back to article Plastic ingredient FOUND ON MOON of Saturn

A NASA spacecraft sniffing the smoggy atmosphere of Titan has found traces of the chemical used to make plastic containers. The robotic Cassini probe has detected propylene on Saturn's moon - the first time this chemical has been found out in space. Titan is a thoroughly unpleasant world with a brownish atmosphere, liquid …

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  1. chizz

    Good news...

    .. it means we can recycle Titan's atmosphere. Now if the probe can detect hydrocarbons then the yanks can go and liberate them Titaniums.

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      Re: Good news...

      Err, propylene is a hydrocarbon... If that's not enough - there is that liquid methane rain (and IIRC ethane lakes).

      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Unhappy

        Re: Good news...

        "Err, propylene is a hydrocarbon... If that's not enough - there is that liquid methane rain (and IIRC ethane lakes)."

        Indeed.

        Enough Methane to keep the gas turbines of Terra spinning for thousands of years.

        Although that does mean the molten salt reactor programme is cancelled and the CO2 might rise a little bit...

    2. Kharkov
      Angel

      Re: Good news...

      Yes, an Olympus-class oil tanker will be setting off soon to go get that crude...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Excellent

    So that's where I left my tupperware!

    NASA, don't 'spose you'd be kind enough to return it? Ta.

    1. Don Jefe

      Re: Excellent

      Why bother. The correct lids won't be with the containers. Those will be found on another moon.

      1. Armando 123

        Re: Excellent

        @DonJefe - [STANDING OVATION] I wish I could upvote that many times, but I no longer live in Chicago.

      2. ecofeco Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Excellent

        POTD, Don Jefe.

    2. Michael 28
      Happy

      Re: Excellent

      as long as they don't find all the beer cans left on Charon.

  3. Tom 7

    Is that the old tupperware boxes

    that peeled after a while, or the new ones that crack after a few uses?

    1. Sebastian Brosig

      Re: Is that the old tupperware boxes

      Tupperware is and always was mostly PP (Polypropylene).

  4. Eponymous Cowherd
    Happy

    Apparently.....

    similar materials are used by Playmobil..

  5. Caesarius
    WTF?

    Tupperware? What's that got to do with it?

    They might as well say that there's methane in the atmosphere, and methane is a notable constituent of farts.

    And I was taught to write "propene" as the new approved name, and that was over 30 years ago.

    1. Daniel B.

      Re: Tupperware? What's that got to do with it?

      Propene implies a double-carbon bond somewhere. Not the same as Propane.

      1. Stoneshop
        Boffin

        Re: Tupperware? What's that got to do with it?

        Not the same as Propane.

        And where did it say 'propane'? Sure, it's not the same as propene/propylene, but that's neither here nor there.

        -ane : CnH(2n+2)

        and for n>= 2

        -ene: CnH(2n) <- one double C-C bond. Old nomenclature: -ylene

        -yn: CnH(2n-2) <- one triple C-C bond

    2. Charles Manning

      But...

      Would you have clicked the link if it just said methane?

      Remember folks, it is click-whoring that pays the ElReg bills.

  6. itzman

    We will never run out of fossil fuel..

    Obviously what we have to do is move titan to an orbit near the earth.

    hell its no less insane that running a terrorist proof multiply redundant 1 terawatt cable from the deserts of a friendly North Africa populated entirely by bunny hugging politically correct greens and plugging into into the European Supergrid...where it will be backed up by supercapacitors containing more energy than the total world nuclear arsenal.... to keep the lights on at night..

    1. DropBear

      Re: We will never run out of fossil fuel..

      1) Get Titan in Earth orbit as a second moon

      2) Install Titan-Earth methane pipeline attached to a North (South?) Pole inlet

      3) Profit!!!

  7. Philippe

    Plastic??

    Samsung will be on the next flight.

    1. Chris 244

      With a seat right next to Apple

      I take it you haven't heard about the "new" iPhone 5c?

  8. Onionstar

    Is this be confirmation of the Playmonaut's home world? I for one applaud the efforts of the Special Projects Bureau to return him to Titan.

  9. Kubla Cant

    The Tupperware Mines of Titan

    ...another place you don't want to work.

  10. Hero Protagonist

    My god, it's full of...

    ...leftovers??

  11. Pugly
    Mushroom

    Won't be long...

    It won't be long before the health and safety nazis insist on sticking labels all over it warning of flammability.....

    1. Don Jefe

      Re: Won't be long...

