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Sunday, June 17, 2012
ScienceDaily: Biochemistry News
Desktop Diaries: Sylvia Earle
Copyright ? 2012 National Public Radio?. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
IRA FLATOW, HOST:
Flora Lichtman is here with our Video Pick of the Week. Hi, Flora.
FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Ira.
FLATOW: What have you got for us this week?
LICHTMAN: This week, we've got something special: shrunken heads, a life-sized green moray, a submarine factory, a visit to Sylvia Earle's house. What else?
FLATOW: Well, of course.
LICHTMAN: Where else would you find all those things together?
(LAUGHTER)
LICHTMAN: It's the next installment in our series of Desktop Diaries. Remember, this is where we go...
FLATOW: Hmm, of course.
LICHTMAN: ...to the - this inspiring scientist's house and then pull information out of them based on their desk trinkets.
FLATOW: Not everybody has a moray eel looking at you.
LICHTMAN: Looks right over. She calls it her mentor, Dr. Earle does, and it's huge and right over the computer there. And there are many things that, you know, you might expect to find in someone who loves the oceans house. This is her place in Oakland. And she has desks, by the way, everywhere. So this is only the tip of the iceberg here.
But, you know, just marine life everywhere, things that she's found while diving. My favorite sort of ornament of the office were these shrunken heads and shrunken Styrofoam cups, And you might be able to guess how they shrunk. This is someone who specializes in going down in submarines, so she basically...
FLATOW: She takes the cup and takes it down with her.
LICHTMAN: Yes, but it doesn't get to ride inside, and that's why it shrinks. So the pressure makes it smaller, but it sounds like a real rite of passage for these deep-sea explorers.
FLATOW: So - yeah. They all do that. Something that starts out the size of a normal eight ounce Styrofoam cup, winds up like a thimble, right?
LICHTMAN: It's tiny. And she has, you know, tons, dozens that she had...
FLATOW: I hadn't heard of the shrunken head version, though, but I knew...
LICHTMAN: That was beyond. When she said, and here's my shrunken head, we both - Christopher Intagliata who's the producer was there with me, too, and we were like, what?
FLATOW: I'm afraid to ask you, it's the head of what?
LICHTMAN: It was, you know, a hat holder, a mannequin head.
FLATOW: Oh. Oh, oh, oh. It's Styrofoam.
LICHTMAN: It was Styrofoam as well.
FLATOW: Oh, it's like for a wig. You put a wig.
LICHTMAN: Yeah, we should clear that up.
FLATOW: Oh, I'm not sure whose head.
LICHTMAN: Anyway, you can see the details on this on our video pick this week.
FLATOW: It's up on our website at sciencefriday.com as our Video Pick of the Week up there on the right side.
LICHTMAN: But, you know, the thing that was really amazing, so Sylvia Earle has been doing this for, you know, five or six decades now. And she's just still so excited when she talks about her work. And it makes sense sort of given her philosophy about what makes a scientist.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED AUDIO)
DR. SYLVIA EARLE: I'm asked sometimes, how did you get to be a biologist? How did you get to be a scientist? How did you get to be an explorer? And I say, it's really easy. You start out as a little kid, and then you never grow up.
LICHTMAN: And this couldn't...
FLATOW: Oh.
LICHTMAN: ...be more true for Dr. Earle. She just seems still so curious about the work and so excited about the work. We also got to take a trip to DOER Marine - which is also in Oakland, and it's a company that Dr. Earle started and now her daughter runs - and see some of the submersibles that they've made and some of the prototypes for what they're working on now because, you know, she wants to go to the deepest part of the ocean, still is working towards this.
And at one point, there's this big - you walk in and it's this huge sort of warehouse, and there are all these cool machines everywhere and these giant pictures of Sylvia in a JIM suit, which is a sort of bubbly astronaut suit. And in the corner, there's this ball, this clear plastic globe, and it's sitting on a mount. So it's about 4 feet off the ground. And, you know, one of the first things Dr. Earle said was, would you like me to get in it?
(LAUGHTER)
LICHTMAN: And this is part of a - sort of the submarine mock-up. So we have a little tape of her in the globe.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED INTERVIEW)
EARLE: It's a great place to dream, a great place to think about what it will take to go to full ocean depth, to go find Jim Cameron's footprint.
