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.
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 …
"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...
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
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..
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.
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!
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.
"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".
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?
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 :)