Titan's Smooth Surface Baffles Scientists

JazMuadDib writes "Scientists expected a few rough spots when their space drone snapped close-range images of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Instead, the planetlike moon appears to have a bizarre, mysteriously smooth surface, and Tuesday's images have left them in a state of wonder. Read more at the Tucson Citizen." NASA's Cassini pages have a wide assortment of images and analysis. Cassini's data has already thrown scientists for loop.

At last

[The Bungi]

I remember reading Carl Sagan's Cosmos and thinking (as he did) that Titan was the most interesting body in the Solar System outside of the Earth (sorry, I'm a terran chauvinist).

It's amazing that we've had to wait more than 20 years since he wrote that to get 700 miles from Titan, and it's mind-boggling that we're actually going to drop a probe in there.

It's just a shame that he's not around to see it.

Re:A Little Perspective

[back_pages]

Man this isn't lost on me.

I'm not even an amateur astronomer but I've been GLUED to these news reports. Didn't Arthur C. Clarke land the Chinese on Titan in 2063 or 3001, only to be eat by a methane-sea monster? Of course, Imperial Earth has Titan colonized.

I've been entranced by these pictures and realizing, as have you, that this is not entirely unlike digging up a miniature monolith on the moon - we're exposing something to the collective consciousness of the only intelligence (we know of) in the universe. We've got our shovel stuck in untilled earth, about to turn over the soil for the first time in history, but there is a whole world sitting there on the blade of the shovel.

The scope of the mysteries these first data suggest only reinforces my awe. It's not like Mars - "These mysterious lines appear to be liquid erosion." It's like, "Pretty pictures, huh? The best and brightest of the world can't figure out what's in those clouds, but we detect dim rocks in distant galaxies by watching the stars wobble." Argh! I want to go to Titan!

I don't know, maybe I've finally just flipped out on something. I want to wallpaper my living room with pictures from Cassini. That's normal, right? I just gotta know what is down there. Put me on the slow spaceship to Saturn and I'll turn into the half-crazed captain who sacrifices everything and jeopardizes his whole crew to complete the mission. Hell, me and HAL would be best friends. Screw you naysayers, I MUST KNOW what's on Titan.

I'm practically counting down the days until the landing probe touches the surface.

Re:Not quite as the summary says

[bani]

Sounds like the surface may be semisolid then, perhaps slushy.

Re:Seems like radar passes coul dprovide elevation

[back_pages]

That's interesting. Do you know anything about the precision of the radar equipment? Could I look at the rather solid up-down pattern of the points on that graph and decide there are ocean swells or would that all be explained by the sensitivity of the equipment?

Of course, I don't really know what a reasonable swell size in a planet-wide (alright, moon-wide) methane ocean would be.. 100m? With the wind data they've recorded, I wouldn't be shocked.

But let me stress - I'm not even an amateur physicist or astrononmer, I'm merely fascinated by this story.

Jello?

[jmoo]

First off I'm not a chemist so please excuse me if this is totally off base.

Is it possible that the surface of Titan is basically a hydrocarbon mix that is basically like slush or jelly? With the cold temperature and higher atmospheric pressure wouldn't that turn all the ethane and methane into something not unlike diesel fuel when its really cold? This would explain the relative smooth face of Titan

Hmmm...maybe the Huygens probe will just bounce when it lands.

Re:No information about X doesn't mean X is false

[Cromac]

The data show a variation in height of only about 150 meters (490 feet) over the 400-kilometer-long (250-mile-long) track, indicating that in this region Titan is remarkably flat.

That sounds like the Red River Valley in MN. 315 miles long, 60 miles wide at its widest and only changes elevation 229 feet over the entire length. The only hills you see there are man made for highway overpasses.

Maybe the rest of Titan is as mountainous as Earth, hopefully more passes of the probe will let us know.

Re:Logic Dictates...

[Elder Entropist]

Nope. Way too smooth. The planet Earth is proportionally smoother than a billiard ball. :)

Erosion

[UncleJam]

Based on the radar data, Titan is extremely flat. I've also seen on the posts here that people expect it to have some tetonics, or heat inside the planet due to all the stress of hanging around saturn.

Is it possible that the reason the satellite is so smooth is because of some erosion? If the weather conditions are hostile, and throw in that the clouds might consist of polymers, then that would just tear everything to shreds.

Re:A Little Perspective

[RodgerDodger]

But if he'd stuck to the plot line he'd outlined in 2001 the book, it would have been Titan.

The book had Discovery going to Saturn; it was the movie that sent it to Jupiter, and Clarke decided to stick to the movie.

Re:Excellent news!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where have I heard that?

Oh right [schlockmercenary.com]

At least you could blame it on Asimov.

Re:Not quite as the summary says

[esanbock]

I would think that proximity to a large planet would make any moon less likely to meteorite impact, since meteors and comets would be more attracted to the planet's gravity instead of the moon's. Some theorisize that Jupiter is what keeps big comets from smashing into Earth and killing more dinosaurs.

