Liquid Lakes On Saturn's Moon Confirmed 188
Riding with Robots writes "Scientists have been using the robotic spacecraft Cassini to explore what looked to be large lakes of hydrocarbons on the surface of Saturn's planet-sized moon Titan. But they couldn't be entirely sure that the features were actually liquid lakes, and not simply very smooth, solid material. Now, new findings seem to confirm that the observations really do show extensive seas of liquid ethane and other hydrocarbons. In fact, Titan seems to have an entire 'water' cycle of ethane evaporation, rain and rivers."
Amazing! (Score:5, Interesting)
Please tell me that all these rovers on Mars were just there to train for the real thing on Titan.
No seriously, picture how awesome it would be to explore Titan with rovers. This place is probably the one place in the Solar system that has the most in common with our planet! The fact that it still has rivers and liquid lakes makes it so much more interesting than Mars, plus it has a thick atmosphere (5 times our atmosphere on the surface) we could probably send a UAV there or a blimp.
Tidal Lock (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone know if Titan is in tidal lock with Saturn? Anyone know if there exists a list of which moons are in tidal lock and which aren't?
Presentation by Carolyn Porco (Cassini) @ TED. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/carolyn_porco_flies_us_to_saturn.html [ted.com]
Re:Amazing! (Score:5, Interesting)
OK here's my idea of a fancy mission to Titan. Firstly, an orbiter around Titan, with a nice camera and the appropriate filters to see through the atmosphere like Cassini has, but also so radar thing to map the whole thing , even under its liquid lakes, and gather lots of informations about what must be Titan's unusual geology, and that would serve as a relay between Earth and the various machines on Titan. Then a lander, not necessarily a rover but that could be a plus, mainly designed to study the local geology and weather. Then a robot to explore the lakes, their chemistry, eventual currents, their depth.
And the fanciest part of all, a UAV-carrying blimp. It would float in Titan's thick atmosphere, low enough to be able to carry heavy weights (remember, on Titan a pressure of 1 Earth atmosphere is pretty high above the ground) and cover a lot of ground, provided there's some wind on Titan. It would obviously study the atmosphere, clouds, winds, chemicals composition, temperature etc extensively, but it would also be greatly placed to study the ground from very close. I said UAV-carrying, what would be more fancy than a blimp that would launch tiny UAVs that would fly around taking lots of pictures and measurements to then return to the blimp?
Sorry to bust your dreams... (Score:5, Interesting)
Before anyone comes up with the idea to mine the hydrocarbonates on Titan to overcome the oil and energy crisis on Earth, hold your breath!
The energy necessary to accelerate the mined hydrocarbonates enough to transfer them to Earth is higher than the actual energy equivalent you get by burning the hydrocarbonates. That's because you would have to accelerate the Titan-oil from 9.7 km/sec (orbital speed of Saturn) to 29.7 km/sec (orbital speed of Earth).
Re:Gas price ? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's our chance to lower the gas price and test if the Global warming is a myth. Import it from Saturn.
What? Are you saying you want to try to burn ethane gas instead of gasoline? I guess you could, though I wouldn't want to be anywhere near ethane storage if a leak was suspected - mixtures of 3% ethane in atmospheric air can be explosive.
And of course that's ignoring how much energy and money would be expended to try to bring it to earth from Saturn.
On another tought, how about a refuelling station there for space exploration ?
Are you planning to burn the ethane? If so, then you would still need to bring oxygen with you, as there might not be any of it there. Unless you want to try to use it as a propellant on its own...
So where did these hydrocarbons come from? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Low Gravity and Viscous Liquids (Score:3, Interesting)
32-212 is equally nonsensical to everybody, except maybe an octopus.
I think that the Germans [wikipedia.org] would have something to say about that :)
IIRC, Farenheit used the word "degrees" and thus wasn't worried about a 10-based system. The boiling point of water wasn't known yet, so he used some points that he knew to be constant. Icy salt water (well, ammonium cloride) was known to remain constant, so he used that for zero. Icy pure water was known to remain constant, so he used that for 32. The human body was known to be constant, so he used that for 96. Why he didn't use 0, 1, and 3 is beyond me... maybe he felt like he needed more resolution. I think one theory is that he originally picked 12 - a number that humans seem to like. Later, for whatever reason, he then sub-divided the scale with 8ths. Another is that he just built his scale by quadrupling a previous 0-60 scale and re-calibrating it.
Re:Amazing! (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all we know Titan's atmosphere way well enough for that (look it up, we're far from completely ignorant about it unlike what you make it out to be), thanks to sending a probe there. And it wouldn't necessarily be hard, it's not because the atmosphere is different that it'd make it hard, it's just a few things about the atmosphere that may make it harder or easier, but there's nothing inherently hard about it.
Also, I think it might be easier to inflate a blimp during a parachute-slowed decent than to actually land safely. Which makes me wonder, why don't we send blimps everywhere where we can find a dense atmosphere? Can you picture a blimp in the atmosphere of Jupiter, Venus or Neptune? *drool*
Well, I won't ask you to picture a blimp in Uranus but that would be pretty cool too.
Chemistry (Score:3, Interesting)
All the articles mention ethane being the product of methane "broken" by sunlight, it is actually methane CH4 having it's H knocked away by a sunlight reaction to make a methyl CH3 radical and joining with another CH3 to make ethane C2H6. I guess you can call that "broken" into ethane.
Given that the above reaction has a byproduct of H*, I guess there is an open question if it can somehow combine with the Nitrogen. For example, if you have some natural process of natural Nitrogen fixation (breaking the triple bond of N2 so it could be combined with H), it seems to me that there is at least some chance of life. Unfortunatly, at a very low temperature, this seems like it would be tough to do. But if you had a way to make ammonia (maybe lightning?), then it seems mightly likely that something could use this highly energetic molecule as a basis for life. Other than that, it seem like it's mostly a hydrocarbon stew...
Many folks think that simple, but highly energetic molecules like ammonia are needed for life. This is basically because it seems hard to evolve in an environment where free uncontrolled energy (like direct ultraviolet light which is what is making all that ethane from methane) is probably tearing down any molecules (like protiens or dna) which proto-life is carefully putting together, so you likely need a small molecule to transfer/store energy from where it is collected to somewhere more protected where you can use it to make more complicated molecules. Of course many folks could be wrong and something else might work just as well.
Re:Amazing! (Score:1, Interesting)
I read people talking about harvesting the hydrocarbons. A better reason to go is the presence of a triple point substance. Perhaps there exists life on Titan which uses ethane and methane in the same way life on Earth uses water? I was always under the impression that much of the reason life exists on earth is due to water having a triple point here (existing as solid, liquid, and vapor). Especially rainfall cycles.