Two new papers based on data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft scrutinize the complex chemical activity on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan. While non-biological chemistry offers one possible explanation, some scientists believe these chemical signatures bolster the argument for a primitive, exotic form of life or precursor to life on Titan’s surface. According to one theory put forth by astrobiologists, the signatures fulfill two important conditions necessary for a hypothesized "methane-based life."

One key finding comes from a paper online now in the journal Icarus that shows hydrogen molecules flowing down through Titan’s atmosphere and disappearing at the surface. Another paper online now in the Journal of Geophysical Research maps hydrocarbons on the Titan surface and finds a lack of acetylene.

This lack of acetylene is important because that chemical would likely be the best energy source for a methane-based life on Titan, said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., who proposed a set of conditions necessary for this kind of methane-based life on Titan in 2005. One interpretation of the acetylene data is that the hydrocarbon is being consumed as food. But McKay said the flow of hydrogen is even more critical because all of their proposed mechanisms involved the consumption of hydrogen.

"We suggested hydrogen consumption because it’s the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth," McKay said. "If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth."

To date, methane-based life forms are only hypothetical. Scientists have not yet detected this form of life anywhere, though there are liquid-water-based microbes on Earth that thrive on methane or produce it as a waste product. On Titan, where temperatures are around 90 Kelvin (minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit), a methane-based organism would have to use a substance that is liquid as its medium for living processes, but not water itself. Water is frozen solid on Titan’s surface and much too cold to support life as we know it.

The list of liquid candidates is very short: liquid methane and related molecules like ethane. While liquid water is widely regarded as necessary for life, there has been extensive speculation published in the scientific literature that this is not a strict requirement.

The new hydrogen findings are consistent with conditions that could produce an exotic, methane-based life form, but do not definitively prove its existence, said Darrell Strobel, a Cassini interdisciplinary scientist based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., who authored the paper on hydrogen.

Strobel, who studies the upper atmospheres of Saturn and Titan, analyzed data from Cassini’s composite infrared spectrometer and ion and neutral mass spectrometer in his new paper. The paper describes densities of hydrogen in different parts of the atmosphere and the surface. Previous models had predicted that hydrogen molecules, a byproduct of ultraviolet sunlight breaking apart acetylene and methane molecules in the upper atmosphere, should be distributed fairly evenly throughout the atmospheric layers.

Strobel found a disparity in the hydrogen densities that lead to a flow down to the surface at a rate of about 10,000 trillion trillion hydrogen molecules per second. This is about the same rate at which the molecules escape out of the upper atmosphere.

"It’s as if you have a hose and you’re squirting hydrogen onto the ground, but it’s disappearing," Strobel said. "I didn’t expect this result, because molecular hydrogen is extremely chemically inert in the atmosphere, very light and buoyant. It should ‘float’ to the top of the atmosphere and escape."

Strobel said it is not likely that hydrogen is being stored in a cave or underground space on Titan. The Titan surface is also so cold that a chemical process that involved a catalyst would be needed to convert hydrogen molecules and acetylene back to methane, even though overall there would be a net release of energy. The energy barrier could be overcome if there were an unknown mineral acting as the catalyst on Titan’s surface.

The hydrocarbon mapping research, led by Roger Clark, a Cassini team scientist based at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, examines data from Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer. Scientists had expected the sun’s interactions with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce acetylene that falls down to coat the Titan surface. But Cassini detected no acetylene on the surface.

In addition Cassini’s spectrometer detected an absence of water ice on the Titan surface, but loads of benzene and another material, which appears to be an organic compound that scientists have not yet been able to identify. The findings lead scientists to believe that the organic compounds are shellacking over the water ice that makes up Titan’s bedrock with a film of hydrocarbons at least a few millimeters to centimeters thick, but possibly much deeper in some places. The ice remains covered up even as liquid methane and ethane flow all over Titan’s surface and fill up lakes and seas much as liquid water does on Earth.

"Titan’s atmospheric chemistry is cranking out organic compounds that rain down on the surface so fast that even as streams of liquid methane and ethane at the surface wash the organics off, the ice gets quickly covered again," Clark said. "All that implies Titan is a dynamic place where organic chemistry is happening now."

