A close fly by of Titan by the Cassini craft revelaed organic matter in its atmosphere of Titan.
Just thought people might be interested that I'm still interested. :)Cassini flew within 638 miles of Titan's frozen surface on April 16 and discovered a hydrocarbon-laced upper atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere is mainly made up of nitrogen and methane, the simplest type of hydrocarbon. But scientists were surprised to find complex organic material in the latest flyby.
Because Titan is extremely cold — about minus 290 degrees — scientists expected the organic material to condense and rain down to the surface. "We are beginning to appreciate the role of the upper atmosphere in the complex carbon cycle that occurs on Titan," said Hunter Waite, a professor at the University of Michigan.
Scientists believe Titan's atmosphere may be similar to that of the primordial Earth and studying it could provide clues to how life began.
Great Whites Are Not Descended From Megalodon
This is sort of groundbreaking news if you are into this sort of thing.
"Most scientists would probably say the great whites evolved from the megalodon line, which existed from two to twenty million years ago," said Chuck Ciampaglio, a geologist and paleontologist at Wright State University. "However, our research, which is based on analyzing fossils of several hundred shark teeth, shows that the great white shares more similarities with the mako shark."
Reconstructing prehistoric sharks is difficult. A shark's skeleton is made of cartilage, which decomposes quicker than bone. Researchers have only recovered a few fossilized megalodon vertebrae."Teeth are the thing to go on," Ciampaglio told LiveScience.
Sharks replace their teeth regular, so they can be found on the seafloor. Fossils of megalodon teeth are collected on ancient seabeds now exposed. Ciampaglio digitized hundreds of teeth -- upper, lower, front, and back teeth from the three species, and analyzed their sizes and shapes.
The analysis showed great whites and makos have very similar tooth and root structure. "The great whites and makos lay right on top of each other," Ciampaglio said. They also have very similar growth trajectories - how a tooth changes in size and shape as the shark grows to its adult size.
The great white and megalodon, however, shared none of these characteristics.
Serration is their only common trait, said Ciampaglio, but the other characteristics are more important. This evidence "strongly supports the theory that the great white is descended from the prehistoric mako group," Ciampaglio said.The megalodon was probably the end of a run of giant sharks that died out 2-3 million years ago, he said.
There you go. The Great White Shark is not a stunted, runty line of Megalodons.
A-Rod's Fine Day
In all the hullaballoo of the NY press trying to paint the Yankees as hopeless this year, we forget just how great some of these players can be on their day. Take Alex Rodriguez for example, who slugged 3 homeruns and a single today.
It was the third time Rodriguez hit three home runs in a game and 38th multihomer game of his career. He his previous three-homer game was on July 31, 2003, for Texas against Boston. The Yankee Stadium crowd gave Rodriguez curtain calls after the last two home runs.
When Rodriguez came up in the fourth, the fans stood throughout the at-bat. And when his drive on a 3-2 pitch hit off the front of the center-field bleachers, just beyond the 408-foot sign, they didn't stop cheering until A-Rod came out of the dugout several minutes later, during reliever Kevin Gregg's warmups.
So I guess that answers the question whether A-Rod is a 'True Yankee' or not. Anybody who can do such Ruthian, Mantlesque feats deserves to be called a 'True Yankee', what ever that means.
- Art Neuro
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