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Space

Rain On Saturn's Titan 69

Posted by timothy from the singin'-in-the-freezing-methane,-just-[aaakk] dept.
BradeRunna writes: "Space.com has a very interesting article describing earth-like weather (even rain) on Saturn's moon, Titan. Especially of note as the surface temperatures hover around minus 288 degrees Fahrenheit. Guess we'll have to wait until the Cassini spacecraft makes it out there in Summer 2004 to get the full skinny ..." A sidebar to the article is a cute comparison between Earth's weather and Titan's.
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Rain on Saturn's Titan More

Rain on Saturn's Titan

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  • It's raining methane, halleluja.
    It's raining methane, halleluja.


  • Throw in some livestock and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

    Where do you think all the methane came from in the first place?

  • No, some corporate hack sells it for $2.50 a bottle...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • If the pressure in the suit is lower than the outside pressure, the main problem would be the methane leaking in. Not that I know whether this is the case, but let's speculate.

    Since methane stinks, you'd probably notice the leak pretty quickly, and be able to hold your breath until the leak was fixed. Since methane isn't poisonous for us, we might only keep the helmet oxygenated and fill the rest of the suit with warmed up methane. The smaller the area you need to protect against leaks, the easier, and the helmet has the excellent property of not having any moving parts.

  • there's plenty of oxygen for that in your suit. In a methane atmosphere, you'd be more concerned about igniting the oxygen... just leak a little and you can have it happen.

    --
  • The cute comparison mentions condensation as the primary "driver" of the weather on titan and evaporation (from the sun) as that which influnces weather on earth.

    Maybye I'm missing something, but it seems to me that evaporation and condensation have to be at equilibruim in order to produce a long-lasting weather cycle.

    It doesn't seem logical to list either one as a primary cause of a weather cycle as they are two sides of the same coin.

  • Well...You wouldn't have to worry about the methane igniting until you are going inside.
    There has to be free oxygen and a lot hotter for it to ignite.
  • methane doesn't stink!
    It's all suphurous impurities that makes farts pong. The smell of propane (regular "gas" gas) comes from additives designed to make it easily detectable.

  • We had a mercaptan spill in the chemistry lab when I was studying. It was not fun. First we though we would all be blown to hell, then (when we realised what was going on) it was just nausiating. The smell changes from "gas" to dead rat to garlic as the concentration goes up. Worse, if you breathe it long enough it oozes out your pores for the rest of the day and YOU stink like a dead rat!

  • Correct, methane doesn't stink.

    Just curious, where did you pick up your vocabulary? I have to say that your usage of the word "pong" cracked me up; as is laughing with you, as opposed to laughing *at* you.
  • It was an ethanol atmosphere....
  • A kelvin is similar to celsius, where 0 celsius is = to 273 Kelvins. Absolute 0, the lowest theoretical temperature, where all atoms stop moving is defined as 0 Kelvin


    Round the firewall,
    Out the NIC,
    Through the router,
    Down the wire,
    NOTHING BUT NET!
  • I was very dissapointed by that comparison, and it's level of cuteness. Perhaps you should supply me with a comparison of Britney Spears and Christina Aguillara so I can achieve my cute comparison quota for the day.
  • Now, now I live in New England, let's try to be nice =) Actually our summer this year was like Titan's: Wet and cold. I wonder if I can call the mayor of Seattle and ask him if he wants his weather back? =)

  • Re:What about that hardware problem? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There's enough bandwidth if the receiver and transmitter frequencies are the same; the problem is that as the received signal is Doppler-shifted by the probe's high relative velocity, its spectrum moves out of the receiver's passband.

    It's definitely an "oops", but it's not something that would show up in ground-based testing unless you specifically tested for that effect. It's easier to forgive them for this one than it was for that metric/imperial screwup on the mars probe.
  • Simple. 1/2 the diameter means 1/8 the volume. So there you go.
  • Main Entry: rain
    a: Water or liquid Methane falling in drops condensed from from vapour or Methane in the atmosphere b: the descent of this water or liquid Methane c: wateror liquid Methane that has fallen as rain

    I was just watching the TITANIC and now I'm wondering what icebergs on Titan are made of.
  • It's easier to forgive them for this one than it was for that metric/imperial screwup on the mars probe.

