This is why I love Science!
Scientific research - constantly suprising, innovative and just damn amazing for the imagination!
An icy shell around Saturn's largest moon Titan is thicker and tougher than boffins previously thought – and it is concealing a bizarre interior with inward-facing spikes. ESA's Huygens probe image of a mountain on the surface of Titan A root mountaintop on Titan. Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona NASA's Cassini …
> Its the "Ultimate Question" that we still have to figure out...
It is impossible for both the Ultimate Answer and the Ultimate Question to be known in the same universe, as they will cancel each other out, and the Universe will be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable...
Oh wait... hasn't this already happened?
tch, you are trusting. As some scientist said, "Science advances one funeral at a time" I suggest that quote indicates that a dominant set of presuppositions holds sway until the originators or more accurately, popularisers cark, so previously ignored anomalies might get admitted and a new set of (depending on discipline) rigid presuppostions becomes the received truth. As for the Titan observations, great analysis, but until something is drilling holes and running seismic observations it ain't science. Plausable hypothesis though. Still lots of odd stuff out there. Makes one wonder just how thin the ice shell on Europa is, if Titan has a thick shell and a lot less tidal heating.
Observational science is still science. There has been an astounding number of facts and principles developed through observing how planetary objects, moons, suns, and galaxies interact with each other. Even an element was discovered through astronomy (helium). To dismiss astronomy and other observational fields because you can't do hands-on experiments is myopic. You can't 'touch' climatology or evolution, either, yet they are still science.
"So it's liquid under the icy crust"
Umm, if I've read it properly, then exactly not. Rather the supposition is that it's bloody great big chunks of ice (the roots) being held down by a seriously thick & rigid ice crust - rather than rising as would usually be the case. That leads to the lower density, thence to the gravitic anomaly; although personally, I think there's just a sodding great ice cave with a monolith in it causing the blip.
To see an example of this type of ice shell take a three liter bottle and fill it completely with water, no air bubbles. Put the bottle in a freezer that can reach zero c temps or below, or outside in the winter at some latitudes. When the water is as frozen as it can get, usually three days or so. You will see a hard ice shell with inward facing spikes,also interestingly there will be floating ice crystals in the inner bubble.
Lovely deduction there from this group.
In my more random moments, I've often wondered just what aliens make of our curiously blue planet. It surely requires an interesting feat of deduction to suggest that it's blue because of the reflection of the sky, and that's blue because of the curious refraction patterns within the atmosphere's water droplets.
It's probably this observation that makes them so interested in visiting us in their saucers.!!...???
Sorry to wander off topic, but my late father was a big Sci-Fi fan; he and I used to get on a roll about aliens in another solar system being just a bit above our technological level and observing this curious yellow sun and its planets - "Look there, at the third planet. Habitable? We hardly think so. For one, it's far outside the required 500+ kelvin* 'habitability band' - far too far away from the parent star. Organisms would certainly freeze to death there. It has a thick atmosphere, likely containing toxic gases like oxygen and argon, and the planet has frighteningly rapid rotation that almost certainly doesn't permit the slow heating required for intelligent, silicon based life forms to thrive. I'm afraid we'll have to look elsewhere if we're going to find life in this galaxy," and so on.
:)
Miss ya dad, wish you could see some of this stuff.