Apple the brand that conquered the world. Undoubtedly, Apple is one of the most well-known brands, the study of its story brings many interesting points.
Apple the brand that conquered the world
Apple the brand that conquered the world which was originally known as Apple Computer, is a multinational company that operates in various fields including the production of electronic devices, personal computers, server production, and computer software. In addition, the mentioned company is one of the largest distributors of multimedia content. Apple has established agencies all over the world to sell its products, which are called App Stores. The main products of this company are the iPhone smartphone, iPad tablet, portable multimedia player, and Macintosh series computers.
At the begining of this article which is about Apple the brand that conquered the world we’re going to talk about Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who founded a company called Apple on April 1, 1976. The registration of this company was also done on the third day of January 1977 (13 January 1355) in Cupertino, California.
For three decades, the main activity of this company was the production of personal computers. In the meantime, products such as the Apple 2 computer, Macintosh and Power Mac were produced. At that time, the sale of these devices was not very favorable and until the 90s, Apple’s market share in the sale of personal computers was very low. Although Steve Jobs was one of the founders of Apple, he was fired from the company between 1985 and 1996. While he was not working at Apple, he founded another company called NeXT, which was eventually bought by Apple. After this incident, Jobs was again elected as the CEO of Apple.
With the introduction of the Apple multimedia player known as the iPod in 2001 and the creation of the iTunes Music Store in 2003, Apple has established itself as one of the top electronics manufacturers and one of the top sellers of multimedia content in the world. These factors caused the computer name to be removed from the end of the company’s name, and in 2007, the company’s name was changed to Apple.
The founding of Apple
If you are reading this article, which is about Aplle the brand that conquered the world, you should probably be considered one of the lovers or at least those interested in the world of technology. With these conditions, you must know that the story of most of the popular and big brands in the field of technology started from a legendary place called the garage of the house. Another thing that exists at the beginning of the story of these types of companies is the not-so-suitable conditions and the workforce of two or three people. But in the end, these beginnings end in a unique ending.
As we mentioned briefly in the introduction section, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are known as the main founders of Apple; But in the meantime, we should not forget one of Steve’s friends named Ronald Wayne. If it wasn’t for Vienna, we might not have seen products like iPhone, iPad, or iMac today. Jobs convinced his friend Wayne to work as his and Steve Wozniak’s subordinate by receiving 10% of the shares of the newly founded company. But 12 days after this happened, Wayne sold his shares worth only $500. This stock is currently worth 72 billion dollars.
The founding of Apple – the meeting of Jobs and Wozniak
The Steves in the story met each other in one of the computer clubs. In this club, computer enthusiasts gathered in a garage in Menlopark, California. The two shared a common goal: to make computers simple for everyone.
At that time, Wozniak had built his first computer. This computer had a keyboard similar to a typewriter and could be connected to a TV. Later, this computer was produced under the name of Apple One, and in fact, it should be considered a prototype of all modern computers. But Wozniak’s main goal was not to change the world, he was more interested in showing himself to others as someone who is able to produce the best possible product with the least resources.
Ronald Wayne
Before founding Apple, Wozniak was reluctant to show his computer to others. He was embarrassed and thought he knew very little about computer systems, so he decided not to introduce his machine to the club altogether. But thanks to Steve Jobs, who saw great potential in Wozniak’s computer, Wozniak relented. If Jobs had not met Wozniak, perhaps the computer built by Wozniak would never have been seen. Even in order to finance the production of this computer, Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen. Wozniak also sold his HP calculator at that time, and finally, the two, together with Ronald Wayne, founded Apple Computer on April 1, 1976 (12 April 1355), a company that is now 42 years old.
Choosing the name of the Apple the brand that conquered the world is the issue in which we’re going to talk about. According to Wozniak’s interview published in Bytes magazine in December 1984, he attributed the idea of choosing the name Apple to Steve Jobs. Wozniak said in this interview: “Jobs occasionally gardened and grew his own organic produce. I think the name Apple came to him because of this or maybe it was the feedback of nature. Maybe this word suddenly inspired him for a moment. In any case, after the name Apple, we both tried to substitute other names; But in the end, none of us managed to find a better name than Apple.”
Selling Apple One computers
Wozniak built all the computers by hand, even though the price set for each Apple One computer was slightly more than the cost of buying its parts. If they managed to sell 50 Apple Ones, only their investment costs would be returned. But Steve Jobs had more ambitious dreams.
The price of Apple One was set at $666.66. The newly founded Apple managed to sign a contract with the Byte store located in Mountain View to produce 50 Apple One units at a price of $500 per unit. Apple was not able to produce more Apple One at that time. The Atari company, where Steve Jobs had a history of working, requested the desired amount in cash to sell each piece to him, and the bank also disqualified Jobs from receiving a loan. Although at that time, Steve Jobs had received an offer of 5 thousand dollars from the father of one of his friends; But this amount was not enough to provide the resources needed to build more Apple One computers.
After preparing the Byte Store order, problems arose between the fledgling Apple Computer Company and the manager of the store, which ultimately led Steve Jobs to take another risk for success. In that situation, he promised to complete the manufactured computers and deliver them to the store in question on time. In fact, the Byte store did not have much hope of selling the Apple One prototype, and for this reason, in the conversations between the Byte shop manager and Steve Jobs, it was decided that this product would become a complete computer. It was around this time that Ronald Wayne became completely disillusioned with the company he had just founded with his friends and eventually left the company.
After his fiasco with the Byte store and his new commitments, Jobs worked hard with Wozniak and several friends and family to get the store’s change order on time. Young and motivated Steve did his job well and kept his promise. When the modified Apple Computer product was delivered to the Byte shop for the second time, Terrell, who managed the said store, was surprised by what he saw.
The product that Jobs and Wozniak had prepared was just a computer board that would not work without its prerequisites. Terrell couldn’t even test these boards and had to buy two converters. Since this product did not have a keyboard or display, it was not possible to transfer information to it without the necessary accessories. Even if a keyboard was added to this board, even with the great effort of a programmer, it would not be possible to program it; Because Jobs and Wozniak did not present the programming language on a cassette tape or a ROM memory chip. Another problem with this product was that there was no box for it.
