UnNews:Saturn moon Titan has big mountains or something

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

13 December 2006

Even if the mountains on Titan looked this cool, neither you nor anyone you'll ever know will ever get to see them like this, so WTF, you know?

SAN FRANCISCO, California -- Some scientists said Tuesday that the international Cassini spacecraft spotted a nearly mile-high mountain range shrouded in hazy clouds on Saturn's giant moon Titan, which is like, so fucking far away that basically, who gives a crap?

The mountains, which stretch for nearly 100 miles, surprised researchers who re-analyzed the images to double-check that they were real and not shadows of other surface features. These researchers are apparently easily surpised by shit that means absolutely nothing to anyone else. A mile high and a 100 miles long is not really that big, if you think about it.

Robert Brown, an easily-surpised Cassini scientist from the University of Arizona, said the mountains reminded him of California's Sierra Nevada range, except it'll be a long, long time (if ever) before any human being lays eyes on them.

"You can call this the Titan Sierra," said Brown, who unveiled the new infrared images at an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. "Or you can call this getting a big boner over nothing."

The mountains are the "tallest" ever seen on Titan and probably formed from the same process that occurs in the Earth's mid-ocean ridge. Whoop-dee-doo. Scientists speculated that hot material beneath Titan's surface gushed up when tectonic plates pulled apart, creating the mountain range, although even if it did, it would still wouldn't mean jack squat to anybody but these eggheads.

Cassini found the summit of the range capped with brilliant white layers that are likely deposits of methane or another organic material, which essentially means frozen farts. Wonderful.