LICHTMAN: She's talking about James Cameron, who we had on the show...
FLATOW: Right, right.
LICHTMAN: ...a couple of months ago.
FLATOW: She wants to go down there also...
LICHTMAN: Absolutely.
FLATOW: ...find some footprints.
LICHTMAN: Yeah. She said she's mentioned this to Jim Cameron. Maybe she could use his sub.
FLATOW: Well, she does hold records for deep-sea diving, right?
LICHTMAN: Absolutely. I mean, actually, this is - I remember one of the first SCIENCE FRIDAYs I ever heard was Dr. Earle talking about that untethered trip she took where she was wearing this gym suit and it really is sort of a bulky marshmallow-man suit...
FLATOW: Yeah.
LICHTMAN: ...1,200 feet down and set the record in '79 for one of the deepest, I think, untethered walking on the sea floor. I just remember how inspiring it was to hear about that. And she set, yeah, many records in her time.
FLATOW: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow here with Flora Lichtman. We're talking about her latest desktop diary about Sylvia Earle, the undersea explorer. And she is still - on the video, it's up there on our website at sciencefriday.com, and you see her jump into this globe like she's 12, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
LICHTMAN: Absolutely. I mean, really, I was thinking could I get in that globe? I'm not really sure. And, you know, her daughter was there and when we asked, you know, well, it's OK for you to get in, and her daughter said, oh, we can't keep her out, which was a revealing, nice moment.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. But she still is one of the great defenders of the oceans.
LICHTMAN: Yeah, I mean, she absolutely is, and I think spends - seems to spend a lot of time working on this. And you can tell that it's the thing where she loves the ocean. You know, anyone who talks to Sylvia Earle can tell that, I think, and I think got sort of stuck with this job of defending it, you know, because...
FLATOW: Yeah. She'd rather be down there.
LICHTMAN: It seems, you know, I don't want to speak for Dr. Earle...
FLATOW: Yeah.
LICHTMAN: ...but it certainly seemed like if she could be spending all her time exploring and not being on the defensive...
FLATOW: Yeah, yeah.
LICHTMAN: ...she would. But, you know, this has become her charge now because she loves it so much.
FLATOW: And as you say, she's in the submarine-building business too.
LICHTMAN: This is something I didn't know, but she started three companies. And this was sort of a shocking revelation for me anyway. To actually do this kind of exploration, you need to figure out how to build the submarines yourself according to Dr. Earle because there's just not money for this publicly.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
LICHTMAN: So you have to find people who need the sub for some other reason, you start the company to build it, and then you lease it back, or this was the case for Dr. Earle, to do your own exploration.
FLATOW: Yeah, that's what Jim Cameron said. He said, no one's going to build it for me.
LICHTMAN: Yeah, that's right.
FLATOW: We have to get our, you know, put our own funding into this because - and Sylvia will tell you and she's told us many times, you know, we know more about the backside of the moon than we know about the deepest canyons in the ocean.
LICHTMAN: And she mentioned this, too, that, you know, we care about exploring space to some degree anyway.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
LICHTMAN: But when it comes to exploring the ocean, you really have to find another way to do it. There's just - although we see that, too, in space as well.
FLATOW: Yeah. And so you got free reign of her many desks to go out and explore her out there.
I hope we can go see another desk.
(LAUGHTER)
LICHTMAN: I feel like I could easily spend many more days getting to know Sylvia Earle. She was a really gracious host, I have to say. We had to go to another shoot after this one, and Dr. Earle came back and delivered us snacks because she was worried that we didn't have lunch.
FLATOW: She's the mother of the oceans, mother who takes care...
LICHTMAN: It was above and beyond.
FLATOW: Above and beyond.
(LAUGHTER)
FLATOW: Yeah. And she has certainly collected a lot - you can see in your video up on our website, she has collected a lot of tchotchkes, as you would say, along the way, right?
LICHTMAN: Over the years. Absolutely. One of the things I liked was this dagger that she found diving and, you know, there were other sort of things from the deep sea as well, beautiful pieces of coral and things like that. But I don't think she collects much of that anymore.
FLATOW: People give her stuff and she...
LICHTMAN: Yeah.
FLATOW: In the video, she has this wonderful giant octopus, is it, this octopus on her desk?
