[extropy-chat] Surgeon General reports: Travel to Saturn's rings might cause cancer

[Damien Broderick]

During the ring plane crossing, the radio and plasma wave science 
instrument on Cassini measured little puffs of plasma produced by dust 
impacts. While crossing the plane of Saturn's rings, the instrument 
detected up to 680 dust hits per second. "The particles are comparable in 
size to particles in cigarette smoke," said Dr. Don Gurnett of the 
University of Iowa, Iowa City, principal investigator for the instrument. 
"When we crossed the ring plane, we had roughly 100,000 total dust hits to 
the spacecraft in less than five minutes. We converted these into audible 
sounds that resemble hail hitting a tin roof."

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2004-171