LARGEST BELCH EVER SEEN devastates gassy GIANT Saturn A titanic storm wracking the atmosphere of Saturn, ringed giant planet of the outer Solar System, resulted in an "unprecedented belch of energy" and an associated super-enormous emission of ethylene gas "the origin of which is a mystery", according to NASA boffins. "This temperature spike is so extreme it's almost unbelievable …
Actually Clarke 2001 was set in the Saturnian system: the moon Iapetus specifically...
The move to Jupiter was made for the film 2001 with Kubrick and this continued in subsequent books. Interestingly there came the idea of life on Jupiter's moon Europa which is believed to host a sea under a thick shell of ice: water being the key ingredient for life.
In a bizarre twist that only the University could think of, turns out they could have stayed at Saturn with evidence for water (and organic compounds) at Enceladus...
Actually Clarke 2001 was set in the Saturnian system: the moon Iapetus specifically...
The move to Jupiter was made for the film 2001 with Kubrick and this continued in subsequent books.
Stop me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that decision made for special effects reasons; i.e., they couldn't create a satisfactorily realistic effect for the ring plane?
From the "Silent Running (1972)" wiki page:
"Trumbull had been involved with creating effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Director Stanley Kubrick wanted the Stargate sequence of that film to be centered around Saturn, but there were technical difficulties in getting the special effects for it finished in the limited timeframe. The Saturn idea was scrapped, and Kubrick substituted Jupiter instead. Trumbull developed the sequence after production, and it was recreated for Saturn in Silent Running"
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable."
No-one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.
No-one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immesurably superior to ours, regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.
Dum, dum dum.......
Wikipedia? Does nobody else remember the smell of ethylene from organic chemistry practicals? (A bag of ripe bananas might reawaken the memory.)
I don't know how you propose to smell anything at 220K. The worry that my nose might break off would outweigh any desire to sniff.
Overheard at a wake near Barnard's Star...
"So Zarg said he knew a hyperspace short-cut through the Sol system that saved 50 zels..."
"Nobody realised he'd been drinking Djinn Entonix all diurnal anomaly when he climbed into the starship..."
"I said that new red uniform was a mistake..."
"He was only three days from retirement..."
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