    No, it isn't. Doppler calculations are one of the most fundamental EE tools used in terrestrial satellite system work. Even ham radio operators have to take it into account. This is a truly amazing engineering f***up -- it had to be made at the most fundamental level, where any newly-graduated BSEE should have been able to catch it. It's incredible that it made it into a multi-billion-dollar planetary probe. :-(
  • With an efficient rebreather, you wouldn't have to carry that much oxygen (assuming a normal spacewalk lenght stay), and you could keep it at relatively low pressure. If your space suit is leaking enough O2 into the atmosphere to start a fire, your bigger problem is that you were counting on that O2 to keep breathing.

    -B
  • Imagine...... a Beowulf Cluster of, what else, Slashdot! Seriously, I know this is off-topic, but I have uncovered another slashdot mirror! Yes, it's true, you can find it here Slashdot Mirror [lunateks.com].
  • You can't smell methane. The smell of natural gas is added, not naturally present. Some people think that methane is what makes farts smell too, but it's actually the Sulphur Dioxide. Methane itself is about as easily detected by humans as CO2 is. We die when our lungs get flooded with it silently.
  • Hey, if Arthur C Clark can change planets between books, I don't see why I can't change planets during a post. Anyway, "Jupiter orbit objectly warming" sounds better to me anyway...

  • "Space.com has a very interesting article describing earth-like weather (even rain) on Saturn's moon, Titan. Especially of note as the surface temperatures hover around minus 288 degrees Fahrenheit. Guess we'll have to wait until the Cassini spacecraft makes it out there in Summer 2004 to get the full skinny ..."

    Jeezus christ! Would the rain freeze into hail by the time it hits the surface?
  • Actually, since it's a methane environment, your suit doesn't have to leak much to start a fire -- the flame could be right at the point of the leak.

    --
  • Don't forget your umbrella.

  • Rain? Yay (Score:3)

    by mbadolato ( 105588 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @01:43AM (#685760)
    Especially of note as the surface temp temperatures hover around minus 288 degrees Fahrenheit.

    Rain AND -288F? Oooo sign me up! When's our first mission??

    Aw hell, I can get rain and 0F by moving back to New England =)

  • Re:rain on titan (Score:4)

    by mallie_mcg ( 161403 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:11AM (#685761) Homepage Journal
    Methane rain (That must smell nice)

    If i am not mistaken i believe that methane is actually pretty much odorless, when we use it for gas to homes and the like we add chemicals so that we can smell it, and not die (in AU at least)

    btw, does anyone know of a site that will point out the best hardware for a dual Linux / Windows box, for gaming and work purposes?


    How every version of MICROS~1 Windows(TM) comes to exist.

  • rain on titan (Score:3)

    by cluge ( 114877 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @01:45AM (#685762) Homepage
    Methane rain (That must smell nice), pools of liquid methane with other hydrocarbons on the surface. Sounds like Titan is natures on refueling station.

  • Weather on Titan... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:22AM (#685763)
    Constant rain... hydrocarbons and methane in the air, making it patently unbreathable... -288 degree temperature.

    Hell, that sounds like the average winter in South Dakota! Throw in some livestock and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Maybe when we send our first probes their we'll find Mount Zorbarmore and Wa'al Drug left behind by the aliens...

  • How F-ing much is -288F (Score:3)

    by Gladiator ( 77646 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:28AM (#685764)
    In C.
    Just for those readers born in the 20th century.

  • Re:rain on titan (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How horrible! With all that methane and hydrocarbons in the atmosphere, don't they realize they're going to cause global warming and destroy their ozone layer!?

  • Mark Twain in Space (Score:3)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:40AM (#685766)
    The whole thing reminds me of the Mark Twain quote:

    " The worst winter I ever lived through was the summer I spent in San Francisco."

    I guess Sam never summered over on Titan.

  • -288 °F = -178 °C (Score:3)

    by Roy Ward ( 14216 ) <royward770@@@actrix...co...nz> on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:44AM (#685767)
    (-288-32)*5/9 = -178 C

    Of course, I suspect that both these numbers have spurious accuracy.

  • Hmmm.. thats interesting .... (Score:3)

    by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:06AM (#685768)
    Now where have I seen this before [slashdot.org]...? Oh yeah, thats right, on Slashdot. :o] at least check the category youre posting under to see if that story has been run within the past WEEK!

  • Only problem is that you'll need to bring along lots of liquid oxygen - so it's a no-win situation.
  • ...or American readers. (Metric system be damned!)
  • Some people might not agree with me on my choices, but here goes:
    Video Card: Geforce 2 Ultra
    Motherboard: Abit KA7-100
    Processor: Athlon 850
    RAM: 256mb (Trust me, you need this much).
    CDRom: Any HP burner will do
    Monitor: The ViewSonic PF775 is nice
    Sound Card: Sound Blaster live
    Network/Modem/Etc: Just check your handy linux compatability lists and find one with the features you like.