      It should also be noted that Titan should not be microwaved as chemicals released in the process can leach into your food.

      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Happy

        Re: Won't be long...

        "It should also be noted that Titan should not be microwaved as chemicals released in the process can leach into your food."

        Hmm.

        A giant magnetron, an orbital nuclear reactor to power it and a large vacuum to hose up the results.

        The possibilities are limitless.

        1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

          Re: Won't be long...

          "A giant magnetron, an orbital nuclear reactor to power it and a large vacuum to hose up the results."

          There is one already - it's called Saturn.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In an infinitely large universe, very few things actually get manufactured, a moon was recently found, that is entirely populated by Tupperware tubs....

  13. Armando 123

    Titan isn't that unpleasant

    It's the only place in the solar system where you can shatter ewoks in a lake of farts, as discussed in that excellent QI documentary with Brian Cox and Ross Noble.

  14. Boyd Crow

    Drinking glasses found in Gobi desert

    The silica in sand is the major component in glass, therefore where there's sand there must be drinking glasses. Same logic as your inane headline. I really don't understand the media's efforts to trivialize scientific discoveries with misleading headlines.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Drinking glasses found in Gobi desert

      Have you seen a doctor about that missing sense of humor? There's a pill for that now.

    2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      What you don't understand

      is the Register. And, you don't appreciate a good "ON THE MOON" headline. So what the hell are you doing here?

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I know where the tupperware came from! The Enterprise left it there in 2009 when Sulu drooped out of warp to catch Nero's ship before it destroyed Earth. It must have slipped through an airlock or out of one of the cargo bays. Dammit Jim, I told you not to pollute! Now we're contaminating the timeline!

  16. sisk

    Wild thoughts

    I just had a wild thought of a massive, space going robotic tanker running on an ion drive powered off of a generator burning methane making trips back and forth to Titan to bring us hydrocarbons. I know the challenges would be very difficult, if not impossible, to overcome in such a project. Even the smallest of them would be massive. Still, it'd be cool to see.

    1. Terry 6 Silver badge

      Re: Wild thoughts

      But do we need that many plastic boxes?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Clearly, a Tupperware party that's out of this world!

  18. Johnny Canuck

    The astronauts can spin it into a polypropylene filament which they can then use in their new 3D printers to make ... er, tupperware.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Terrist prejudice

    "Titan is a thoroughly unpleasant world with a brownish atmosphere, liquid methane rain and freezing temperatures that can plummet to a frosty -180°C."

    Strangely, the Titan guide to Earth says "Earth is a thoroughly unpleasant world with high levels of UV, highly corrosive liquid hydrogen oxide rain and temperatures high enough to vaporise propylene. It is hard to imagine that any life form could survive such conditions".

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Terrist prejudice

      I'll bring a towel.

      1. No, I will not fix your computer

        Re: Terrist prejudice

        A towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

        - Douglas Adams

        So, yes, remember your towel when you travel the galaxy!

        As a side note, perhaps the polypropylene being detected is from all the refills in the biros?

  20. AGurusGuru

    That makes me suspicious of the quality of the testing!

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    We're going nowhere. Get over it.

  22. Stuart Halliday
    Alien

    Always thought Lakeland shops were alien-like....

  23. Frumious Bandersnatch

    It makes one think

    Many (hopefully in multiples) years from now, if a travelling alien probe happens upon the remains of the civilisation here, perhaps they'll find all the various plastics we've left behind. They might find the variety of chemicals fairly unsurprising (given that at least propylene seems to form naturally in some places), but hopefully we'll give them cause to scratch their heads (probably in multiples) wondering what natural forces could have given rise to such a range of shapes and colours :)

    1. DropBear

      Re: It makes one think

      So the deepest of the Plastic Strata will be the ancient Bakelite Layer...?

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    We've found the tupperware

    What moon has the lost socks?

    1. CommanderJameson

      Re: We've found the tupperware

      There is a theory that the cores of gas giants are actually metallic hydrogen.

      This is obviously wrong.

      These cores are metallic, but they're iron. Made from all the teaspoons I can't find.

  25. Kaltern

    I just can't help but remember this line from ID4...

    .... I saw what they're planning to do. They're like locusts. They're moving from planet to planet... their whole civilization. After they've consumed every natural resource they move on...

  26. grim109

    lets mine the crap out of it

  27. Gavin Jamie
    Coat

    Finding water

    It is all very well finding water on the Moon and Mars but only Titan provides somewhere to put it.

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