The absence of detectable acetylene on the Titan surface can very well have a non-biological explanation, said Mark Allen, principal investigator with the NASA Astrobiology Institute Titan team. Allen is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Allen said one possibility is that sunlight or cosmic rays are transforming the acetylene in icy aerosols in the atmosphere into more complex molecules that would fall to the ground with no acetylene signature.

"Scientific conservatism suggests that a biological explanation should be the last choice after all non-biological explanations are addressed," Allen said. "We have a lot of work to do to rule out possible non-biological explanations. It is more likely that a chemical process, without biology, can explain these results – for example, reactions involving mineral catalysts."

"These new results are surprising and exciting," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL. "Cassini has many more flybys of Titan that might help us sort out just what is happening at the surface."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission online click here.

The news is spreading like wildfire over the Internet.  Oh joy to us all, Iranian clerics have solved the problem of earthquakes.  Science doesn’t count – earthquakes are caused by women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously according to a senior Iranian cleric.  This direct from those now building nuclear weapons!

"Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

"What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon Friday. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam’s moral codes."

Seismologists have warned for at least two decades that it is likely the sprawling capital will be struck by a catastrophic quake in the near future.  Iran is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric’s explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that a quake is certain to hit the captial Tehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate.

Tehran straddles scores of fault lines, including one more than 50 miles long. It has not suffered a major quake since 1830.

In 2003, a powerful earthquake hit the southern city of Bam, killing 31,000 people – about a quarter of that city’s population – and destroying its ancient mud-built citadel.

"A divine authority told me to tell the people to make a general repentance. Why? Because calamities threaten us," said Sedighi, Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leader.  Referring to the violence that followed last June’s disputed presidential election, he said, "The political earthquake that occurred was a reaction to some of the actions (that took place).

"And now, if a natural earthquake hits Tehran, no one will be able to confront such a calamity but God’s power, only God’s power. … So let’s not disappoint God.’

The Iranian government and its security forces have been locked in a bloody battle with a large opposition movement that accuses Ahmadinejad of winning last year’s vote by fraud. Women in the Islamic Republic are required by law to cover from head to toe, but many, especially the young, ignore some of the more strict codes and wear tight coats and scarves pulled back that show much of the hair.

Ahmadinejad, taking a break from bedding sheep, made his quake prediction two weeks ago, but said he could not give an exact date. He acknowledged that he could not order all of Tehran’s 12 million people to evacuate.

"But provisions have to be made. … At least 5 million should leave Tehran so it is less crowded," the president said.

Minister of Welfare and Social Security Sadeq Mahsooli said prayers and pleas for forgiveness were the best "formulas to repel earthquakes."  

"We cannot invent a system that prevents earthquakes, but God has created this system and that is to avoid sins, to pray, to seek forgiveness, pay alms and self-sacrifice," Mahsooli said.

See, it is all Britney Spears‘ fault California has earthquakes.  We should have known.

AccuWeather.com reports this year’s tornado season is expected to shift farther eastward into the Midwest and become more active in late April through June.  Oklahoma should continue see fewer powerful storms Meterologist Henry Margusity told Tulsa Today.

The greatest concentration of tornadoes is reported between March and August each year in "Tornado Alley," which includes portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota. 

This spring, AccuWeather.com meteorologists expect tornado activity will increase farther east into the Midwest instead of the traditional Tornado Alley.

Tornado season usually begins in March, but this year, there has been a lack of tornadoes. A total of 64 tornadoes have occurred as of March 29. On average, 225 tornadoes occur by this date.

Several reasons account for the lack for tornadoes in 2010, an El Niño year.
   1. A cooler-than-normal Gulf of Mexico.
   2. Jet stream displaced farther south than normal due to the El Niño.
   3. Persistent cool weather in the Plains and South.

The frequency of tornadoes will increase as the El Niño begins to weaken and the Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures warm.

The Midwest appears particularly primed for additional tornado outbreaks this year rather than the typical Tornado Alley states because of the predicted storm track and the proximity of Gulf moisture should be present by late April.