    About the KA7-100: The HPT370 chipset is not supported 'out of the box' on most distrobutions, but a quick kernel patch/update can fix that. I believe it was introduced in the 2.2.17 kernel tree... If not, Highpoint Technologies has there own kernel patch available.

    -Medgur
  • or in minnesota, for that matter
  • Plain methane is completely odorless. In commercial uses, tiny quantities of methylmercaptan are added to give it a distinctive, unpleasant odor. I've always wanted to obtain a very small quantity of pure methylmercaptan and release it in, oh let's say some random high school, and watch them evacuate the place for fear of a non-existant gas leak. But that's probably tremendously illegal. Damn laws won't let anybody have fun.
  • To ease the constraints of laundry facilities on a manned mission, just hang the clothes outside the station (perhaps using the antenna array of the Huygens) and wait for the amonia and methane rain to get those whites their brightest...
  • Heh - although today is pretty nice, we've already started our rainy season, thanks. (although the mayor here is a moron, it wouldn't surprise me if he took you up on your offer ;)

  • I believe I can fly. (Score:5)

    by Forge ( 2456 ) <kevinforge AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday October 22, 2000 @07:48AM (#685776) Homepage Journal
    From The article.

    Titan's gravity is only about one seventh that of Earth. The intense chill, however, means a low energy atmosphere that hangs around, instead of escaping this relatively weak force of gravity. So Titan's atmosphere is denser than Earth's and extends much higher into the sky.

    Lower gravity and denser atmosphere means that you could not only survive on Titan with a much simpler space suite than you need for work on the moon but you can also fly with simple wings sprouting from your arms.

    No. I am serious about both points. Since the atmosphere is denser than earth but less dens than say water, you don't need a pressure suite just something completely sealed that wont tear easily and keeps the Methane off your skin. More importantly it only has to deal with cold temperatures not the -200 to +200 degree fluctuations in earth orbit.

    About the wings. The reason we were never able to fly with arm mounted wings is that #1 we are generally not strong enough to build manipulate wings that can support a human and #2 those wings have to be so very large.

    However on Titan they need only be 1/7th the size of your tipical glider's wingspan. Posibly less if you consider the denser atmosfare. So just as we can fly throgh water by flaping our bare arms we should be able to fly on titan with tiny wings just barley longer than our arms and as little as 2 feet thick. I.e. The sort of thing that can be built into a plastic suite that's all soft on the outside to prevent sparks from igniting that methane.

    Better yet wings of that size could be made retractable and the smaller suite means you could store a larger air supply. A rebrether ( filters out your own CO2 ) would do wonders too.

    R. Kelly would be proud.

  • Ew! (Score:1)

    by braeden ( 182481 )
    Titan smells like a big ol' fart! o.O

    Fart clouds, fart rain, fart seas.... disgusting!
  • One question thogh. How did a moon 1/2 the size of earth get 1/7 the gravity ?

    Is it made of something less denzse than Silicone and Iron ?
  • You mean - "Saturn orbital objectily warm it" right? I mean, it's not like the rings on the planet on the heading illustration give it away, or nothing.
  • Actually this has been proposed, at least by SF writers, and more for Jupiter's moons (or for Mars) than for Titan, but the idea is the same.

    A body without (much) internal heat anywhere in the Solar System is heated by solar radiation, which is mainly visible light. In equilibrium it re-radiates that energy mainly as infrared (the colder it is, the longer the wavelength). If you can surround it with something that is transparent to visible light, but opaque, or reflective, to infrared, then it can;t radiate the heat away and gets hotter. CO2 has such properties to a modest extent. Various rather exotic gasses much more so. It has been computed that adding 1 part per million of some of these gasses to Mars's atmosphere would warm the equator of Mars to the temperatures of the arctic on Earth.

    Titan would be a much bigger problem, and it might be more efficient to use some more direct heating method, but the greenhouse effect has its part to play.
  • Celcius and Farenheit both suck. Everyone should use Kelvins, considering the lowerest possible temperature that can ever be is defined as 0 Kelvin, and converting into celsius is simple. As for farenheit ... its useless.