LICHTMAN: Yeah. And that one - she said that it reached out a tentacle and grabbed her. It was at the American Museum of Natural History, I think...
FLATOW: She goes to the museum shop.
(LAUGHTER)
LICHTMAN: Yeah, she says she does a lot of her shopping at museum stores.
FLATOW: You can find Sylvia trolling museum stores.
LICHTMAN: That's right. Keep your eyes open next time you're there.
FLATOW: If you see this perky woman, you know, a deep-sea diver looking for interesting new underwater stuff, that'll be Sylvia Earle and...
LICHTMAN: Yeah. Or at the bottom of the sea.
FLATOW: Or at...
LICHTMAN: That's where I can't wait to see Dr. Earle next.
FLATOW: Yeah. I can't wait for her to finish up one of those new submarines...
LICHTMAN: Me too.
FLATOW: ...and get down there. Maybe we could do a live broadcast. Wouldn't that be something, from the bottom of the ocean?
LICHTMAN: That would be...
FLATOW: We've done astronauts in the International Space Station. Now we have to go in the other direction.
LICHTMAN: We've got to go in the other direction.
FLATOW: All right. We're going to aim for that. Thank you, Flora.
LICHTMAN: Thanks, Ira.
FLATOW: Flora Lichtman, our Video Pick of the Week, a Desktop Diary.
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Saturday, June 16, 2012
Brent Budowsky: GOP Wages War Against Jobs
When I was a younger man I marched in support of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. I am a union man. Proud and strong. No apologies. No surrender. No regrets. No retreat. While I am not honored to own a union card, I consider myself a union man. Now and forever.
The unions stand tall in the history of freedom. I was proud to stand with Solidarity in Poland in its hours of greatest crisis, with the same conviction that the heroic workers of Solidarity stand with the battling workers of Wisconsin and workers everywhere. When we battle for the rights of workers anywhere, we battle for the rights of workers everywhere. Collective bargaining, democracy and freedom are inseparable.
The unions have played a special role in creating prosperity in every corner of the world, where they stand up for the rights of workers, the creation of jobs and the rising tide that lifts all boats. Economic historians and statisticians prove the point. When unions flourish, prosperity rises, because more jobs and fair pay create stronger consumers and greater demand, which increases the profits of firms and the wealth of nations.
The Republican Party and its nominee for president once waged war against the auto recovery program of the president, which promised, and delivered, shared sacrifice and shared rewards for labor and business. When the program worked brilliantly the Republican nominee, who demeans the labor legacy of his father, then lied and tried to claim credit.
Today the Republican Party, led by its candidate for president, wages war against the jobs of those who serve with the police. Last Friday a triumphalist Mitt Romney, pouncing on what he considered a political opportunity, waved his arms with a glowing smirk while repeating his support for previous firings of police and promising to fire more police.
Today the Republican Party, led by its candidate for president, wages war against the jobs of firefighters. The triumphalist Romney, believing (wrongly) that he had found the golden key to power, told cheering partisans that he supports the past layoffs of those who save our neighbors from the deadly infernos of burning flames, and promises if elected to fire more of these heroic Americans.
Remember when a grateful and patriotic nation rose as one to applaud the indescribable valor of those who ran into burning buildings to save our families and neighbors after terrorists struck on that deadly September morning?
Today Mitt Romney, who ranked nearly last in the nation creating jobs as governor, lusts for the presidency. He seems joyous that many are jobless today. He celebrates their pain as his good fortune. He panders to the hatred of unions that his father deplored. He forgets that Ronald Reagan led the Screen Actors Guild. He treats the jobs of police and firefighters, and nurses and teachers, as the petty cash of his unprincipled ambition.
Today the Republican Party, led by its candidate for president, wages war against the jobs of teachers. American teachers are enormously trusted and deeply respected by overwhelming majorities of our people. They faithfully, diligently and wonderfully use the gifts God gave them to lift the lives of their students and the education of our children. They deserve the respect that was shown them by leaders and statesmen such as George Romney, not the contempt shown them by vulture politicians such as Mitt Romney.
Today the GOP wages war against programs that create jobs, policies that promote jobs, workers who desperately need jobs and women who want to be paid fairly when they have jobs. Today the GOP wages war against the jobs of police who protect our neighborhoods, firefighters who protect our homes, teachers who educate our children, nurses who tend our wounds, bargaining that protects their rights and earned pensions that protect their security.