Terrell did not hope for this win either; But Jobs finally convinced him to fulfill the contract and pay the desired amount to the young Apple company. Finally, between 1976 and September 1977, 200 Apple One computers were produced. Considering that every 200 Apple One computers made were sold, this product can be considered a successful device. This computer made the fledgling Apple company experience a very impressive growth.
Apple computer 2
In this part of the article which is about Apple the brand that conquered the world, we’re going to talk about Apple computer 2. In April 1977, the Apple II computer was introduced at the West Coast Computer Show. At that time, this product had shoulder-to-shoulder competition with giants such as Commodore PET. This machine, like its previous generation, was a pioneering machine that used color graphics and its memory was of a tape type, which was later upgraded to a 5.2-inch floppy. The Apple 2 could display images on an NTSC display with a true resolution of 280 x 192 pixels, which was amazing at the time, and this resolution was considered a high resolution.
The Apple 2 computer was a real invention. The author of Steve Jobs’ biography, Walter Isaacson, has said that the introduction of Apple 2 was the starting point of the personal computer industry. The problem, however, was the $1,300 price set for this computer, which did not seem reasonable considering its technical specifications. Of course, paying such a fee for users required a good reason. But Apple 2 had a very good feature that people had a good reason to buy this product due to this feature.
Visicalc software is a stimulus to increase the sales of Apple 2
A Harvard Business School student named Dan Bricklin provided a very good mental picture. He had the idea of a display in which numbers are visually visible and can be interacted with using a mouse and keyboard and various operations such as addition and subtraction can be performed on them. Of course, what came to Bricklin’s mind in the 1970s has appeared in today’s spreadsheet software such as Excel. Bricklin along with Bob Frankston developed VisiCalc software for Apple 2 within two months.
VisiCalc was introduced in 1979. The software was advertised as a magic screen capable of recalculating. Obviously, the release of the aforementioned software was one of the most important factors that contributed to the successful sale of the Apple 2 computer and made the company establish a solid foundation in the personal computer industry.
Before the official introduction of VisiCalc, an analyst named Benjamin M. Rosen, after a brief review of this software, expressed his opinion as follows: “VisiCalc is very powerful and complete, and its operation is easy and suitable, and these characteristics make this software probably one of the Become the best-selling software in history. In addition, the existence of such software helps to sell more computers.”
Of course, there were other people at that time who didn’t think it was reasonable to buy Apple 2 just because of having the mentioned software. Among these people, we can mention Tim Berry, who thought it would be better if VisiCalc could run on CP/M computers so that its capabilities could be used on other systems.
Apple, Xerox, and one-button mouse
The two Steve stories targeted the big names in the industry with two personal computers produced in their company.
At that time, Xerox also established a research center called Xerox PARC in America. The center was built to investigate new technologies and helped advance technologies such as optical multimedia content, Ethernet, and laser printers that are used on a daily basis.
Both the Apple One and the Apple 2 were text-based systems that were very similar to the early personal computers offered by IBM. But Steve Jobs wanted to make a device that had more sense. He convinced Xerox to give him access to Xerox PARC for three days along with some Apple employees. In return, Xerox bought 100,000 shares of Apple at a price of $10 per share before the company’s initial public offering, which brought high profits and low risk to Xerox. Jobs’ opinion changed when he saw a device called Alto. This machine was widely used in the Xerox research center and at that time it used a horizontal display and a graphical user interface. These two features made Alto ahead of others in its time. Xerox company produced a total of 2000 units of this product. Steve Jobs came to the conclusion that the computers produced by Apple should have a function similar to the product of Xerox.
Apple’s entry into the stock market
After Ford went public in 1956, the largest IPO (initial stock offering) was held by Apple in 1980. At that time, Apple entered the stock market with a value equal to 1.8 billion dollars, and this was enough to make more than 40 of the company’s 1,000 employees become millionaires overnight.
The Apple 3 computer was also introduced in 1980 at a price between $4,340 and $7,800 and was supposed to be Apple’s flagship and business computer, but this did not happen due to the problems that arose for this product. As a reminder, it is not bad to mention that Apple 3 uses a processor with a working frequency of 2 MHz, and its RAM memory was considered to be 4 KB.
A year after Apple’s IPO, in 1981, IBM introduced a personal computer priced at $1,565. This product did not have significant technical specifications and because people did not care about these specifications, after two years it was able to take a significant share of Apple’s market. At the same time, Apple felt its first strong tremor. As a result, this company fired 40 of its employees, and changes were made in the positions of the main managers. In 1982, the young Microsoft company started making some software for Apple’s mysterious Mac project; But the Redmonds were simultaneously working on a graphical user interface (Windows) for IBM PCs.
But in 1983, Apple also introduced a computer named Lisa with a price of $9,995. This product was actually the first commercial computer with a mouse and graphical user interface; But due to the high price, low speed, and lack of compatibility with other products, it could not be successful.
The birth of the Mac and the departure of Steve Jobs from Apple
Finally, in 1984, the long-awaited Mac personal computer was introduced. This personal computer uses 128 kilobytes of memory and its price was set at $2,495. Other features of the early Mac include its 8 MHz processor.
But in 1985, after problems arose between Jobs and Scully (CEO of Pepsi, who took over as CEO of Apple), Steve Dastan resigned from Apple and founded a new company called Next (NeXT).
Things did not go well for Apple after Jobs’ resignation until in 1988 Apple sued Microsoft for infringing the audio and visual rights of the Lisa computer and using Apple’s achievements in Windows 2.0 due to the excessive decrease in Macintosh sales. 3 complained.
It was in this year that Jobs introduced a new personal computer in the Next company. In 1988, Apple introduced only one product called Mac IIx, which had nothing to say against the product made by NeXT. The NextComputer was a 12-inch product that ran the Unix operating system. In addition, the court situation between Apple and Microsoft did not end in favor of Cupertino.
In 1990, in response to criticism of the company’s high prices, Apple introduced three low-cost Mac models: the first model was the Mac Classic, priced at $999. The second model was called McLC and it was sold at the price of 2400 dollars, and finally, the third model was the Mac IIsi and it cost 3800 dollars. Despite the technical limitations of these three products, Apple managed to sell a large number of them and once again win back the trust of its investors.
In 1990, Apple also invested in Arm. This company paid 2.5 million dollars to ARM and acquired 43% of the shares of this CPU manufacturer. At the end of the 1990s, Apple sold its 43% stake in ARM at a price equal to 792 million dollars, and this caused the losses incurred by ARM to be compensated so the company could move away from its bad days.
