Science fiction MMORPG Destiny is often an inspiration for looking beyond planet Earth and into space, including the stars and planets.
But someone at Yahoo News recently decided that images from the game also work well with more real science-like stories, and used a photo from Destiny on an article about a real-world scientific discovery.
Yahoo's story is about Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and new discoveries about that celestial body made by researchers. The photo is from Destiny, but it does depict the game's version of Saturn.
The question here is was this deliberate or just an accident? Was the reporter specifically looking to make a reference to Destiny, which actually has a character class called Titans? Or was this the result of a random Google image search that turned up a pretty photo that seemed appropriate enough for the topic?
It doesn't really matter, because gamers will still enjoy the photo attached to the story - its use could attract some additional readers.
Here's a screenshot of the online article:
The big takeaway here, though, is that Titan is capable of supporting life. A study done by Cornell University discovered that Titan and Earth are a lot alike: both have flowing liquids on their surfaces.
But Titan's liquids are mostly methane and ethane, and not H20. It also has an atmosphere of hydrogen cyanide, which means it's not likely that humans will live there anytime soon. But scientists do believe that these materials are what started life on Earth.
Although the study suggests that life on Titan is possible, it also reiterated that it doesn't guarantee that there is life on Titan, or that any ever existed there. But of all the celestial bodies in our solar system, Titan is one of the most likely to have the potential of sustaining life. And that still makes this news a big deal.
In Destiny, Saturn is one of those planets that players cannot land on because it's still a gas giant. But during the Collapse - the event in history that nearly brought humanity to extinction - a cruiser called Cassini got stranded near the planet. Players can travel to the ship, but it's now home to humanity's enemies.
In Destiny's "The Taken King" expansion, the Hive Dreadnought orbits around the planet between two of its rings. There is also a legend that mysterious ancient intelligent life-forms originated on Titan or Europa.