I am a union man, and proud of it. Republicans who wage war against unions and jobs are waging war against American values and prosperity.
This column was originally published at The Hill.
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Friday, June 15, 2012
marketing on the Internet - Make Online Money By Marketing On The ...
by William Burnell
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marketing on the Internet More Details about marketing on the Internet here.
Deciding on what niche or market you want to work in can be difficult. The problem is many people could already be servicing whatever you consider. This is where you need to look for a niche in a particular market. A niche market is a specific area that others are not servicing or not servicing adequately. In other words there is not as much competition, but you will need to be able to identify a niche that will make you online money.Here are some areas you can explore to help you find your market and your product:
What are you good at?
What talents have you developed and what interests do you have that you can share with others? Start making a list. You might be surprised at the breadth of your knowledge. Do not take your skills and knowledge for granted. Your line of work or your hobby or your passion may be commonplace to you because you live with them. It is easy to assume everyone else knows what you know but just have a look at some of questions people ask in forums and websites and you will soon see they do not know.
Can You Sell It?
You may have an idea for a product or service that is not readily available but it might be because nobody wants it. You will need to do your homework. You need to know what people are looking for. You can do this by doing what everyone else does - search the Internet.
One of the best free tools for doing this is "Google AdWords: Keyword Tool". Enter your product or service into the search area to find the number of people searching for information on your area of interest. Then click on the word or phrase and go to Google Search. When this comes up in the browser address bar, put the word or phrase in inverted commas or quotes and click on search. This tells you the number of websites you will be competing with.
Go to forums and websites to see the questions people are asking and to see if they are being answered. This is where your specific knowledge will help. This will help you identify the gaps or weaknesses in the products or services available now. This is where you may be able to find your niche.
It is all very well finding something to sell but it has to be something people want to buy. This means what you want to promote has to be sought after by enough people to make it viable for you.
Does It Exist Already?
If you identify a market but do not have a product or service, then look for an existing one you can improve or adapt. Or simply promote an existing product or service that fits the niche you have identified.
Marketing on the Internet is one of the fastest, easiest and cheapest ways to get your product or service in front of millions of people, but there is no guarantee of success. There is a great deal of competition so you need to come up with a new product or service that fills a need for a lot of people or come up with a fresh approach to promote an existing product or service.
If you can successfully identify a niche that is not been serviced you will have the satisfaction of being able to help a lot of people and turn your interest or hobby into a good source of online money.
Marketing on the Internet can be a great way to make online money,?but it can be frustrating when you first start out. You will find valuable resources to help you when you visit http://www.marketingontheinternetnow.com William Burnell has several years experience as an Internet marketer and knows how challenging it can be.
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William Burnell
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Scientists sequence genome of human relative that prefers love over war
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Public release date: 14-Jun-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Darrell E. Ward
Darrell.Ward@osumc.edu
614-293-3737
Ohio State University Medical Center
COLUMBUS, Ohio An international team of scientists has sequenced the genome of the bonobo, a primate that, along with chimpanzees, is the closest living relative of humans. Unlike chimpanzees, which have an aggressive nature, bonobos tend to be peaceful, playful and highly sexual.
The study, published online in the journal Nature, compares the bonobo genome to the genomes of chimpanzees and humans.
As part of the study, scientists at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC James) analyzed and compared movable pieces of DNA called transposons in the three genomes.
"The findings will help scientists understand the evolutionary relationships between humans, chimpanzees and bonobos, and should help us learn more about the genetic basis for traits that humans share with these close relatives," says Dr. David E. Symer, assistant professor of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics and leader of the Ohio State team. Symer worked closely with Dr. Keiko Akagi, a bioinformatics expert at Ohio State, and Saneyuki Higashino, a graduate student visiting from Japan.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, led the study. They worked in collaboration with investigators at Aarhus University in Denmark, the University of Washington in Seattle, the National Human Genome Research Institute, The Ohio State University and other centers.
The team sequenced and assembled the genome of a female bonobo named Ulindi that lives in the Leipzig zoo.
They found that more than 3 percent of the human genome is more closely related to either the bonobo or the chimpanzee than the two apes are to each other, which indicates that the three species share a complex evolutionary relationship.
