| Bright
ideas face test in cold light on Saturn's moon
Sydney Morning Herald, 11th March 2005
This was a
short and sweet article about one of Saturn’s moons. I
thought that it was quite a good article because while
it is informative and contains some interesting facts,
the author has also tried to give the reader an idea of
how big the figures are by relating it to something they
know. For example he says that the moon Enceladus is estimated
to contain 70 billion litres of frozen water but he puts
it into scale by saying that it is enough to fill the
Warragamba Dam more than 37 million times.
The article
also contains some facts about the moon including its
size, shininess, and composition and a model of how it
formed. The article also contains a photograph (supposedly
of the moon), which draws the reader’s attention.
The article
is also good because it gives the reader an idea about
the kind of information that the world’s various spacecraft
are gathering and why it is important and relevant. I
think that it is important for the public to know where
their money is being spent and that it isn’t wasted.
In the article
they discuss one astronomer’s theories about the moon
but they also make it clear that they are just speculations
and that he could be wrong. I appreciated the fact that
he didn’t try to hide the fact that they didn’t have any
conclusive proof.
There were
a few things that I don’t like about this article though.
The first is the title; Bright ideas face test in cold
light of Saturn’s moon. This title doesn’t make it immediately
clear what the article is about and the use of the contrasting
words cold and light just sound silly, not clever. The
author has also made an attempt to be witty by adding
in a few really bad jokes such as the water if melted
would be beautiful for martinis and nice to swim in. He
was obviously trying to lighten the mood of the article
but I found the comments corny and in poor taste.
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