WEEKLY WHINE

Titan stumps Edvard

Ready to go to Titan?

Say yes.

There you go.

Yes, the Huygens probe was successfully released from Cassini yesterday. It's now on its way toward Titan, Saturn's largest moon and a possible home of life, though highly unlikely. Anyway, this week we received 9,341,305 questions covering 88,315,230,003 topics. But our favourite one out of all those was that one topic about Titan and Huygens, which we counted as one topic just because. We then passed them over to "Dynamite Eating" Edvard van de Kamp, who has finally switched off the Weakest Link reruns and is ready to respond to them. Speaking of weakest links, the weakest links on this page are the ones in the Whine Control, that little blue box up there next to the headline. Those are the ones that you can use to view more stuff about and/or by Edvard.

Dear Edvard: Where does the name Huygens come from? - Chris Wingobert, Melbourne, Vic, Australia

Dear Chris: The great nation of the Netherlands.

Dear Edvard: What about the name Titan? Where does that come from? - Martina Czabaltra, Budapest, Hungary

Dear Martina: The pretty good nation of Greece.

Dear Edvard: So where does the name Cassini come from? - Bertram Havoline, Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA

Dear Bertram: The comparatively pedestrian nation of Italy.

Dear Edvard: I'm not sure you're addressing these questions about name origins the way the askers wanted. - Cliff Whitehorse, Central Line, MI, USA

Dear Cliff: Like you could do better.

Dear Edvard: Yeah I could. Christiaan Huygens, discoverer of Titan. Titans, the twelve giants who were Uranus and Gaia's children. Jean-Dominique Cassini, discoverer of four other Saturnian satellites and the division in its rings now named in his honour. - Cliff Whitehorse, Central Line, MI, USA

Dear Cliff: Would you like to take over now? No, go ahead. By all means, feel free to give us your answers. I'll sit right here. Enlighten us, Cliff.

Dear Cliff: Who the hell are you? - Linda Fïllar, Stockholm, Sweden

Dear Linda: I'm Edvard's replacement.

Dear Cliff: Is Huygens likely to splash down in a liquid sea on Titan? - Rocky Androne, San Pedro, CA, USA

Dear Rocky: The hell would I know? I'm a retired taxidermist. What would I know about seas on Titan?

Dear Cliff: Ha ha! You suck! - Edvard van de Kamp, Utrecht, Netherlands

Dear Edvard: Do not!