Carolyn Porco: Fly me to the moons of Saturn

http://www.ted.com Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco shows images from the Cassini voyage to Saturn, focusing on its largest moon, Titan, and on frozen Enceladus, which seems to shoot jets of ice.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes -- including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

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[Nagrobek78]

I have a question for people who complain that solar exploration should be abandoned and the resources should be guided towards feeding the poor and eradicading poverty. My question is - why solar exploration and not for example armaments, building thousands of new churches, mosks and temples, etc. worthless activities? Cause things I mentioned take up a lot more of resources than exploration of space, and give a lot less (if any) gain for humanity.

[visceralgristle]

Must be hard to keep all those astronomers around the world from talking about this stuff though, eh?

Yeah, there might be top secret spy satellite missions, but unless it's to do with national security, there's no reason to hide astronomical findings... it's just a waste of time and money.

[darrenholcomb42]

To quote Carl Sagan "A search (for alien intelligence) lasting decades would cost less than the budget over runs of a single modest weapons system in a single year".

[Electricdreamerb]

Poor Pluto D:

[barkpeeler2000]

i could listen to carolyn porco talk about the universe all day.

[eatingtacos000]

great video. saturn and its moons are truly beautiful

[darrenholcomb42]

I either know something or I don't know something. And I want to know-for a fact-as much about this universe as possible. Belief is too subject to human ego to trust in any way. To quote Douglas Adams "is not enough to see that a garden is beautiful without pretending there are fairies dwelling at the bottom of it". Reality is amazing and will always be so over religion which is just made up nonsense that didn't even exist until about 6000 years ago.

[xSnapper26x]

@Nagrobek78 Yeah I agree, I think churches (especially in the US) and here in Australia to a certain degree, basically go untaxed and have heaps of money to play with. Its ironic that GOD supposedly created the entire universe however seems to need a constant supply of money to continue his deeds, completely silly ...

[Zbochenez]

first define "gain for humanity" so it can be measured. then take a random sample of religious institutions and find the average net gain for humanity inolved (negative or positive). then do the same with exploration of space. then compare the two averages. impossible to do? if so then, from a scientific point of view at least, your statement "give a lot less..." is of no value. maybe research already exists on this. can you provide links then

[omegavalerius]

@rustyscrapper

And yet the Americans just launched the most sophisticated solar exploring satellite system ever: The Solar Dynamics Observatory. And the French just launced their solar observatory: the Picard satellite. The Indians launch one next year. I'm sure you can dream up a way to make this information fit with your statement.

[rustyscrapper]

exploring the solar system would produce evidence that climate change is related to solar cycles. This evidence goes against man made climate change and carbon tax so space must not be exlpored.

They are all in with their frauds they can not go back on climate change or it would prove science is completely hijacked.