Powerbook entered the market
Although Apple tried many times to produce a portable product, But this effort never came to fruition. But Apple did not give up and finally, in 1991, it introduced its first portable personal computer named Powerbook. This product is actually the first generation of products that we know today as MacBook. In that year, Apple unveiled three models: PowerBook 100, PowerBook 140, and PowerBook 170. These devices offered features like Mac, But their weight was low and this product eventually became a standard for portable computers.
In 1991, Apple also cooperated with IBM and produced a multimedia engine, an operating system, and computers based on Motorola’s RISC processors.
After years of dominance of the Macintosh operating system, finally, in 1992, Microsoft was able to attract the opinion of many users with the release of Windows 3.1. At that time, Apple’s 15% share was rapidly slipping away from this company.
Of course, another important event happened to Apple in 1992, and that was the entry of a 25-year-old and creative designer named Jonathan Ive into the Cupertino industrial design group. He worked in the design of products such as MessagePad 110 and after 6 years at Apple, he became the main designer of the iMac. As we know, iMac was one of Apple’s turning points in the design of personal computers. Before the unveiling of the iMac, Steve Jobs returned to the company he founded with Apple’s acquisition of NeXT. The purchase of NeXT gave Apple the opportunity to use the company’s significant improvements in the field of software, which resulted in fundamental and positive changes in the Mac operating system.
iMac, redefining the desktop computer
The age of computers connected to the Internet for most people is associated with the blue Apple iMac. This personal computer was priced at $1,299 and was one of the fastest Mac series computers introduced by Apple.
MacOS X strategy is defined. At Apple’s World Developers Conference, Steve Jobs announced to developers that Mac OS 8.5 is a truly advanced operating system that provides great features to users.
After the success of the iMac in 1998, Apple also applied an update to its portable computers. In 99, Apple unveiled a product called iBook.
Dual iPod and iTunes and the revolution in the world of music
In 2001, 4 years after the infrastructural changes of Steve Jobs in Apple, this company introduced a revolutionary product called the iPod, which with its price of 399 dollars uses 5 gigabytes of internal storage memory and could hold 1000 MP3 audio files. But at that time, few people thought that this product could completely revolutionize not only Apple but also the music industry.
Simultaneously with the introduction of the iPod, Apple released a new version of the MacOS X operating system. In this version, features that Mac users have been waiting for for a long time were added, including multitasking, multi-processing activity, etc. Of course, the original version of OAS X was not yet ready for public release.
But it was in 2002 that MacOS X 10.2 was prepared by Apple under the code name Jaguar. Apple has implemented many improvements in this version, including the addition of email, iChat, address book, Inkwell, Quicktime 6 with support for MPEG-4 format, improved universal access, optimized search section, Sherlock 3, Quartz Extreme, And Rendezvous pointed out.
This version of OAS X was one of the turning points of this operating system and one of the important factors in attracting users’ attention to Apple’s desktop platform. In 2003, one of the most important products of Apple, the iTunes store, was unveiled. After the success that the Cupertinos achieved with the release of the iPod, the company decided to establish the music store Itinos; A virtual store where more than 200 thousand songs were available to users. At that time, users had to pay 99 cents to access each song.
In 2003, Apple also revolutionized the laptop industry by introducing the world’s first 17-inch notebook. In addition, the 12-inch Apple Powerbook model was introduced this year, which was considered the smallest laptop made by this company until then.
iPhone and the beginning of Apple’s dominance
In 2007, one of the most historic moments was spent in Apple.In this year, the first generation of the iPhone smartphone was introduced by Steve Jobs, the creative brain of Apple.This product is considered one of the most revolutionary technology products in history.With the introduction of the iPhone, the relationship between mobile operators and phone manufacturers entered a new phase.
It is safe to say that the birth of the iPhone is a turning point in the history of the technology world.With the iPhone, Apple brought down many giants in the field of mobile phones such as Nokia and ended the monotony of competitors such as Microsoft.The iPhone has been Apple’s main product for more than a decade, so that most of the company’s income comes from iPhone sales.
Three years later, in 2010, Steve Jobs introduced the first iPad tablet, which revolutionized the field once again.If iPhones and iPads are not more important than Apple Macs, they are certainly not less important.
In addition, by introducing the iCloud cloud service, Apple made this technology available to ordinary users in its own way.As we know, cloud services similar to iCloud are provided by many companies today.Although Apple was not the first company active in the field of cloud services, it played a very important role in presenting and introducing this service to ordinary users.
But finally 2011 came.A year that was perhaps one of the saddest times for many Apple fans.Steve Jobs died this year, just one day after the introduction of the iPhone 4S at the age of 56.
In 2013, during the World Developers Conference, Apple unveiled the new and completely redesigned Mac Pro.This product was small and its black color and cylindrical shape attracted the attention of many desktop users.This model was improved in many ways compared to the previous models and was sold from December of the same year at a price of $2,999.Although the Mac Pro price is very high, we must note that Apple has produced this product for professional users.
Apple’s next revolutionary product in the gadget market was the Apple Watch, which was introduced in 2014 by Tim Cook.In introducing this product, they introduced it as a tool to control health and fitness.The first version of Apple Watch was released on April 24, 2015, and three versions have been introduced to date.As the most valuable company in the world, Apple has an annual income of about 220 billion dollars, of which 48 billion is reported as net income.The company has 123,000 employees around the world and its stock value also sees many jumps every day.
This company recently became the first American company with a market value of one trillion dollars.Thanks to a jump in the value of its shares, the Cupertinos managed to achieve such an achievement ahead of Amazon, the online retail giant of the world of technology, as the company’s closest competitor.We note that contrary to public opinion, Apple is not the first trillion dollar company in the world;Because PetroChina achieved this figure for a short time in 2007.
The surge in Cupertino’s stock came a day after it reported better-than-expected financial results for the third quarter of 2018.During this time, the giant of the technology world reached a profit of 11.5 billion dollars from an income of 53.3 billion dollars, and this issue increased the value of its shares to such an extent that the market value of this company simply jumped from 935 billion dollars to 1 trillion dollars.
In addition to having rings and attractive features, the planet Saturn has many and varied moons. The two moons Titan and Enceladus are attractive destinations for researchers due to their unique features and potential for life.
