http://www.drudgereport.com/

Sorry to use Drudge, but the site he linked apparently wasn't ready for the all the traffic, and if true, this is quite a major scientific development.

Here's the link to the original story:
http://cfnews13.com/StoryHeadline.aspx?id=13873

[silverlib]

1. Whoops - the link isn't working for me (n/t)

[tritsofme]

3. I know, that's why I had to cite Sludge.

This site apparently couldn't handle all the traffic.

[ET Awful]

2. They're simply going to announced that after a long and thorough search

they've discovered that there is, unfortunately, no intelligent life in the solar system, despite what you may have seen or heard. :P

[ret5hd]

4. damnit...beat me to it.

[slackmaster]

26. They've discovered the Bozone Layer

Protecting the rest of the universe from Earth's harmful rays.

Kick.

[EST]

46. "Bozone layer"...chortle.

Lessons learned: don't be eating raisins and reading DU!

[edbermac]

40. No signs of intelligent life in the White House...

[jsamuel]

5. nm

some moon

[seriousstan]

6. Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus

NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon.

"We realize that this is a radical conclusion - that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. "However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms."

High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting huge quantities of particles at high speed. Scientists examined several models to explain the process. They ruled out the idea the particles are produced or blown off the moon's surface by vapor created when warm water ice converts to a gas. Instead, scientists have found evidence for a much more exciting possibility. The jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), like cold versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone.

"We previously knew of at most three places where active volcanism exists: Jupiter's moon Io, Earth, and possibly Neptune's moon Triton. Cassini changed all that, making Enceladus the latest member of this very exclusive club, and one of the most exciting places in the solar system," said John Spencer, Cassini scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder.

[prodigal_green]

7. cool

Have we made enemies of them yet?

[symbolman]

45. These Plumes are either FOR US or

AGAINST US..

Maybe they discovered Bush's home planet.. let's take up a fund to send him BACK!

[EST]

48. They are only outing this news because one of the plumes

is named Valarie.

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. NASA claims it is pro-life and wants 435 billion dollars to protect

alien lifeforms.

[savemefromdumbya]

43. LOL!

[patcox2]

9. "Possible life." Ho hum.

They make announcements about possible life all the time. Sure its possible, it was possible yesterday and it will be possible tomorrow.

[Peace Patriot]

32. Patcox2, that was not true only a few years ago, when NASA and most

other conventional scientists pooh-poohed the chances of any other life--let alone sentient life--in our solar system or anywhere else in the vast universe. This began to change dramatically with the recent discoveries of many planets outside our solar system (the most recent an earth-like planet of rock and ice, detected with gravitational lensing), and better information about our nearby planets and moons. I've been following this story for 40-some years and I see a very big change in the evidence and in what scientists are willing to say about it. We've gone from quite dour prognostications and skepticism, to wide-eyed wonder at the prevalence of life-creating conditions, in a very short space of time. The one exception was Carl Sagan who headed NASA's imaging team and promoted life-search experiments and evidence gathering on various NASA missions. He always thought the odds were in favor of life--and those odds have gone way, way up in the last few years. Pity he didn't live to see it.

Personally, I keep waiting for those highly intelligent, highly advanced aliens to come down here and whack Bush up the side of the head. One can always hope. But barring intervention by the Galactic Council of Wise Elders, here is the obvious way to get ourselves out of the pickle we are in...

Throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

:think: :patriot: :woohoo: :patriot: :think:

[patcox2]

42. I haven't seen any change in the 40 years I have been following.

Seti has been around that long, Sagan didn't fund and run that himself. The mars landers all have as a primary function experiments to detect signs of life, those weren't cheap, sounds like Nasa's interested. The ability to detect planets only confirmed the theory they were there, the only news is that the numbers are at the larger end of speculation rather than the smaller, which puts the calculation for the likelihood of intelligent life existing nearer, rather than further, from us.

Seems to me there has always been optimism, and newer discoveries confirm the optimism, but don't confirm the actuality.

Except maybe the alleged fossils in the martian ejecta recovered from greenland.

[QuettaKid]

10. Announcement from NASA today? Life on Titan?

""I just spoke with Doc Mirelson at NASA HQ PAO. He was not aware of any specific "huge announcement" that NASA would be making today but suggested that the reporter who wrote this story might be referencing a 2:00 pm Cassini update. NASA does have a habit of alerting the media ahead of time when something big is going to be announced. No such alert has been sent out.

However when I spoke with Eric Hupp a few minutes later she did say that there would be a "large announcement" (as opposed to "huge" I suppose) from the Cassini Team - and that press releases will be issued by NASA and a number of universities today at 2:00 PM EST.

