We’re a little late to the party on this one, but it’s just too fascinating to pass up. A team of planetary scientists recently claimed that the mix of methane, carbon and lightning in Saturn’s atmosphere is causing diamonds to be forged in the planet’s atmosphere. Like, a lot of diamonds.
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Saturn’s never looked more majestic than in this beautiful high-resolution image captured recently by Cassini.
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This image shows the rare sight of Saturn’s moons Mimas and Pandora aligning in the night sky—and they couldn’t look more different.
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It took two decades of brilliant engineering to get the Cassini probe to Saturn, and the images this little ‘bot has sent back are the stuff of science fiction. But in the hands of filmmaker Fabio di Donato, they look more like a silent film from the 1920s.
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Ever since NASA’s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft entered Saturn’s orbit in 2004, filmmaker Stephen van Vuuren has been enthralled with its progress. So much so that he’s spent years collecting over a million insanely high-res photos from Cassini’s mission and quilted them together into a 45-minute film called In Saturn’s Rings. Without relying on CGI or fancy visual effects, van Vuuren has patched together a seamless visual journey through our solar system, culminating in a breathtaking view of Saturn’s rings and moons. Distributed by BIG & Digital, the movie is expected to make its way to IMAX theaters sometime in 2014, though there’s no word yet on a specific release date. The first official trailer dropped today, and you can watch it — in 4K if you’ve got the right screen — after the break.
Source: In Saturn’s Rings
Scientists observing Saturn’s moon Titan with NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have boldly gone where no man has gone before — visually, anyway. Using radar imagery collected from nine years of Cassini flybys, researchers were able to patch together the first global topographic map of Titan, published in the July 2013 issue of Icarus. Ralph Lorenz, a member of the Cassini radar team at Johns Hopkins, said, “Titan has so much interesting activity — like flowing liquids and moving sand dunes — but to understand these processes it’s useful to know how the terrain slopes.” In particular, understanding the moon’s terrain can reveal a lot about its dynamic climate system. Like Earth, Titan’s atmosphere is composed primarily of nitrogen, but the liquids and vapors on the moon’s surface are made of methane and other organic chemicals integral to the creation of complex life. By studying the relationship between atmosphere and terrain, researchers hope to learn more about the evolution of life in its earliest stages, and inspire curious minds to turn their eyes toward Titan.
Via: Space
Source: Icarus
If the crashing sound of lightning striking Saturn wasn’t enough to excite your inner-meteorologist, then perhaps footage of a raging extraterrestrial hurricane will win you over. After orbiting the ringed planet for nine years, NASA’s Cassini probe has managed to snag video of a super storm on the celestial body’s north pole. Cloaked by the darkness of winter, the hurricane’s eye became visible as Saturn’s northern hemisphere transitioned into spring. Unlike the tropical cyclones of Earth (see: Hurricane Katrina, Sandy and Irene), this furious typhoon has been spinning for several years and has winds that flow at speeds exceeding 300MPH. Further differentiating itself from our world’s whirlwinds, this alien cyclone is locked to its planet’s north pole and is fueled by small amounts of water vapor instead of an actual ocean. Completely in a category of its own, the hurricane’s eye measures about 1,250 miles wide and is surrounded by fluffy white clouds the size of Texas. To see this Saturnian fury in all its glory, check out the video after the break and feel free to leave your gratuitous hurricane names in the comments below.
Source: NASA
So, first things first. Sega actually shipped some pretty insane gear. A handheld console that used full-size Genesis cartridges? Check. A sophisticated Tamagotchi that our own editor-in-chief developed games for? Yessir. Something called a “32X” that stacked on top of an already sizable home console? Sure, why not? Given the outfit’s history, the item you’re peering at above doesn’t feel all that outlandish. According to one Super Magnetic — a self-proclaimed ex-employee of Sega — this is Pluto.
As the story goes, Sega was pondering the release of a Saturn variant that included an embedded NetLink device. At the time, online console gaming was in its earliest stages, and someone likely assumed that they could kickstart things by including an Ethernet jack from the get-go. Of course, Pluto never saw the light of day in the consumer world — thankfully, you can partake in a few more shots of what could’ve been at the source link below.
Filed under: Gaming
Via: Joystiq
Source: Assembler Games
“I don’t care about the specs, I want one.” That Neogaf user’s comment likely sums up how other retro-gaming aficionados will feel about a new notebook PC from Japanese PC retailer Enterbrain, built in conjunction with Sega. The model sports covers themed in three of the classic consoles, namely Mega Drive, Saturn and Dreamcast, along with a generic Sega-branded model. We do care a little about the specs ourselves, so you’ll get a 64-bit version of Windows 8, 15.6-inch 1,920 x 1,080 screen, Intel Pentium 2020M processor, 4GB of RAM and 500GB of HDD storage, as a minimum configuration. That’ll start at a whopping ¥99,750 ($1,100) when it arrives in June, provided you live in Japan — but if so, all you’d need to go with it for a full ’90s game blast would be a cartridge adapter like this one.
Gallery: Sega Enterbrain themed netbooks
Via: Eurogamer
Source: Ebten (translated)
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