Moons of Saturn; Features and Explorations
The planet Saturn has a large number of diverse moons, ranging from satellites with a diameter of tens of meters to large moons like Titan with dimensions larger than the planet Mercury. Saturn has 82 confirmed moons, only 13 of which are larger than 50 km in diameter. Titan is the most prominent moon of Saturn and the second-largest moon in the Solar System after Ganymede (Jupiter’s moon). The moon’s atmosphere is as nitrogen-rich as Earth’s and offers views of river networks and hydrocarbon lakes.
The twenty-four moons of Saturn are regular satellites and their progressive orbits are not inclined to Saturn’s equatorial plane. These twenty-four moons include seven main satellites, four small moons, two small-orbiting moons, and two other moons that act as shepherds of Saturn’s F ring. The remaining 58 moons, which have a diameter varying from 4 to 213 km, are among the irregular moons whose orbits are further away from Saturn. These moons are likely captured planets or parts of bodies that have collapsed after being trapped. Irregular months are divided into Inuit, Norse, and Gaelic groups based on orbital characteristics. The names of these groups are taken from Greek mythology. The largest irregular moon of Phoebe is Saturn’s ninth moon, which was discovered at the end of the 19th century. Saturn’s rings are a combination of microscopic variable bodies to satellites several hundreds of meters in diameter, each orbiting Saturn in its own orbit.
Formation and origin
It is believed that Saturn’s lunar system was formed similar to Jupiter’s moons, but in general, the details of the formation of Saturn’s moons are unclear. On June 23, 2014, NASA reported strong evidence that the nitrogen in Titan’s atmosphere came from material from the Oort cloud, not from Saturn.
Group of months
Although the demarcation of Saturn’s moons is somewhat vague, they can be divided into ten groups based on their orbital characteristics. Many of these moons, including Penn and Daphnis, are in Saturn’s ring system, and their orbital period is slightly longer than that of Saturn. Internal moons and regular moons have an average orbital inclination that varies from 1 degree to 1.5 degrees. On the other hand, the irregular moons in the outermost part of Saturn’s moon system, especially in the Norse group, have orbital radians of millions of kilometers and orbital periods of several years. The Norse moons also orbit Saturn in the opposite direction.
Large inner moons: Saturn’s innermost large moons are located in Saturn’s thin E ring. These moons are Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, and Dione.
Outer large moons: These moons are located on the other side of the E ring, they are: Rhea, Titan, Hyperion, Laptus
Irregular months
Irregular moons are small satellites with high radians and inclinations and are thought to have been trapped by Saturn’s gravity in the past. The exact size of these moons is still unknown because their dimensions are so small that they are difficult to observe with a telescope.
Alkeonides
The three small moons between the moons of Mimas and Enceladus are called Alkeonids, which derives its name from Greek mythology. These three months are Matun, Ant, and Plan. Ant and Meton have a very thin circular arc in their orbit, while Plan has a completely thin ring. During these months, only texts were photographed from a relatively close distance. This egg-shaped moon has a small number of impact craters.
Overview of Titan and Enceladus
Titan and Enceladus are the two prominent moons of Saturn, which have been noticed by Cassini Huygens probe data and the potential for life in the past years, and missions have been designed to visit these two mysterious moons.
Titan
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second-largest moon in the solar system (after Jupiter’s moon Ganymede). Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a dense, cloudy planet-like atmosphere. Scientists believe that the conditions on Titan are similar to the initial conditions on Earth, but the only difference is that the Earth is closer to the Sun and it is hotter. In many ways, Titan is the most similar to Earth.
Titan’s diameter reaches 2,575 km, which is approximately 50% wider than the Earth’s moon. The distance between Titan and Saturn is nearly 1.2 million kilometers and 1.4 billion kilometers or 9.5 AU from the Sun. An astronomical unit is the distance from the Earth to the sun. It takes about 80 minutes for sunlight to reach Titan because of this distance, sunlight is about 100 times dimmer than sunlight on Earth.
It takes approximately 15 days and 22 hours for Titan to complete one orbit of Saturn. Titan is tidally locked to Saturn, which means that, like Earth’s moon, one side of it is always seen from Saturn. It takes approximately 29 Earth years for Saturn to complete the orbit of the Sun (Saturnian year), and Saturn’s axis of rotation, like Earth’s, has a deviation that causes seasons on this planet; But Saturn’s seasons are longer, typically lasting nearly seven Earth years each. Since Titan’s orbit is in line with Saturn’s equatorial plane and Titan’s deviation from the Sun is almost the same as Saturn’s, the seasons of this month are the same as Saturn’s, that is, almost every season of Titan is seven Earth years and one year is equal to 29 Earth years.
Cassini image of Titan’s north polar hydrocarbon lake
Scientists are not sure about the exact formation and origin of Titan. However, this month’s weather holds clues. A number of Cassini Huygens probe instruments measured nitrogen-14 and nitrogen-15 isotopes in Titan’s atmosphere. According to the findings, the nitrogen isotope ratio found in Titan is very similar to the isotope of comets in the Everett cloud. The globular Oort cloud consists of hundreds of billions of icy bodies that are located at a distance between 5000 and 100 thousand astronomical units from the sun (each astronomical unit is equal to 150 million kilometers). The nitrogen ratio of Titan’s atmosphere shows that the building blocks of this moon were formed in the same gas and dust cloud as the Sun in the early history of the solar system, and the origin of these blocks is not the hot disk of Saturn’s material.
Surface: Titan’s surface is one of the most similar to Earth in the entire solar system. Of course, its temperatures are lower and it has different chemical characteristics. The surface temperature of Titan reaches minus 179 degrees Celsius. Titan may also have volcanic activity. The moon’s surface is full of methane and ethane streams that form large river and lake channels. No other world in the entire solar system (except Earth) has surface liquid.
Atmosphere: Nearly 95% of Titan’s atmosphere is nitrogen and 5% is methane. Traces of carbon compounds can also be found in the atmosphere of this planet. In the altitudes of this month, methane and nitrogen molecules are decomposed due to collision with the ultraviolet light of the sun and energetic particles. Parts of this molecule are re-combined and produce various biochemical substances such as substances containing carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and other elements necessary for life.