    Round the firewall,
    Out the NIC,
    Through the router,
    Down the wire,
    NOTHING BUT NET!
  • Rain on Titan. That is something to experience before you die.
  • Along the same lines, Titan by Stephen Baxter is about a manned mission by NASA to titan. About a third of the book actaully takes place on Titan with the astronauts having to try and amintain a level of self sufficiency. Altogether a good book.
  • Even if they were talking about water as the rain on Titan (read the article before you post, you won't make as big a fool out of yourself.), it would not become hail just by falling. Falling rain that turns into ice at high altitudes is called sleet. Rain that turns into ice at low altitudes is called freezing rain. The difference between the two is that freezing rain is much wetter and freezes to our nice roads thus causing a more dangerous impact on drivers of automobiles, trucks, etc.

    Hail is formed in thunderstorms where supercooled water condenses around dust particles, dirt, grasshoppers, etc, and then it freezes a layer. The newly formed hail stone is then tossed back up into the thunderhead where it receives a new layer of ice. This process continues until the stone becomes to heavy for the winds to lift back up into the anvil of the cumulonimbus thunderhead. This is why hail can be anywhere from pea sized to softball sized. Also, in examining a hail stone, one will notice, upon dissection, that you can observe the ringed layers. Another note is that sleet and freezing rain are primarily cold weather precipitation while hail stones are formed in warmer layers in that chaotic area we call a frontal boundary. Conceivable with winds of infinite speed, you could get hail stones of infinite size.

  • Especially of note as the surface temp temperatures hover around minus 288 degrees Fahrenheit.

    I guess that means the weather-girl on the Daily Titanic News broadcast really would be a frozen bitch.

    (Aw ... geez, I'm really politically incorrect today. Even Pooh Bear is hiding from the fallout ...).

  • Boys, boys...

    Let's start talking about rain again. OK?

    Dynoman7
  • Have you dug Wall Drug?

    With all that methane in the air, we may get a little loopy and start seeing jack-a-lopes or something. Do they have free water on Titan?

    hehe
    dynoman7
  • We can make it livable. If we belive what Gore says about global warming, all we would have to do to warm it up is put some cars and factories on the planet and we can globally warm it!

  • James P. Hogans Code of the Lifemaker, takes place on Titan - but if I remember correctly it's cloud covered most of the time in that story.

    So, who got it right (where it actually mattered to the story)?
    --

  • Trouble indeed, trouble on triton [dartmouth.edu]. Hehe, well, at least the book was good.
  • Or the title of the Slashdotr headline:

    "Rain On Saturn's Titan"

  • What about that hardware problem? (Score:4)

    by Lonesmurf ( 88531 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @04:20AM (#685792) Homepage
    I havn't been around /. a lot recently, but I don't remember hearing anything about this [space.com] hardware problem that they recently discovered.

    Apparently some nincompoop on the Cassini design team decided that it would be smart to not design the reciever on the orbiting probe to have enough bandwidth to take in all of the data that the probes in the atmosphere/on the surface could send up. Not smart.

    Rami
    --
  • I'm booking the next flight to Titan! =P
  • Is [the moon] made of something less denzse than Silicone and Iron ?

    Yes. The density of the Earth varies with radius, being greatest in the iron core. The moon is just a hunk of rock.

  • Finding a material that would be flexible enough at -188C for a space suit with flappable wings could present a problem. not to mentions a material that would insulate a person from these temperatures.
    ^. .^
  • With the news of severe weather, the Weather Channel is probably already making arrangements to fly Jim Cantore out there. Expect live reports sometime next week.
    ^. .^
  • True. But I contend less of a problem than materials to handle earth orbit. Keaping the atmosfare out is easy and has been done. Something that won't harden is a little togher but such plastics probebly exist already.

    BTW: At those tempretures you nead to generate heet inside the suite. Not just insulate it.

  • Re:I believe I can fly. (Score:3)

    by DoomHaven ( 70347 ) <(DoomHaven) (at) (hotmail.com)> on Sunday October 22, 2000 @08:09AM (#685798)
    I don't think you have to worry about sparks; you still need oxygen to ignite methane, and I have not read anything that indicates that Titan has a significant oxygen atmosphere.

    I must say, Forge, that this is probably the most interesting comment in this whole discussion. It reminds me of what the humans believe the Overlords' world looks like in Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End"; since the Overlords are huge, but still have flight-worthy wings, that their home planet must have low gravity and a dense atmosphere.
  • I'm pretty sure we do it here too. And there's another side effect: when there's a leak in one of the pipes running through the empty desert states, the repair crews can just look for circling vultures, since they (the vultures) think there's some nice dead animal down there.

  • globally warm it I know it's still a globe, but since Titan's just a moon could we say "moonily warm it" or "satalitily warm it" or "Jupiter orbital objectily warm it" ?

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