Tour the Saturnian circus

Sarah, VA — Thu, 31 May 2007 02:53:01 GMT

You know, all of these gas giants are truly amazing. And the fact that they can attract so many moons, like Titan or Janus. Not only that, but the true variation of terrain is great.

Tour the Saturnian circus

Chris E. — Thu, 31 May 2007 03:40:27 GMT

Now we're talk’en! You know it didn't look good there for a while when Cassini first arrived as there were no "oceans" to be found but low and behold there are certainly large seas pretty much as predicted! I really like the false color image of Saturn too. That really does show the detail. Could the hexagon be like the 2001 Obelisk? When we reach a pre-determined level of exploration we are given a further sign to come and investigate? I mean, you’d really have to be a very high tech culture to detect it like finding the Obelisk on the moon right?

Tour the Saturnian circus

Chris Reeve, San Francisco, CA — Thu, 31 May 2007 04:34:08 GMT

Most people are not aware that Saturn bears a very prominent role in mythology. Amongst numerous cultures for a very specific period of time, it is designated very specifically and without ambiguity as the non-moving Sun above our North Pole. So specific, widespread and unrelated to what we see today is this designation that it's difficult to dismiss. Astrophysicists try to convince us all that they have the final word on the history of man and this planet, but there is a science to mythology as well -- and the astrophysicists put no effort into integrating the science of mythology into their own science because the two sciences come to very different conclusions. Clearly, the concept of the Big Bang and planetary formation by gravitational collapse does not support this as a possibility. But astrophysics is an interpretive science that lacks a control variable. Astrophysicists in fact have no more say over the past than mythologists. They have no monopoly on our understanding of the universe, and they'd be wise to read the evidence for themselves before dismissing it.

The Nation of Islam symbol of a star within a crescent appears in images that date to many thousands of years ago and from places all over the world. But have you ever thought about this symbol? It is an inherent contradiction given the standard interpretations of the Sun and the Moon. The Sun cannot possibly be on that side of the crescent, much less inside of it. And yet, we see this particular symbol right alongside ancient cave art drawings that depict animals without ANY artistic license -- as if this is what people literally saw. Many of these images that involve this symbol from later time periods are accompanied by text that we can decipher quite well, and this text clearly states that the crescent is Saturn, and the star inside is Venus. You can choose to believe that all literate people who lived before us so many thousands of years ago were insane or delusional even though we possess evidence that some of these cultures were quite advanced -- or you can look at astrophysics in a critical way and realize that there remain many unanswered questions: how is it that they cannot see 95% of the matter within the universe? What causes gravity? Is it possible that Saturn really could have been fixed in the sky in a polar configuration? You won't see answers to these questions in mainstream astrophysics. You have to venture to the fringes to even find speculation. It is unfortunately common today that well-meaning scientists and enthusiasts will discourage people from investigating these weird things on their own, and it is because of them that these issues remain fringe. If they would stop and read the evidence for themselves instead of arguing against materials that they have not read, then they too would realize that something very strange happened in the past with Saturn and our own planet.

Anybody who wants to see the evidence for the polar configuration should read "The Many Faces of Venus" by Ev Cochrane, or anything by David Talbott.

Tour the Saturnian circus

bboyer — Thu, 31 May 2007 08:50:03 GMT

http://www.thunderbolts.info/ has an interesting slant on Saturn, its rings, and moons. Also covers the other planets, our solar system, and the wider cosmos in general.

Tour the Saturnian circus

Mark K, Brookline, NH — Thu, 31 May 2007 23:03:09 GMT

Three cheers for the scientists and engineers at NASA. These images are monumental technical achievements for the good of humanity - we can't go there ourselves (yet), so these wonderful people bring our solar system to us! Thank you!

Tour the Saturnian circus

Alan Sheets, Loveland CO — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:16:09 GMT

When are we going to start dropping parachuted probes WITH CAMERAS into gas giants?

Tour the Saturnian circus

Frank Glover — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 21:04:00 GMT

Ever flown through clouds?

As it would likely be clouds of various kinds, all the way down to depths where temperature and pressure would destroy any such probes, it's not clear that there'd be much to see. More would be learned by directly sampling and analyzing the atmospheric contents as Galileo's entry probe did at Jupiter.

(And finding, among other things, that at least at the time and region of entry, Jupiter's atmosphere was suprisingly devoid of water vapor)

Tour the Saturnian circus

Chris Reeve, San Francisco, CA — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:16:45 GMT

> When are we going to start dropping parachuted
> probes WITH CAMERAS into gas giants?

I could be wrong on this, but my understanding is that excited plasmas, as is present with the gas giants, will make it impossible to transmit radio signals out of it. Ignoring the issue of heat to the camera, you'd never be able to get the information out of that region unless you created some sort of novel technique of communication (like a neutron beam or something).

We are very lucky to have a few snapshots of Venus' surface. I believe that that represents the limits of what we can pull of though.

This illustrates the important point that we do not actually know what's inside of a lot of these planets, and even the Sun. We infer the composition based upon our theories and their orbits. Astrophysicists have attempted to develop sciences to understand what's inside of the Sun (helioseismology), but it was recently discovered that their knowledge of the oxygen ratio within the Sun is wrong -- which invalidates almost that entire field. What you have to understand too is that much of astrophysics is interpretive. Unlike in geoseismology, where we can send an input and get an output, we are only observing outputs with helioseismology. It's this lack of a control variable that causes problems. The end result is that much of astrophysics is somewhat speculative. And this is important to understand because it means that we need to keep an open mind with respect to alternative cosmologies and space theories. We can develop reasons to believe that the Big Bang is true and that the planets and stars are composed of the things we believe them to be, but we cannot do an experiment to verify this. For this reason, the theory of the Big Bang remains a theory that will always be open to attack. One very good contender of late is plasma cosmology. We increasingly see signs of huge magnetic fields and synchrotron radiation, both of which should be indicator that there are likely large electrical currents flowing through space. The mainstream astrophysicists have been very slow to accept this, but it's becoming undeniable.