Some of the compounds are formed by decomposition and cycle of methane and nitrogen. Methane and nitrogen create a thick, orange cloud that covers the moon’s surface, making it difficult to observe Titan’s surface from space. The origin of all methane in the atmosphere still remains a mystery.
The presence of methane and nitrogen in Titan’s atmosphere causes orange clouds
Life Potential
Cassini’s numerous gravity measurements of Titan indicate that the moon has a subsurface ocean of liquid water, possibly mixed with salt and ammonia. The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe also measured radio signals from the moon’s surface in 2005, indicating oceans 55 to 80 kilometers below Titan’s icy surface. The discovery of a global ocean of liquid water also places Titan in the group of moons of the solar system that have the potential for life. Additionally, the rivers, lakes, and seas of methane and liquid ethane on Titan’s surface could serve as a habitable environment on the surface of this moon, although any possible life on this moon would be different from terrestrial life; Therefore, Titan can host habitats and conditions suitable for life, including life that we know (in the subsurface ocean) and life that we do not know (in surface hydrocarbon liquids). Although evidence of life on Titan’s surface has yet to be discovered, the moon’s complex and unique chemical nature are definitive findings that make it an ideal destination for exploration.
Enceladus
Few moons in the solar system are as fascinating as Enceladus. Some of these moons are thought to have liquid water oceans beneath their frozen crusts, but one of Enceladus’ unique features is its geysers. Based on samples obtained from space probes, Enceladus has the most chemical elements necessary for life and probably has hydrothermal or hydrothermal vents that transport hot mineral water from subsurface oceans.
About the size of Arizona, Enceladus has the whitest and most reflective surface in the Solar System. This moon has a ring system and ejects ice fragments into space into its orbit. These fragments form Saturn’s E ring. The name Enceladus comes from Greek mythology. The images of the Voyager spacecraft in the 1980s show that this moon, despite its small size (approximately 500 km in diameter), has a relatively smooth ice surface in some places and has a high brightness. In fact, Enceladus is one of the most reflective bodies in the solar system, the reason for which scientists did not know for years.
Since Enceladus reflects a large part of the sunlight, its surface temperature is extremely low and reaches minus 201 degrees Celsius. Enceladus is located at a distance of 238 thousand kilometers from Saturn between the orbits of the other two moons Mimas and Tethys. The moon is tidally locked to Saturn, taking approximately 32.9 hours to complete one orbit in the densest part of Saturn’s E ring.
The Cassini spacecraft captured this amazing image of Enceladus in October 2008
In 2005, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed water ice, and gas particles ejected from the surface of Enceladus at speeds of approximately 400 meters per second. These eruptions appear to be continuous, creating a huge halo of icy dust around Enceladus that forms the material of Saturn’s E ring. Only a small fraction of this material enters the ring, and most of it falls on the surface of Enceladus as snow. For this reason, this moon has a white and bright surface.
Enceladus’ geysers originate from relatively hot cracks in its crust, which scientists call tiger stripes. Several gases such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and maybe a little ammonia, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen along with salt and silica make up the gas cover of the Enceladus geyser channels. The density of biological material in geysers is twenty times higher than expected by scientists.
Based on measurements of the Doppler effect and the very small amplitude of Enceladus’ wobble as it spins around, scientists have discovered a global ocean beneath the moon’s surface. They believe that the thickness of the ice shell of Enceladus in its south pole is close to 1 to 5 km. The average thickness of the entire crust is between 20 and 25 km.
Since the ocean of Enceladus is covered with ice and the glaciers form Saturn’s E ring, examining the E ring could mean examining the ocean of Enceladus. A large part of the E ring is made up of ice particles, but among them you can also find very small particles of silica. These particles are formed when liquid water and rock react with each other at temperatures above 90 degrees Celsius. This is another indication of the existence of warm blue channels under the icy crust of Enceladus, which are not dissimilar to the warm blue channels of the Earth’s oceans. Enceladus is one of the prime candidates for life in the solar system with features such as a global ocean, unique chemistry and internal heat.
Enceladus glaciers; Parts of the icy fragments make their way into Saturn’s E ring
Space discoveries and explorations
The first moon of Saturn was discovered in 1655. Within two hundred years after the discovery of the first moon, seven more large moons were observed. Astronomers managed to discover 18 moons in the orbit of this planet until 1997. NASA’s Cassini mission and advances in ground-based telescopes made it possible to discover other moons of Saturn. In 1847, British astronomer Sir John Herschel suggested that Saturn’s moons be named after Greek mythology.
With the beginning of the space age, more features of Saturn’s moons were obtained. Unmanned probes have revolutionized the study of exoplanets. The Voyager spacecraft reached Saturn in 1980-1981 and discovered its three moons Atlas, Prometheus, and Pandora. The number of Saturn’s moons reached 17 by that time. In 1990, Penn’s moon was discovered in Voyager archive images.
The Cassini spacecraft, which arrived at Saturn in the summer of 2004, discovered three more of Saturn’s inner moons. Cassini scientists announced in November 2004 that there are more moons in Saturn’s ring structure, although only one, Dauphines, was confirmed at the time. In 2007, the moon Ante was discovered, and in 2008 Cassini observations reported high-energy electrons on the moon Rhea near Saturn’s magnetosphere, indicating a ring system around Saturn’s second largest moon. In March 2009, the Aegon satellite was discovered in Saturn’s G ring. In July of the same year S/2009 S1, the first B-ring satellite was observed. In April 2014, a new moon was reported in ring A.
Images of Saturn’s moons
On July 1, 2004, the Cassini Huygens spacecraft began its SOI (Saturn Orbit Entry) maneuver and entered Saturn’s orbit. Cassini had extensively explored the Saturn system prior to SOI. The probe flew by Phoebe’s moon in June 2004 and sent back high-quality data. Cassini also flew by the surface of Titan twice, and on December 25, 2004, the Huygens probe was sent to the surface of this moon. Huygens landed on Titan’s surface on January 14, 2005 and sent a series of data back to Earth. In 2005, Cassini flew past Titan and other icy moons of Saturn several times.
According to a March 10, 2000 NASA report, the Cassini probe discovered evidence of liquid water reservoirs in the glaciers and geysers of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. In July 2005, Cassini discovered the first evidence of hydrocarbon lakes near Titan’s north pole, which was later confirmed in January 2007. In March 2007, more evidence was obtained of Titan’s arctic hydrocarbon seas, the largest of which is the size of the Caspian Sea. In 2009, Cassini discovered four new moons. Cassini’s mission ended in September 2017 after an intentional collision with Saturn’s atmosphere.
