Word: planetful
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...biological processes, was high in relation to carbon 13. This indicates that the hydrocarbons were produced by photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert carbon dioxide into organic compounds and oxygen. Ponnamperuma's find shows that life was present on earth 3.8 billion years ago, when the planet was only 800 million years old. The oldest previously known terrestrial life dated back 3.4 billion years...
...attempt to determine whether organic molecules can form on other planets, scientists at Ponnamperuma's Laboratory of Chemical Evolution filled a container with gases like those in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Then, to simulate sunlight and Jovian lightning flashes, they exposed the gases to ultraviolet light and shot electric discharges through them. The brown and yellow hues of the organic compounds that formed in the container closely resemble those in the spectacular pictures of the Jupiter clouds taken by the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, which flew by the planet earlier this year. This finding strongly suggests that organic...
Further study of radiation data revealed that besides the fifth and sixth ("E" and "F") Saturnian rings observed a few days before in Pioneer photos, there was an outermost and tenuous seventh ring as much as 960,000 km (600,000 miles) from the planet. Other facts disclosed by Pioneer's telemetry: Saturn, as expected, has a magnetic field. But it is only 700 times stronger than the earth's, a fifth as intense as scientists had expected. Because this field traps particles radiated from the sun, Saturn has radiation belts that Pioneer detected as it neared...
Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the mission was the failure to record atmospheric and surface temperatures on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Scientists have been particularly fascinated by Titan because it is slightly larger than the planet Mercury and has a thick atmosphere that may be similar to that of the primitive earth. Spectroscopic readings by earthbound astronomers showed, for example, that the atmosphere is rich in methane gas, which is believed to be one of the primary ingredients in the earth's early atmosphere. Given the right temperatures, scientists speculated, some form of life, or at least...
...Because the orbits of Saturn's moons are not precisely defined, some scientists think that the object could be one of the planet's ten known moons...