This announcement is in reference to a paper that will appear in Science magazine - and that magazine has it under embargo. I have not seen any of these embargoed press releases but from what I have pieced together the references to "life relatively close to the earth" may be a bit of a stretch to say the least. This announcement is a follow-on to previous announcements about discoveries on a moon in the Saturnian system - and the ramifications for life cannot be totally ignored - but that claim is not the thrust of the discovery.""

http://www.nasawatch.com/

[cantstandbush]

11. When will we invade? n/t

[QuettaKid]

12. I bet it relates to this place

Behold, the atmosphere of Titan.

[9119495]

13. Is it HAL? Or that astronaut that got left behind perhaps? n/t

[Bassic]

29. Frank Poole. Nah they'll only find him frozen near Neptune ( I think)

In like 3001 or something.

[seriousstan]

14. Not Titan, Saturn's moon Enceladus.....

NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon.

"We realize that this is a radical conclusion - that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. "However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms."

High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting huge quantities of particles at high speed. Scientists examined several models to explain the process. They ruled out the idea the particles are produced or blown off the moon's surface by vapor created when warm water ice converts to a gas. Instead, scientists have found evidence for a much more exciting possibility. The jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), like cold versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone.

"We previously knew of at most three places where active volcanism exists: Jupiter's moon Io, Earth, and possibly Neptune's moon Triton. Cassini changed all that, making Enceladus the latest member of this very exclusive club, and one of the most exciting places in the solar system," said John Spencer, Cassini scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder.

[QuettaKid]

15. link. nt.

.

[seriousstan]

17. OK but you won't like it.......

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash8na.htm

[QuettaKid]

20. thanks but NO thanks.

I never take my computer to that cesspool.

[bananas]

39. Here's an official press release at prnewswire.com

found it by googling news for "Enceladus"
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Enceladus+&btnG=Search+News

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-09-2006/0004317260&EDATE=

WASHINGTON, March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have
found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like
geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so
near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon.
"We realize that this is a radical conclusion -- that we may have evidence
for liquid water within a body so small and so cold," said Carolyn Porco,
Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
"However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of
solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for
living organisms."
High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting
large quantities of particles at high speed. Scientists examined several
models to explain the process. They ruled out the idea the particles are
produced or blown off the moon's surface by vapor created when warm water ice
converts to a gas. Instead, scientists have found evidence for a much more
exciting possibility. The jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of
liquid water above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), like cold
versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone.

<snip>

[seattlemetal]

16. Whales! :o) n/t

[QuettaKid]

19. No. . . it's THIS pic

lower right hand corner, the bright spot. An intergalactic ship leaving the atmosphere of Saturn. OHPLEASEOHPLEASEOHPLEASE!!!!! Just once can't we have a discovery along the lines of something like this?



:applause:

[seattlemetal]

27. is that a real pic? no photoshop?

if so, then what the hell is that thing??? oh my god...can you imagine if we founf life on another planet? kinda blows the bible all to shit doesnt it?

[QuettaKid]

30. Yep it's real.

alas, it is probably just an imaging artifact. Original is here:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image-details.cfm?imageID=2021


EDIT: Actually, now I am not so sure...if you blow it up to a higher resolution it looks like something actually is there. wow. How cool would that be if it was a ship!?!? Stranger things have happened.

[Peace Patriot]

35. It looks like a miniature of Saturn itself--how it might have looked to

Galileo, in old telescopes--with the rings hard to distinguish (could be mistaken for moons). I wonder what the distance was from camera to object. The NASA site says that the camera was 1.7 million miles from Saturn, but doesn't comment on the object nor how far away it is. It could possibly be an irreguler-shaped moon--but it sure looks like either a moon with rings, or a moon with satellites...or?

A glitch in the data stream--leaving out some pixels? Aliens checking out our explorations? A space-based city--Atlantis in the sky? A black hole? The NASA text is infuriatingly silent on this object.

[LostinVA]

18. They better watch out if they have oil...

[QuettaKid]

21. The moon in question. AWESOME pic.

[sam sarrha]

22. it is just smelly brown slime.. but it is remarkably smarter than Bu$h..

:rofl:

[underpants]

24. Just like the Catholic church said it was

:yoiks:

[MrBenchley]

28. Interesting site...thanks for the link!

[democrat_patriot]

23. When do we invade? Do they have oil?

Are they willing to join the "coalition of the willing"?

[underpants]

25. Somewhere in Virginia Falwell and Robertson are in a dark room

trying to figure out how to spin this one

[katamaran]

31. Lemme think...

Either
"God's wonderous love has touched the coldness of space and breathed new life into our universe..."

or
"Those liberal heathens that call themselves scientists are corrupting our children and denying the law of God..."

I'm betting on the latter.

