Pictures of Titan's Lakes 119
sighted writes "For decades, scientists have wondered if the thick orange haze that shrouds Saturn's giant moon Titan hid lakes of liquid methane on the surface, but there was no way to confirm it, until now. The Cassini flyby of July 22, 2006 took these striking images and were released today."
Confirmed? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hardly proof.
why is liquid methane a big deal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's a question... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:why is liquid methane a big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
However, given that just about any chemical process is gonna run rather slow at the kinds of temperatures that exist on Titan we shouldn't expect any life that we find there to be very developed.
The next obvious step is to send something down to swim in the methane oceans of titan, and see if it gets eaten (or, at least, finds signs of (non)organic life. I don' think that it's that much lower a probability than finding life signs on mars (presuming that we figure out how to look for methane-based life), although it's admittedly a bit more expensive to go to Jupiter than it is to go to Mars.
OK, still the question is unanswered (Score:1, Interesting)
Titan by Stephen Baxter (Score:3, Interesting)
"What have you done for us lately?" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:why is liquid methane a big deal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:why is liquid methane a big deal? (Score:3, Interesting)
To me, it seems extremely unlikely that we could give any kind of reliable estimate on how unlikely that is...
OTOH, all we'd need is a version of Urey-Miller experiment that used (our best guess of) the chemicals and the environment of Titan. Then let it simmer for a time, and see if any promising complex chain forming molecules (such as our amino acids) appeared... I wonder if anybody has attempted such and experiment.
Re:why is liquid methane a big deal? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wake us up when you actually have something wet... (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think this is conclusive. As one of the other earlier posts said, they have taken the rough areas and coloured them rock colour, and taken the smooth areas and coloured them water colour. At the edge of these 'lake' features there are intermediate regions which are pretty flat and might be either shallow lake or a flat shore. Or something else completly different.
The article suggests we will in time know what we have. It is probably not sand because there aren't any dunes. If they are lakes, then the lake height ought to change with the seasons. In the meantime colouring it blue isn't really helping.
When I was a lad, Venus was believed to have huge oceans of soda water. Mars had a canal system. Tintin 'Destination Moon' book had underground ice on the moon. In the last fifty years we have visited all sorts of extraordinary places, and everywhere has turned out to be pretty dry. The lander shots of Titan looked just like a coastline, but that was not wet. There is an intriguing trickle of something in a crater on Mars. So far, the more we look, the less we find, and the more sceptical I get. Is this sort of thing really necessary to get funding for space exploration?