Future missions to Saturn will be dedicated to exploring its two oceanic moons, Titan and Enceladus. If all goes according to plan, NASA’s Dragonfly robotic probe will launch in 2026 and reach Titan by 2034. The purpose of this probe is to investigate several situations on the surface of Titan.
Dragonfly is the first unmanned surface lander that can fly through Titan’s thick atmosphere. The probe’s instruments help assess chemical and biological traces of possible past and present life on Titan. The probe will also investigate Titan’s sand dunes and biomaterials. Overall, Dragonfly will investigate Titan’s atmosphere, surface features, subsurface oceans, and surface fluids.
After Titan, Enceladus is the next target of Saturn system research. Cassini’s discoveries from this month attracted a lot of attention, and several plans to explore Enceladus were proposed, but none were finalized. In September 2018, NASA and the Breakthrough Initiative proposed an agreement for the initial phase of the Enceladus mission. This spacecraft will be lightweight and low-cost and will investigate glaciers and sample them.
Scientists have managed to discover new active hydrothermal wells at a depth of 2,550 meters below the surface of the ocean, wells that emit water with a temperature of more than 300 degrees Celsius.
Discovery of new hydrothermal wells at a depth of 2.5 km in the ocean
Five active and new hydrothermal wells have been discovered in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 2,550 meters on the seabed. These wells are places where superheated water erupts from the sea floor.
A hydrothermal vent is a crack on the surface of the earth, which geologically heats the surrounding waters.
Hydrothermal vents are often found in areas that are volcanically active, such as areas where tectonic plates are moving apart, ocean floors, and hot spots. The most famous hydrothermal system on land is probably Yellowstone National Park in America. Under the sea, hydrothermal vents are called black chimneys and can be found in most deep ocean waters.
The surroundings of hydrothermal wells are biologically more productive and are often home to complex communities that use chemicals dissolved in well fluids. Chemosynthetic activities form the base of the food chain and are used by organisms as diverse as large tube worms, bivalves, barnacles, and shrimp.
It is believed that there are active hydrothermal vents on Jupiter’s moon Europa and also on one of Saturn’s moons Enceladus. It is also believed that there were active hydrothermal vents on Mars in the past.
It should be mentioned that these new hydrothermal wells were discovered by Sentry, which is an autonomous underwater probe, accompanied by Alvin, a manned submarine. These two technologies together accelerated the process of this research and exploration.
“By jointly operating these two advanced deep-sea submarines, we can make significant new discoveries about how the deep ocean floor is structured in some of the most inhospitable environments on Earth,” said Ross Parnell-Turner, a member of the operations team.
The team, led by Jill McDermott of Lehigh University, discovered these wells in a highly volcanic region in the eastern Pacific. These wells spit out fluids with a temperature of more than 300 degrees Celsius.
These wells are formed due to the continuous separation of tectonic or tectonic plates in the East Pacific Rise, which is located in the wide volcanic mountain chain of the mid-ocean ridge. In this section, two tectonic plates are moving away from each other by approximately 11 cm per year.
Mid-ocean ridges are underwater mountain ranges formed by plate tectonics. The mid-ocean ridges are connected and form a global mid-ocean ridge system.
Thibaut Barriere, one of the senior scientists of this exploration from the University of Brest in France, says: The mid-ocean ridge accounts for more than 75% of all volcanic activity on our planet.
He, who is an expert in thermal measurements and modeling of hydrothermal wells, added: This area is filled with thousands of hot water springs in the deep sea like this, all of which remove 10% of the total internal heat of the earth.
We want to increase our understanding of how hydrothermal vents release heat and chemicals as they pass through the seafloor and affect the global ocean.
The researchers first sent Sentry to use its sensors to create high-resolution maps during the night. Maps of this robot were analyzed to show how humans travel to this location during the day. This process allowed them to collect first-hand data.
“The high-resolution maps that Sentry produces will allow us to identify new hydrothermal fields immediately after the robot returns to the deck,” McDermott said. Sentry gives us great targets for Alvin and the opportunity for multiple discoveries in one dive.
Finding extraterrestrial life
Wells rich in chemicals are known to support life around them, even in the darkest and deepest places on the sea floor. Studying these wells can provide valuable insights into the conditions they may support beyond Earth.
Saturn’s moon Enceladus is believed to have hydrothermal vents beneath its icy surface.
Additionally, understanding hydrothermal vents helps scientists understand the geophysical, chemical, and biological processes that shape our planet.
The study team aims to further investigate this hydrothermal activity and volcanoes along the eastern Pacific mid-ocean ridge in a subsequent mission that will also include the use of Sentry and Alvin.
It is worth mentioning that the Alvin probe has been involved in the discovery of several hydrothermal vents since 1977 and began its work by investigating an ocean ridge in the north of the Galapagos Islands.
Reviews of Xiaomi Poco X6 Neo phone, price, technical specifications, design, screen, software, hardware, battery life, charging, and other specifications of this phone.
Xiaomi Poco X6 Neo review
Introduction
Poco X6 Neo is the most affordable model in the X6 series. The other models in the series, the X6 and X6 Pro, borrow bits and pieces from Xiaomi’s Redmi range of devices. However, the X6 Neo is, for all intents and purposes, essentially the Redmi Note 13R Pro with a different name. Since we haven’t looked at that model either, it’s a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
Poco X6 Neo, the cheaper model of this series, loses some of the beauty of the more expensive models. You get a usable camera on the back and the chip drops to a MediaTek Dimensity 6080. 120Hz AMOLED screen and 3x lossless zoom in 108MP camera.
With a starting price of INR 15,999 (~$192), it is slightly cheaper than the X6 and X6 Pro. Let’s see what you get for the money you pay.
Unboxing Poco X6 Neo
The Poco X6 Neo comes in the usual Poco black and yellow packaging. Inside, you’ll find the phone, a 33W charger, and a USB-A to USB-C cable.
