Hydrocarbon Lakes Above and Water Ocean Beneath the Surface of Titan
Amazing news about Saturn's giant moon Titan.
The first is a confirmation of something long suspected. There are large lakes of liquid methane or ethane on Titan's surface.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070313_titan_lakes.html
One of the seas ... is larger than any of the Great Lakes in North America and possibly only slightly smaller than the Caspian Sea, which lies between Russia and Iran and is the largest lake on Earth.
This also implies tremendous hydrocarbon resources on Titan, which would be of immense value as feedstock for plastics, fullerenes, and life support systems.
This I expected. But I did not expect this:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080320-titan-ocean.html
Apparently, Titan probably has a subsurface water ocean similar to Europa's, and possibly even larger. Analysis of terrain features revealed that Titan's tectonic plates shift massively and frequently, which implies considerable lubrication beneath.
The size of these shifts hints that Titan's crust and core have to be separated by a liquid ocean to allow the atmosphere to move the crust around. Titan is about 3,200 miles (5,150 km) in diameter. The hidden ocean may be 60 to 120 miles (100 to 200 km) thick and its ice crust may be 30 to 90 miles (50 to 150 km) thick, Lorenz said. Beneath that may be a few hundred miles of a heavier form of ice "that you get at higher pressures," he explained, on top of a rocky core roughly 1,800 to 2,100 miles (3,000 km to 3,400 km) wide.
This underground ocean is likely mostly water with a dash of ammonia. As organic molecules - the chemical ingredients of life on Earth - have been detected on Titan's surface, it may be they are in the ocean as well.
We now see that four worlds in the Solar System in addition to Earth may well possess life as we know it: Mars, Europa, Ganymede, and Titan.
This could serve as a major spur to interplanetary exploration, and a lure beyond the Inner Solar System to the Middle. Reaching and operating in the lunar systems of the two great gas giants would not be easy -- we would need to build either very long duration fission-powered, or moderately long-duration fusion-powered spacecraft, and surviving in the Jovian magnetosphere would require the development of powerful electromagnetic energy shields.
But now we have a clear reason to make the trip.
The first is a confirmation of something long suspected. There are large lakes of liquid methane or ethane on Titan's surface.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070313_titan_lakes.html
One of the seas ... is larger than any of the Great Lakes in North America and possibly only slightly smaller than the Caspian Sea, which lies between Russia and Iran and is the largest lake on Earth.
This also implies tremendous hydrocarbon resources on Titan, which would be of immense value as feedstock for plastics, fullerenes, and life support systems.
This I expected. But I did not expect this:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080320-titan-ocean.html
Apparently, Titan probably has a subsurface water ocean similar to Europa's, and possibly even larger. Analysis of terrain features revealed that Titan's tectonic plates shift massively and frequently, which implies considerable lubrication beneath.
The size of these shifts hints that Titan's crust and core have to be separated by a liquid ocean to allow the atmosphere to move the crust around. Titan is about 3,200 miles (5,150 km) in diameter. The hidden ocean may be 60 to 120 miles (100 to 200 km) thick and its ice crust may be 30 to 90 miles (50 to 150 km) thick, Lorenz said. Beneath that may be a few hundred miles of a heavier form of ice "that you get at higher pressures," he explained, on top of a rocky core roughly 1,800 to 2,100 miles (3,000 km to 3,400 km) wide.
This underground ocean is likely mostly water with a dash of ammonia. As organic molecules - the chemical ingredients of life on Earth - have been detected on Titan's surface, it may be they are in the ocean as well.
We now see that four worlds in the Solar System in addition to Earth may well possess life as we know it: Mars, Europa, Ganymede, and Titan.
This could serve as a major spur to interplanetary exploration, and a lure beyond the Inner Solar System to the Middle. Reaching and operating in the lunar systems of the two great gas giants would not be easy -- we would need to build either very long duration fission-powered, or moderately long-duration fusion-powered spacecraft, and surviving in the Jovian magnetosphere would require the development of powerful electromagnetic energy shields.
But now we have a clear reason to make the trip.