Topic: Two Cool Space News Stories

[Dracho]

PARIS (AP) - Saturn's planet-size moon Titan has dramatic weather, with freezing temperatures, carbon- and nitrogen-rich clouds and possibly lightning, scientists said Wednesday, describing a world that may have looked like Earth before life developed.

The European Space Agency's probe landed on Titan in January, uncovering some mysteries of the methane-rich globe - the only moon in the solar system known to have a thick atmosphere. Scientists presented detailed results of months of study in the journal Nature and at a news conference in Paris.

Titan has long intrigued researchers because it is surrounded by a thick blanket of nitrogen and methane. Until recently, scientists believed the most likely explanation for the methane was the presence of a methane-rich sea of hydrocarbons.

The Huygens probe and its mother ship, Cassini, have offered evidence against that theory. The $3.3 billion Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its moons was launched in 1997 from Cape Canaveral, a joint effort involving NASA, ESA and the Italian space agency.

Titan's clouds are made from molecules that include carbon and nitrogen - compounds generated in photochemical smog and circulated by rain and the atmosphere, the researchers reported in Nature.

They said there was no reason to believe Titan's methane is a product of biological activity.

Yet more methane is appearing constantly and may burst from ice volcanos or fall as rain, researchers said, describing riverbed and drainage channels spotted during the craft's descent Jan. 14.

Scientists described the moon's freezing temperatures: 290 degrees below zero on the surface. The atmosphere has distinct layers and may offer evidence of lightning.

Titan's smoggy atmosphere may be similar to that of the primordial Earth, and scientists believe that studying it could provide clues to how life began.

The first results from the Huygens probe were released in January: Black-and-white photos showed a rugged terrain of ridges, peaks, vein-like channels and apparently dry lakebeds on the moon 740 million miles away.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20051130/D8E6T6O85.html

[Dracho]

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Astronomers have discovered what they believe is the birth of the smallest known solar system. Peering through ground- and space-based telescopes, scientists observed a brown dwarf - or failed star - less than one hundredth the mass of the sun surrounded by what appears to be a disk of dust and gas.

The brown dwarf - located 500 light years away in the constellation Chamaeleon - appears to be undergoing a planet-forming process that could one day yield a solar system, said Kevin Luhman of Pennsylvania State University, who led the discovery.

It's long been believed that our own solar system came into existence when a huge cloud of gas and dust collapsed to form the sun and planets about 4.5 billion years ago.

The new finding is the smallest brown dwarf to be discovered with planet-forming properties. If the disk forms planets, the resulting solar system will be about 100 times smaller than our own, scientists said.

Brown dwarfs, which are bigger than a planet but much smaller than a star, are thought to be balls of gas that failed to collect enough mass to start shining.

The discovery was made using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope as well as ground observatories. Results will be published in the Dec. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20051130/D8E6T6O88.html

[prometheus]

Cool Stories Indeed