A black silicone case is also provided in the box. The bezel doesn’t add much to the thickness of the phone and has a convenient cutout for the fingerprint sensor on the power button, which makes it very easy to locate the button without looking. There is also a flap for the USB port, which is a bit too tight. However, for purely aesthetic reasons, the frame leaves a large opening at the back for the camera, leaving the area exposed to damage.
The design of the Poco X6 Neo is one of its outstanding features. As mentioned earlier, this is claimed to be Poco’s thinnest phone yet, and it shows. At only 7.7mm, the phone feels very thin in the hand. Even with the bezel on, the X6 Neo is slimmer than other bezel-less phones.
The X6 Neo is made entirely of plastic, except for Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on the front. However, the choice of materials makes the phone feel much nicer than you’d normally find in this price range.
The sides of the frame are completely smooth with a matte texture. The entire back has a shimmer and arc glow that moves as you move the phone under the light in a way reminiscent of sand dunes. It’s a perfectly fetching pattern that adds a lot of personality to the phone’s design. However, it’s limited to this particular color, as Astral Black and Horizon Blue are quite simple.
Near the top of the phone is a large camera island, which is seen on other Poco X6 phones. Here you will find only two camera lenses, only one of which is actually usable. There’s also an LED flash and a circular pattern that’s really only there for visual symmetry, not functionality. The camera island on this model also has an iridescent look like the rest of the back, but it’s glossy instead of matte. These two lenses also have beautiful shiny rings around them.
As for the rest of the design, you see fairly thin and uniform bezels on the front with a subtle camera notch at the top. All the physical buttons are on the right side, and on top you’ll find a headphone jack and IR blaster.
The overall design of the Poco X6 Neo is really good and belies the price of the device. Even small things like the way the front glass connects to the side bezel without the rubbery edge you see on phones in this price range set it apart from the competition. It also contributes to a fairly robust build despite its plastic construction as well as IP54 dust and water resistance.
Display
Poco X6 Neo has a 6.67-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 with a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz. The screen has a maximum brightness of 1000 nits, 100% DCI-P3 color coverage, and a touch sampling rate of 240 Hz.
As with other Xiaomi/Poco budget phones, you can make basic color adjustments in the settings. By default, the phone is set to the Vivid profile, which claims to adjust colors based on the displayed content but has a cold blue-white point. A saturated profile is always saturated but has a warmer color tone. It seems to target the standard sRGB profile and has a standard white point of D65 with natural colors. You can also adjust the color temperature for all three profiles manually using the color wheel.
In standard mode, the display has good color accuracy. This panel also has sufficient resolution and a good viewing angle.
Maximum brightness was usually adequate, but the way the auto-brightness works is a bit odd. In most modern smartphones, when using automatic brightness, the display can exceed the manual brightness level under bright light. The X6 Neo, on the other hand, doesn’t reach, let alone exceed, the maximum manually adjustable brightness even under the brightest sunlight. You can get more brightness if you manually maximize the brightness instead. It was tested several times and at no point did the auto-brightness max out the brightness under strong light, instead, it was fixed at around 90%.
As for brightness, there’s no HDR support on the X6 Neo.
Unfortunately, like some other Xiaomi/Poco phones, the X6 Neo has the company’s awkward full-time video processing. Whenever you start a video, the phone automatically oversharpens it while also increasing the saturation and contrast, and there’s nothing you can do to turn it off.
Display settings
Well, almost nothing. Thanks to a Reddit comment, we were able to disable this effect by going into the phone’s Developer options and disabling the “Disable HW overlays” option, which turns off all video processing. The only problem is that when the phone is restarted, this option comes back and needs to be reactivated.
The display can refresh up to 120 Hz. The phone actually runs at 120Hz in most apps we’ve tried, including some games, but how it’s implemented leaves a lot to be desired. When running a game that supports a high refresh rate, the phone works at a frequency of 120 Hz. However, the phone is also designed to drop the refresh rate to 60Hz when you’re not interacting with the screen, which is fine when you’re on the home screen but not in the middle of a game. So the moment you stop interacting with the phone, the display and game will be forced down from 120Hz to 60Hz. The games we tried didn’t handle this very well, stuttering a bit when running at 60Hz.
Unfortunately, there’s no developer mode hack we can use to disable this behavior, so unless you’re playing a game where you have to constantly tap the screen, you’ll have this problem unless you manually set the screen to 60 Lock hertz.
Charging speed
The Poco X6 Neo supports 33W fast charging and a compatible charger is included in the box.
In our tests, the phone was able to charge reasonably quickly, with half of the battery charged in the first 30 minutes and a full charge taking about an hour. It’s certainly not the fastest charger we’ve seen, but it should be more than enough for most scenarios.
Additionally, you can disable fast charging through battery settings, which helps extend battery life.
Audio
The Poco X6 Neo has a speaker at the bottom, which is strange when you consider that it also has Dolby Atmos audio processing enabled. Of course, there’s no spatial processing when you’re working with just one speaker, but the Atmos mode adds a bit more warmth and body to the otherwise flat-out tinny sound.
However, there is a headphone jack where you can fully experience Dolby Atmos audio processing and also enjoy Atmos-encoded content, such as Apple Music or videos with an Atmos soundtrack.
You can also use Bluetooth. One thing to note here is that even though the phone lists aptX Adaptive and LHDC in the list of codecs in developer options, it doesn’t support either of them. We’ve noticed this on other cheaper Xiaomi/Poco phones as well, and it’s unclear why the company includes the full list of Bluetooth codecs even when many don’t actually exist. All you have access to on this phone are SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD, and LDAC, which are all codecs natively available on Android.
A slightly more frustrating issue with Bluetooth audio on this phone is the absolute lack of Bluetooth audio. This feature has been around for over a decade at this point and syncs the volume levels of a connected Bluetooth audio device and phone so they can be controlled as one. On the X6 Neo, the phone and accessory audio are separate, so you have to adjust both to get the right volume. This feature was present on the cheaper Poco M6 we recently reviewed, not to mention it’s pretty much a staple of phones these days, so we’re not sure why it’s missing here.
Software
The Poco X6 Neo runs on MIUI 14 on top of Android 13. As with other Poco devices, the MIUI version here is slightly different compared to Redmi or Xiaomi branded phones with a different launcher and some minor UI tweaks. As with other MIUI devices, some effects such as transparency are also disabled in the UI (such as notification backgrounds) because this device is inferior.