AccuWeather.com analyzed tornado reports dating back to 1950 from the Storm Prediction Center during April, May and June of 1958, 1966, 1978, 1988, 1993, 1995 and 2003, the most recent years categorized as El Niño events.

Two patterns emerged from this information: many states had fewer tornadoes reported early in severe weather season than normal, and then higher totals emerged in the following months for some states.

In April, the southern tier of states, including Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, reported an increased number of tornadoes than they typically see. Meanwhile, nearly all states to the north of that line saw fewer twisters in El Niño years.

However, the severe weather often returned with a vengeance in the states lining the Mississippi River and many Southern states in May, as a much higher-than-normal amount of tornado reports occurred in those years.

Once June arrives, tornado activity begins to normalize overall across the country. The one exception is South Dakota, which has seen nearly double the amount of twisters in June El Niño years than others.

Margusity, told Tulsa Today that while the numbers of tornados in the Tulsa area should continue to be lower than usual this year, St. Louis and Springfield will see more with greater danger in larger population centers as "people don’t expect or know how to respond like you do in Oklahoma."

Al Gore’s global warming film would be banned in schools under plans by the UK Independence Party (UKIP) the Telegraph is reporting.

Following a number of scandals around the science of climate change, UKIP are promising to launch a Royal Commission led by a High Court judge to investigate whether global warming is man-made. 

Pending the results of the commission, the party, that has no MPs at the moment, have promised to build new fossil-fueled power stations to meet energy demands and scrap subsidies for wind farms. Global warming ‘propaganda’ like the Al Gore film Inconvenient Truth will be banned in schools and public authorities will not be allowed to spend money on climate change initiatives.

A recent poll found the just one in five people believe climate change is man-made, compared to one in three a year ago.

The survey of 1,000 people found people over 65 were more likely to be skeptical.

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, the UKIP climate change spokesman, said his party was the only opportunity to vote against the climate change consensus.

"At the moment all the major parties have decided to sign up to the eco-fascist agenda and therefore anyone who does not believe in eco-fascist agenda has no where else to go," he said.

Climate change skeptics claim that emails stolen from the University of East Anglia show scientists were willing to manipulate the data around global warming in a scandal known as ‘climategate’.

In another scandal known as ‘glaciergate’ the UN body in charge of climate change science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was forced to retract a claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

To read more, click here.

NASA officials broke ground near Canberra, Australia on Wednesday, Feb. 24, beginning a new antenna-building campaign to improve Deep Space Network communications.

Following the recommendations of an independent study, NASA embarked on an ambitious project to replace its aging fleet of 70-meter-wide (230-foot-wide) dishes with a new generation of 34-meter (112-foot) antennas by 2025.

The three 70-meter antennas, located at the NASA Deep Space Network complexes at Goldstone, Calif., Madrid, Spain, and Canberra, are more than 40 years old and show wear and tear from constant use.

The new antennas, known as "beam wave guide" antennas, can be used more flexibly, allowing the network to operate on several different frequency bands within the same antenna. Their electronic equipment is more accessible, making maintenance easier and less costly. The new antennas also can receive higher-frequency, wider-bandwidth signals known as the "Ka band." This band, required for new NASA missions approved after 2009, allows the newer antennas to carry more data than the older ones.

In the first phase of the project near Canberra, NASA expects to complete the building of up to three 34-meter antennas by 2018. The decision to begin construction came on the 50th anniversary of U.S. and Australian cooperation in space tracking operations.

"There is no better way to celebrate our 50 years of collaboration and partnership in exploring the heavens with the government of Australia than our renewed commitment and investment in new capabilities required for the next five decades," said Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator for Space Communications and Navigation at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Space Communications and Navigation is responsible for managing all NASA space communications and navigation resources and their operations. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the agency’s Deep Space Network, an important component of the agency’s space communications resources.

NASA’s goal is to integrate all NASA communications resources into a unified, far more capable network. Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization manages the communication complex near Canberra for NASA.

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

More information about the Deep Space Network is online  (click here for more).  More information about NASA’s Space Communication and Navigation Program is online (click here for more).