Transposons are popularly called "jumping genes" because they can move from one chromosomal location to another. They have accumulated in the genomes over evolutionary time and make up about half the genomic DNA of all three primates.
The Ohio State investigators identified the presence of more than 2.5 million transposons at identical locations in the chromosomes of all three species. They also found roughly 1,500 transposon insertions that are unique to the bonobo genome; that is, they are not present at the same genomic positions in the human or chimpanzee genomes, Symer says.
"These particular transposons inserted into the bonobo genome after they diverged from chimpanzees about a million years ago. They may be responsible for some of the key differences between bonobos, chimpanzees and humans, so we are continuing to study them," Symer says.
###
Researchers at these centers also participated in this study: J. Craig Venter Institute; University of Maryland; 454 Life Sciences; National Institutes of Health; University of Oxford, UK; The Wellcome Trust; Tokyo Institute of Technology; University of Washington; the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; University of Bari, Italy; Institut de Biologia Evolutiva, Spain; Lola Ya Bonobo Bonobo Sanctuary, Democratic Republic of Congo; Reserve Naturelle Sanctuaire a` Chimpanzes de Tchimpounga, Jane Goodall Institute, Republic of Congo; Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust, Uganda; Harvard Medical School; University of Montana; and the International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology, Kenya.
The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute strives to create a cancer-free world by integrating scientific research with excellence in education and patient-centered care, a strategy that leads to better methods of prevention, detection and treatment. Ohio State is one of only 41 National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers and one of only seven centers funded by the NCI to conduct both phase I and phase II clinical trials. The NCI recently rated Ohio State's cancer program as "exceptional," the highest rating given by NCI survey teams. As the cancer program's 210-bed adult patient-care component, The James is a "Top Hospital" as named by the Leapfrog Group and one of the top 20 cancer hospitals in the nation as ranked by U.S.News & World Report.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 14-Jun-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Darrell E. Ward
Darrell.Ward@osumc.edu
614-293-3737
Ohio State University Medical Center
COLUMBUS, Ohio An international team of scientists has sequenced the genome of the bonobo, a primate that, along with chimpanzees, is the closest living relative of humans. Unlike chimpanzees, which have an aggressive nature, bonobos tend to be peaceful, playful and highly sexual.
The study, published online in the journal Nature, compares the bonobo genome to the genomes of chimpanzees and humans.
As part of the study, scientists at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC James) analyzed and compared movable pieces of DNA called transposons in the three genomes.
"The findings will help scientists understand the evolutionary relationships between humans, chimpanzees and bonobos, and should help us learn more about the genetic basis for traits that humans share with these close relatives," says Dr. David E. Symer, assistant professor of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics and leader of the Ohio State team. Symer worked closely with Dr. Keiko Akagi, a bioinformatics expert at Ohio State, and Saneyuki Higashino, a graduate student visiting from Japan.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, led the study. They worked in collaboration with investigators at Aarhus University in Denmark, the University of Washington in Seattle, the National Human Genome Research Institute, The Ohio State University and other centers.
The team sequenced and assembled the genome of a female bonobo named Ulindi that lives in the Leipzig zoo.
They found that more than 3 percent of the human genome is more closely related to either the bonobo or the chimpanzee than the two apes are to each other, which indicates that the three species share a complex evolutionary relationship.
Transposons are popularly called "jumping genes" because they can move from one chromosomal location to another. They have accumulated in the genomes over evolutionary time and make up about half the genomic DNA of all three primates.
The Ohio State investigators identified the presence of more than 2.5 million transposons at identical locations in the chromosomes of all three species. They also found roughly 1,500 transposon insertions that are unique to the bonobo genome; that is, they are not present at the same genomic positions in the human or chimpanzee genomes, Symer says.
"These particular transposons inserted into the bonobo genome after they diverged from chimpanzees about a million years ago. They may be responsible for some of the key differences between bonobos, chimpanzees and humans, so we are continuing to study them," Symer says.