[soothsayer]

33. Let me know if they find intelligent life in the WH

[Barrett808]

34. NASA Announces First Stardust Comet Sample Results (related?)

NASA Announces First Stardust Comet Sample Results

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
[phone]

William Jeffs
Johnson Space Center, Houston
[phone]


March 6, 2006
MEDIA ADVISORY: 06-040

Results from the first studies of cometary samples returned to Earth by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft is the subject of a news conference at 3 p.m. EST, Monday, March 13, from NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston

The briefing airs live on the Web and on NASA TV’s Public and Media channels. Reporters may ask questions from participating NASA centers. Participants:

-- Thomas Morgan, Program Scientist, NASA Headquarters
-- Donald Brownlee, Principal Investigator, University of Washington, Seattle
-- Peter Tsou, Deputy Principal Investigator, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
-- Michael Zolensky, Curator and Co-investigator, Johnson Space Center

NASA TV's Public, Education and Media channels are available on an MPEG-2 digital C-band signal accessed via satellite AMC-6, at 72 degrees west longitude, transponder 17C, 4040 MHz, vertical polarization. In Alaska and Hawaii, they're on AMC-7 at 137 degrees west longitude, transponder 18C, at 4060 MHz, horizontal polarization. For digital downlink information on the Web, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For information about Stardust on the Web, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/stardust

For information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/home

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/mar/HQ_M06040_stardust_results.html

[truebrit71]

36. Here you go....Water on Enceladus

WASHINGTON, March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have
found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like
geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so
near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon.
"We realize that this is a radical conclusion -- that we may have evidence
for liquid water within a body so small and so cold," said Carolyn Porco,
Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
"However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of
solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for
living organisms."
High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting
large quantities of particles at high speed. Scientists examined several
models to explain the process. They ruled out the idea the particles are
produced or blown off the moon's surface by vapor created when warm water ice
converts to a gas. Instead, scientists have found evidence for a much more
exciting possibility. The jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of
liquid water above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), like cold
versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone.
"We previously knew of at most three places where active volcanism exists:
Jupiter's moon Io, Earth, and possibly Neptune's moon Triton. Cassini changed
all that, making Enceladus the latest member of this very exclusive club, and
one of the most exciting places in the solar system," said John Spencer,
Cassini scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder.
"Other moons in the solar system have liquid-water oceans covered by
kilometers of icy crust," said Andrew Ingersoll, imaging team member and
atmospheric scientist at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena,
Calif. "What's different here is that pockets of liquid water may be no more
than tens of meters below the surface."
"As Cassini approached Saturn, we discovered the Saturnian system is
filled with oxygen atoms. At the time we had no idea where the oxygen was
coming from," said Candy Hansen, Cassini scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. "Now we know Enceladus is spewing out water
molecules, which break down into oxygen and hydrogen."
Scientists still have many questions. Why is Enceladus so active? Are
other sites on Enceladus active? Might this activity have been continuous
enough over the moon's history for life to have had a chance to take hold in
the moon's interior?
In the spring of 2008, scientists will get another chance to look at
Enceladus when Cassini flies within 350 kilometers (approximately 220 miles),
but much work remains after the spacecraft's four-year prime mission is over.
"There's no question, along with the moon Titan, Enceladus should be a
very high priority for us. Saturn has given us two exciting worlds to
explore," said Jonathan Lunine, Cassini interdisciplinary scientist,
University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
Mission scientists report these and other Enceladus findings in this
week's issue of Science. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project
of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the
Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The Cassini
orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. For Cassini images
and information about the research on the Web, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

[EC]

37. maybe about the "red rain" that fell on India

that has been determined to be living cells from a comet...

[Kailassa]

38. Oops, we were wrong.

What had at first appeared to be evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus, has now proved to be merely one more case of irritated aliens pissing at our space probe. But do not fear, our Beloved Leader will stop at nothing to find those responsible for such unprovoked attacks, and, in the name of Jesus, he will bravely send your sons and daughters to raze all such heathen from the skies forever.

Investigations are already underway into harnessing the energy to be produced by turning Enceladus into a giant fusion machine, and any good, co-operative Enciladians will have the honor of feeling their home warm beneath their feet as they ready it to begin the reaction.

[coalition_unwilling]

41. Cassini saw Saturnians holding a sign that said

"Yankees go home. Saturn for the Saturnians."

[topsfieldgal]

44. NASA

Heavens to Betsy!

"The space agency is releasing a study today, at 2 p.m., that is being terribly misinterpreted by some who clearly do not fully understand what they're reading in a news release summarizing the study."

Not OUR media. Say it isn't so....

[killbotfactory]

47. NASA article

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20060309.html

Neat!

[eppur_se_muova]

49. Now says report "erroneous", News station misinterpreted NASA statement.