Waves Spotted On Titan

minty3 writes "Planetary scientists believe they have observed waves rippling on one of Titan's seas. The findings, presented on March 17 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, describes how the Cassini spacecraft captured images of sunlight glinting off the Punga Mare (abstract), suggesting they are not reflective sunlight but waves." The Planetary Society recently posted a nice breakdown of the basics about Titan's lakes: "To flow with liquid, those river valleys must have been filled with methane that came from higher elevations; it had to rain methane on Titan. Rainfall runs off, and then what? It must pool somewhere. What we learned from the Cassini orbiter at Saturn is that there are lakes on Titan. ... Rainfall, river runoff, lakes, evaporation into clouds, rainfall again. Cassini has seen clouds make storms on Titan. We have seen the whole cycle -- it's just like Earth's water cycle, but with a completely different substance [methane], and much, much colder."

Showed this on Cosmos, Sunday night.

[rmdingler]

There are probably some tardigrade-like creatures living here we would have difficulty recognizing as life.

Seriously, Neil Degrasse Tyson is not unwatchable.

Re:Showed this on Cosmos, Sunday night.

[geekoid]

It's about the fence sitters, and the kids.

Most important question!

[hedgemage]

CAN YOU SURF THESE WAVES?

Unfortunately...

[asmkm22]

We've pretty much hit the point where future missions to explore places like Titan are decades down the road, since people don't seem to think NASA should be properly funded.

Re:Charlie don't surf

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have any conception of the staggering amount of resources we'd need to go there and bring back significant quantities of the stuff? Considering there is absolutely nothing on Titan to support an infrastructure, and it would be in such a hostile environment that the Antarctic in winter at night looks like a sauna?

If we COULD do that, we DON'T HAVE an energy or resource problem! Do you understand that? Or do you think space is like in the movies?

Your grandchildren will know how to shoe a horse, not fly a starship to Pluto, do you also understand that?

Re:Charlie don't surf

[Anonymous Coward]

especially since with a fuel source (like, say, methane) it's relatively easy to heat a local environment

On Titan, oxidizer is fuel, and it is in very short supply. Hypothetical Titanians would look at the Earth atmosphere and dream about tanking our oxygen into their fuel reservoirs. We take oxygen for granted, and call other components of oxidizing reactions: "fuel". Any stronger reactant then "normal" oxygen we call "corrosive" or "violently reacting". Titanians would call those "highly caloric fuel".

Our chemistry is Earth-centric and we classified chemical compounds according to common reactions and concentrations in environment we have here.