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Cassini has crashed into Saturn
- l3m0ndr0p 9y agoI wonder how many people of the the planet Saturn were harmed during this operation.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoNo more than are harmed every day by regular space debris impacting Saturn. Plus, we're fairly sure there are no people there.
- danielharrison 9y ago42
- jlebrech 9y agowe've probably seeded it now with bacteria from earth.
- Froyoh 9y agoLet the new experiement begin.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoThat's actually an interesting question - are there layers of Saturn's atmosphere where Earth-borne bacteria could survive? Someplace where the temperature and pressure are capable of supporting life, and where there might be some nutrients for them to feed on?
- fredley 9y agoWell if there are any tardigrades on board they'd probably be able to survive: > Individual species of tardigrades can survive extreme conditions that would be rapidly fatal to nearly all other known life forms, including complete global mass extinction events due to astrophysical events, such as supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, large asteroid impacts, or passing-by stars. Some tardigrades can withstand temperatures down to 1 K (−458 °F; −272 °C) (close to absolute zero) while others can withstand 420 K (300 °F; 150 °C) for several minutes, pressures about six times greater than those found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 30 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce. From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade
- jacquesm 9y agoThey'd survive for a while but in the end they'd have to live off something, what would they live off on Saturn?
- Nuzzerino 9y agoA more likely candidate would be Saturn's largest moon, Titan, which contains ammonia, a number of complex chemicals, and possibly water.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- idlewords 9y agoBetter Saturn than Enceladus. That was the point of the exercise.
- mavhc 9y agoThat's why they crashed it into Saturn, to avoid possibly infecting the moons which might have life
- agumonkey 9y agoWhat about huygens ? was it entirely free of "polluants" ?
- planteen 9y agoI think the fear was more about contaminating Enceladus where liquid water is known to exist than Titan where it does not.
- mavhc 9y agoCassini is plutonium powered, which is the main problem.
- agumonkey 9y agoSo they weren't concerned about organic but radioactive spoiling ? I guess organic and simple material would degrade in Saturn condition anyway ..
- avenoir 9y agoI remember reading that the Mars rover went through "planetary protection" which is basically a decontamination process. I wonder if a similar thing happened here and how thorough this process is.
- ekianjo 9y agoNot sure if a fireball trailing through another planet's atmosphere leaves much behind.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoOne of the theories of the origin of life on Earth is that it was seeded here by Martian rocks that originated from that planet when struck by other rocks. So, it's not totally implausible, although less so here since Saturn's atmosphere doesn't really stop.
- Alan_Dillman 9y agoThat's not a theory, that's someone injecting creation myth into science. It violates Occam's Razor badly. It is less plausible than life just starting on earth. There is no good reason for adding the complexity of starting elsewhere, surviving being blasted off planetary surface, surviving long enough to reach earth, somehow reaching earth, surviving reentry, surviving alien conditions on earth, and somehow thriving... while the original source died off and/or cannot be found, if talking about Mars. It is miraculous thinking, and has no place alongside more reasonable ideas.
- artmageddon 9y agoI assume it would just be with tardigrades, but can they even survive / thrive on Saturn?
- satysin 9y agoCould bacteria survive for 20 years in space?
- delecti 9y agoNot to "relevant XKCD" the situation, but yes. TLDR is that bacteria die at a rate of about 30% every 6 years, so after 30 years there's still 16% of the original bacteria left. https://what-if.xkcd.com/117/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/117/
- satysin 9y agoThat is pretty incredible I have to say. Amazing how tough bacteria are even in the extremes of deep space.
- wruza 9y agoAfter 20 years hungry tardigrada should have eaten them all.
- simion314 9y agoThe probe burned with very high temperature, not sure any organic chemical can survive.
- ccozan 9y agoFinal Images ( choose Grand Finale ) https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/images/ https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/images/ I wonder if it got destroyed or just lost the signal due to the atmosphere. Amazing times to live.
- liberte82 9y agoIncredible. It's easy to forget that it's not so long ago that our not-too-distant ancestors looked up at the sky and noticed that these stars wandered in the sky a little bit differently from the others. What they would have thought if they'd have known that we would be sending probes to these places and sending images home.
- merricksb 9y agoEarlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15256418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15256418
- liberte82 9y agoThis links to the same post