###
Researchers at these centers also participated in this study: J. Craig Venter Institute; University of Maryland; 454 Life Sciences; National Institutes of Health; University of Oxford, UK; The Wellcome Trust; Tokyo Institute of Technology; University of Washington; the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; University of Bari, Italy; Institut de Biologia Evolutiva, Spain; Lola Ya Bonobo Bonobo Sanctuary, Democratic Republic of Congo; Reserve Naturelle Sanctuaire a` Chimpanzes de Tchimpounga, Jane Goodall Institute, Republic of Congo; Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust, Uganda; Harvard Medical School; University of Montana; and the International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology, Kenya.
The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute strives to create a cancer-free world by integrating scientific research with excellence in education and patient-centered care, a strategy that leads to better methods of prevention, detection and treatment. Ohio State is one of only 41 National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers and one of only seven centers funded by the NCI to conduct both phase I and phase II clinical trials. The NCI recently rated Ohio State's cancer program as "exceptional," the highest rating given by NCI survey teams. As the cancer program's 210-bed adult patient-care component, The James is a "Top Hospital" as named by the Leapfrog Group and one of the top 20 cancer hospitals in the nation as ranked by U.S.News & World Report.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Tropical Lakes on Saturn Moon Could Expand Options for Life
News |
Space
A subsurface source of liquid methane may be replenishing equatorial lakes on Titan, which might be a crucible for life
?| June 14, 2012?|
From Nature magazine
Nestling among the dunes in the dry equatorial region of Saturn's moon Titan is what appears to be a hydrocarbon lake. The observation, by the Cassini spacecraft, suggests that oases of liquid methane ? which might be a crucible for life ? lie beneath the moon's surface. The work is published today in Nature.
Besides Earth, Titan is the only solid object in the Solar System to circulate liquids in a cycle of rain and evaporation, although on Titan the process is driven by methane rather than water.
This cycle is expected to form liquid bodies near the moon's poles, but not at its dune-covered equator, where Cassini measurements show that humidity levels are low and little rain falls to the surface. "The equatorial belt is like a desert on Earth, where evaporation trumps precipitation," says astrobiologist Jonathan Lunine of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Any surface liquid there should evaporate and be transported to the cooler poles, where it should condense as rain. "Lakes at the poles are easy to explain, but lakes in the tropics are not," says Caitlin Griffith, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Indeed, Cassini has spotted hundreds of lakes and three seas in Titan's polar regions.
Now Griffith and her colleagues think they have found a tropical lake ? some 60 kilometres long and 40 kilometres wide, and at least 1 metre deep ? in Cassini observations made between 2004 and 2008. It appears as a black splotch at seven near-infrared wavelengths that can travel relatively unimpeded through the moon's thick atmosphere, which blocks visible light.
Caverns measureless to man
The team also found four smaller, brighter splotches, which Griffith says may be "shallower ponds similar to marshes on Earth, with knee-to-ankle-level depths". Because tropical lakes on Titan should evaporate over a period of just a few thousand years, the researchers argue that these ponds and lakes are being replenished by subsurface oases of liquid methane.
That would expand the number of places on the moon where life could potentially originate. Methane, which is made up of one carbon and four hydrogen atoms, is the source of more complicated organic molecules found on Titan. "There may be organic chemical processes that occur in liquid hydrocarbons that could lead to compounds analogous to proteins and information-carrying molecules," says Lunine, who was not involved in the work. "There might be a kind of life that works in liquid hydrocarbons."
Lunine and Griffith are members of a proposed NASA mission to look for such complex chemistry, called the Titan Mare Explorer (TiME). The TiME probe would spend three months bobbing around Ligeia Mare, a sea near Titan's north polar region, measuring its chemistry with a mass spectrometer.
But should that mission, the fate of which will soon be decided by NASA, land on a tropical lake instead? No, says Lunine. He points out that a number of lines of evidence ? including telltale radar signatures ? show that the polar regions are filled with liquid hydrocarbon lakes and seas. So far there is less evidence for the tropical features. "Something else that just happens to be dark at those wavelengths", such as a solid organic compound, might mimic a lake, he says.
Only 17% of the equatorial region's surface area has been analysed at the high resolutions required to spot these small features, but Lunine says that lower-resolution observations suggest tropical lakes are relatively few and far between. Still, the idea of oases on Titan appeals to him. "There's a place on Titan named Xanadu, and if you go back to the Coleridge poem on Xanadu, he talks about 'caverns measureless to man',? Lunine says. He adds that he would love to find such caverns filled with methane on Titan.
This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on June 14, 2012.
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