Isn't the earth flat too?

[AngryScotsman]

Last I checked 70% of the earths surface was +/- 50 meters too.

Maybe its smooth because the whole moon is ocean

[Viol8]

Perhaps this possibility is precluded by other data but it would make sense for the surface to be smooth(ish) if it was all liquid. As for the 50m high variations , well in gravity that low it could be easily possible for normal waves to be that height (though where does the energy come from? Don't know). Anyway , just a though...

Re:Is it just me...

[CreatureComfort]

From the article:

But, according to data gathered by Cassini, the particles that make up the cloud are too big to be methane.

"I don't believe it," says Chris McKay, a planetary scientist with the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "What else can they be? It would be like flying over Earth and saying the clouds are not water. If those clouds are really not methane, then a lot of the things we think about Titan are wrong. A lot of things we think about those clouds are wrong - the whole explanation of why they're there."

Had the clouds been found to be methane, it wouldn't have made the news. I'm sure there are hundreds of things that have been noticed so far that do fit the theories and the scientists just shrug and make another check mark on the clipboard.

Re:Seems like radar passes could provide elevation

[Travis Fisher]

They did do synthetic aperature radar on this pass. See this image of the diverse surface of Titan [nasa.gov] or this image of a feature called the 'black cat' [nasa.gov].

I think the first of those images especially is much more interesting than the "flatter than a pancake" altitude reading in the original post. You can see a lot of surface detail (unfortunately in a region where we don't yet have optical imaging). Look at the left side of the 'diversity' image. Notice the large dark circular feature? Circular feature == crater on a moon like Titan. That is something that we hadn't seen in the optical images. Then notice the bright area inside the crater rim. On these radar images, bright area == roughed up surface. Notice the little squiggly white bit going down from the bright area to the center of the crater? That has got to be an erosion channel from liquid running down into the crater. Then look at the center of the crater. You see another feature with very smooth edges, shaped sort of like a peanut. Any guesses as to what that is? My guess is a pool of the liquid that ran down. Very exciting image!

Gattaca - Manned Mission to Titan

[brandonp]

I watched Gattaca last night, what a great movie. I loved seeing Jerome's (the main character, Ethan Hawke) description of Titan.

He was smoking a cigarrette at dinner and was asked "What is Titan like at this time of the Year?". He took a puff of his cigarrate and blew the smoke into a glass of wine.

What a great visual and great description.

--
Brandon Petersen
Get Firefox! [spreadfirefox.com]

Re:Jello?

[k98sven]

Is it possible that the surface of Titan is basically a hydrocarbon mix that is basically like slush or jelly? With the cold temperature and higher atmospheric pressure wouldn't that turn all the ethane and methane into something not unlike diesel fuel when its really cold?

I'm a chemist, and you're off-base.

The intermolecular forces between methane and ethane molecules are very small. Even at high pressure/low temperature they will have low density and viscosity.

Look it up [nist.gov] (then choose 'fluid properties' and play around with the settings.)

For methane, in the range of 0-300 MPa of pressure (0-300 atmospheres) and 100 Kelvin (-280 F) for instance, the viscosity ranges about 150-200 uPa*s. Contrast that to water at room temperature and pressure, it's about 1000 uPa*s.

So.. no way it's jelly. It's not slushy. It's not even watery. It's light and whispy.

Played around with liquid nitrogen? It has a very low viscosity. Think something in that direction.

Sigh...

[David Gould]

I see there are at least six people who still think these "geeks never get laid" jokes are funny. (One to post it, one to post a "mod parent up", and four to mod it up.) One continues to wonder how long it'll take until they realize that the joke's actually on them. Hint: you six are pretty much the only ones, 'mkay?

True, most of us have a tougher time than other guys, but for many (most?) of us, it does happen at least once in a while, and plenty of us are getting it all the time. So there.

It's time to try being funny about something else.

Scientific theories

[Anders Andersson]

I think those theories are seldom actually wrong, but they may have been simplified to the point that they are easily misinterpreted or misapplied. I remember around 1980, when one of the Voyager probes sent back stunning images of Saturn's rings, and scientists tried to understand the strange strokes, swirls and whatever phenomena they saw in those images. One newspaper went as far as saying that Saturn's rings defied the laws of physics, which therefore had to be rewritten!

Already Isaac Newton understood that a gravitational system with more than two bodies involved could not be fully described analytically. Calculating the positions of the nine major planets and their natural satellites is complex enough. Before Voyager, we had never seen a gravitational system with a trillion closely interacting bodies. Physicists weren't amazed by the Voyager images because the theory of gravity was wrong (it of course wasn't), but because they couldn't predict what such a complex system would look like. A layman (in particular a journalist) may perceive that amazement as an admission of error in science, when in fact it's only a leap forward.

Then again, in some cases new discoveries do invalidate earlier scientific theories, but hardly those theories the general public knows about. Cosmic string theory and such isn't that mature yet.