Despite these differences, this is very much the MIUI 14 we’ve seen dozens of times before, and it’s now on its way out, replaced by Xiaomi’s new HyperOS. However, we are not sure when this particular device will receive that update.
The software you get on this phone is fairly customizable. You can download themes that can update icons, fonts, wallpapers, and more. Unfortunately, while you can change things like your fonts individually, Poco Launcher doesn’t support manually changing icons via downloadable icon packs. The only way to change the icons is through the theme or by downloading another launcher.
MIUI 14 for Poco
Another strange thing about Poco phones is the inability to easily lock apps in the memory through the Task Switcher. Normally you can press and hold an app in the Task switcher and tap the lock button, but on Poco phones, you need to go to the Boost speed option in the Security app and then find the Lock apps menu option. Can individually lock programs in memory.
Other than that, it’s pretty much your typical MIUI affair. The Settings app still has a completely different design compared to any Android phone on the market. The search function is also useless because even things that are in the Settings app often don’t show up in search results.
Bloatware, spam notifications, and ads
Then there are the more sinister aspects of MIUI, which include bloatware, ads, and notification spam. We counted 10 non-native apps pre-installed on the phone, and the most recommended when you launch Xiaomi’s own app store. Most of the company’s main apps show ads when you open them, and you have to dig into their settings to disable them. The phone is also spammed with ad content notifications, some of which cannot be ignored until you click them.
These are the mainstay of the low-end Xiaomi/Poco device experience, and long-time users have become accustomed to or learned to avoid them. However, it’s important to name and shame them every time because a lot of it is unacceptable, and ignoring it will only make the situation worse.
Function
Poco X6 Neo uses the MediaTek Dimensity 6080 chipset. It comes in either 8GB + 128GB or 12GB + 256GB, and our review unit was the latter.
Performance in the X6 Neo was a bit mixed. The phone performs well most of the time, but there may be noticeable stuttering when starting some activities. This could include opening an app or starting a YouTube video. These slowdowns usually last a second or so, after which performance is fine. Similarly, there may be an occasional issue when navigating through some apps like Chrome or the Play Store that never quite goes away.
In our opinion, this is an optimization issue that needs to be investigated. The hardware seems capable, but the software isn’t polished enough to take full advantage of it right now. Maybe the cores aren’t ramping up fast enough, or there’s a bottleneck somewhere else in the system. Regardless, there is room for further improvement as performance is otherwise very good.
Stock watches • Watches with Antutu open • Watches with other apps
Before we get into the benchmarks, we want to note that the Poco X6 Neo cheats on Antutu. We noticed that the phone tends to overclock all of its cores, maxing them out as long as the Antutu app is open. This behavior is usually seen when you enable performance mode on some Android phones, but this phone doesn’t have that option. Nor does it do so in other programs or even other metrics.
This means Antutu’s results should be taken with a grain of salt, as the phone clearly performs differently in this particular app than in others. We really hoped we were past the age of benchmark cheating, but clearly not.
Camera
The Poco X6 Neo has a dual camera system on paper. You have a 108MP f1.8 main camera and a 2MP depth sensor. This means that you actually only have one camera to contend with. However, the phone has a trick up its sleeve, which is 3x lossless digital zoom, but more on that later.
The camera app on the X6 Neo is somewhat basic. It has all the commonly used features, including Pro mode, but lacks the option to capture RAW images. However, the Pro mode has some nice features, such as histogram, focus peaking, and zebra pattern for metering.
Camera app
But let’s go to the image quality. The 108-megapixel rear camera can take nice pictures in 1x mode, provided the HDR option is turned on. Color reproduction and white balance are good, and there’s reasonable detail without too much sharpness. Unfortunately, the Auto HDR option is fiddly and may not always kick in when necessary (and there’s no way to force it), so some images can be highlighted.
12-megapixel main camera
You can also choose to shoot in native 108MP mode. We’re happy to see that these aren’t just 12MP images pushed up to 108MP, but native photos from the sensor. Unfortunately, the phone turns off a lot of its image processing, including HDR, for this mode, so unless the lighting is perfect, expect to see a lot of washed-out highlights and colors.
108-megapixel main camera
The X6 Neo doesn’t have a telephoto camera, but it does have a 3x lossless digital zoom. In this mode, the camera takes a crop from the middle of the original 108MP image, resulting in fairly detailed and beautiful images. The results were absolutely stunning, as you’d be forgiven for thinking they came from a native 3x telephoto camera.
3x main digital camera
The thing about this camera is that this quality is only possible in the 3x option. The 2x mode (or rather anything between 1x and 3x) simply takes a crop from the 1x image, which can make the 2x image significantly worse than both the 1x and 3x images. Similarly, anything beyond 3x is also a crop of the 3x image, so they don’t look great either, although we have to say they still look better than 2x, which can be noticeably bad at times.
2x main digital camera
Image processing can also be different between these modes. The 2x image (or anything less than 3x) only inherits the 1x image processing while the 3x and above have the same processing (or lack thereof) as the native 108MP image. This can cause back-to-back shots from 1x, 2x, and 3x to look noticeably different at times.
We feel there’s room for further camera optimization here so that 3x images look a little better in terms of colors and dynamic range. Similarly, 2x images could benefit from a reduction in post-processing, as they can look overwhelming at times. However, for a phone that doesn’t have a true telephoto camera, we were quite impressed with the X6 Neo’s three times lossless shooting.
When it comes to video, you’re limited to a maximum of 1080p at 30fps. There’s digital image stabilization, but you don’t get any clever zoom tricks here, as the video is basically cropped from the middle of the sensor.
The video quality is average. While the image is good in terms of color and dynamic range, it is noticeably soft and lacks detail. Still, the image stabilization works well enough, so it’s not unusable if you just need something for TikTok or Instagram loops.
Summary
Poco X6 Neo is a really well-designed and well-made phone with a high-quality display. The design alone makes us want to recommend it, as it feels good in the hand, making it far better than many more expensive smartphones. Performance, for the most part, is good, as is overall camera quality.
The only downside is the software experience, particularly the intrusive nature of ads, notifications, and bloatware. A single speaker is underwhelming even at this price, and certain areas of the software could use more optimization to improve performance. We are also not interested in detecting benchmarks and artificially increasing device scores.
However, for the price, the X6 Neo is really good value and we’re happy to recommend it.