Posted 03.20.2012 at 5:05 pm
21 Comments
Surface of Io
The U.S. Geological Survey released the first complete geologic map of Io. This is a true color image. Click here to embiggen.
USGS
This oozy, pockmarked image is the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io, from the first complete geologic map of the turbulent orb. Io is the most volcanically active place in the solar system, so it’s of great interest to geologists because its surface is continually refreshing and renewing. It’s the only celestial body where scientists have not seen any impact craters.
The U.S. Geological Survey published the Io map using data from four image mosaics, produced by the Voyager and Galileo missions. David Williams, a faculty research associate in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, spent six years breaking the mosaics down to 19 different types of surface material. The map can now be used as a benchmark for further Io studies, allowing scientists to track how the moon changes.
Tidal forces among Jupiter, Io and its sister moons Ganymede and Europa cause wrenching movements in the moon’s crust, creating heat inside the moon and causing its volcanism.
The map, which is rendered in true color, includes lava flows, tholi (volcanic domes), moon calderas called paterae, and sulfur plains. You can download the whole thing here.
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Photo captions says "Click here to embiggen"??? REALLY? EMBIGGEN? EM-freakin-BIGGEN???? Can you have some kind of writing standard here?
Lol, they wish to coin a new word and then copy right it, i.e. 'Embiggen'. POPSCI has now decided to drop the word enlarge. I think they should use 'click here to augumentize', personally, lol.
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Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
As I readable this POPSCI fontisicals, I find that Jupiters lunatic lo has an complete placiod amount of volcantoid participiontablesszz and void of astronimics impacrtiums… too!
This is so cool! I will never have to use spell check again! YEA!
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Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
You guys realize that "embiggen" is a VERY common allusion to The Simpsons, right? You've likely seen it before on a ton of other sites. It's a pretty common colloquialism when talking about enlarging a photo online.
Though, you guys all look really super cool overreacting about it, so you should probably just stay the course.
Can you imagine our President making a speech, explaining how we need to reduce the national debt and stop it from it embiggening. I am sorry, that just sounds silly, lol.
And to defend this word and POPSCI by using the SIMPSON as a source is just crazy funny. Hey it may very well be a real word, but your defense just kills me, ROFL!!! Snort,lol!
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Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
I'll tell you though, that whether it's embiggened or not; Io appears like it might be very heavy in platinum group metals.
Would this mean that Io is not a moon and a planet since its having Volcanic activity??
@eric18 this is still a moon, the reason being it orbits another planet and that classifies it as a moon.
Yes, but if the ISS is in orbit around the Earth, does this make it a moon? The presence of people or activities is incidental, nor does it matter if the actual orbit changes, and those who destroyed the planet Pluto said that size was not the issue; then I submit that the ISS should be renamed the ISM. If the ISS crashed to Earth today, it would be a physical part of this planetary body, thereby becoming PLANET, and if we boosted a trillion kilos of Earth mountains to the station in a big soup kettle, it would still make the station no more and no less a body in orbit around a planet. If we bring Pluto to the moon and stabilize their combined orbit after mating them together, is it not still a moon? If we took a bunch of the moon away, would it no longer be Luna, moon of Earth? One last question. If all that I put on here is just BS, then shouldn't those who felt the testicular and FINANCIALLY based need to destroy Pluto have left it the hell alone and let humanity continue to enjoy it's wonderful colloquialism about our 9th planet? Seriously, our computers could give a damn less what we choose to call any of it, right?
What hat did you pull that rabbit out of? How do you know lo is heavy with platinium. I am curious of your source of information.
On earth, how many volcanoes do we mine on Earth, while they very active?
Do you think we are going to send a mining expedition to lo in hopes of finding platinum on a volcanoe planet. I do not think likely. You have a very embiggen imagination sir. But that is ok, I like that! ;)
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See life in all its beautiful colors, and
from different perspectives too!
@ Space; are you referring to the rabbit masquerading as the word APPEARS? If so, then you'd surely KNOW that I didn't say anything like...This is what it is. Also, you might want to know that the phrase 'platinum group metals' does not in any way signify the presence of platinum. BUT YES!! You ARE indeed right and spot on in your ASSUMPTION that I do think it highly likely that humanity,should we live long enough; will send a mining expedition to Io in hopes of finding, among other things, platinum group metals. I do hope you feel all snug and smug right now, as you might have when you attacked me for my statement that you didn't read very well.
@ Space; Earth technologists would be very hard pressed in taking on a mining mission to Io at our stage of development and with the ever-present profit motive driving almost everything that humans have the capability to do.
quasi44,
You very clearly type 'platinum group metals', I stand corrected. I wish you the best of luck on Earth and on Lo for in mining in volcanoes. Hey, their always has to be the first adventurer that accomplishes this goal. I think you are an embiggen of man to do this task, GOOD LUCK!
Embiggen, I find I just adore that word, happy sigh....
Thank you Rebecca Boyle and Homer Simpson!
..........................................
See life in all its beautiful colors, and
from different perspectives too!
Stupid variable-pitch fonts! The name of the moon is IO, not LO, i as in infidel, not L as in latitude. I remember having the same problem trying to explain that Kim Jong Il was not Kim Jong the second but that the Il was actually an iL. We like to make fun of ancient languages for their lack of punctuation and ambiguities, but we still have plenty of ambiguities of our own!
As for embiggen: It was put into the Springfield town motto by The Simpsons writers probably to demonstrate how uneducated the town is, but it proved to be popular, because it's funny. And now we see how language evolves, new words are born, old words die off. A very annoying process once you reach a certain age, and it doesn't matter how cromulent the new words appear.
“Embiggen” – Sounds like a power word. I hear it in my head booming with echo in the voice of Morgan Freeman. EMBIGGEN!!!
@quasi44 “Yes, but if the ISS is in orbit around the Earth, does this make it a moon?”
"That is no moon… It’s a space station!" -Obi-Wan Kenobi
A moon is a NATURAL satellite. So one could say that the space station IS a moon... an artificial moon.
Here is the current definition of a planet according to wikipedia:
A planet (from Greek πλανήτης αστήρ planētēs astēr "wandering star") is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.
Try to come up with a definition of planet that would include Pluto and limit the total number of planets in our solar system to nine (without listing them by name).
Looks like some kind of sickening bacteria! Maybe the whole planet is alive!
gizmowiz,
Io, is alive, ALIVE! That by far has been the most intelligent comment so far in this article.
Of course it appears to me as scrambled eggs gone terribly wrong, but that is just me. ;)
..........................................
See life in all its beautiful colors, and
from different perspectives too!
Not everything orbiting a planetary body is considered a "moon". More correctly, they're primarily considered "satellites", as a primary classification. A "moon" would be a particular type of "satellite".