Sometimes I wonder if the guys at NASA are pulling our legs. Above is supposedly a picture of one of Saturn’s moons, Hyperion, as it was shown Sunday on the APOD site. My first impression was that it was a picture of a dead, badly weathered brain coral, or maybe a stromatolite. I dug up a bath sponge I hadn’t used in 20 years, shook off the dust, wetted it, wrung it out, and took the picture below. Pretty close to NASA’s picture if you squint till both pictures nearly disappear.
In their description of Hyperion they mention that the bottoms of the craters are filled with a dark substance, some mystery matter. I looked at the bottoms of the “craters” in my sponge and saw the same thing! When I shook it, out fell deposits left by myriad mice over the years. But I doubt that’s what is darkening Hyperion’s craters. On close examination of their photo, I believe it’s oil! Lots of it! We should toss a line out to lasso that little puppy and tug it into geosynchronous orbit, poke a hose in it, and revel in free oil forever!How come NASA never thinks of neat stuff like that?
Hyperion photo credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA
Sponge photo credit: Moi
2 comments:
Hey Tom, did you click on the APOD photo? I did and it turned on its head, so I clicked on that image and got a very large enlargement. What a weird world.
It seems most of APOD’s photos do something when you click on them. Mostly they just get bigger.
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