Craters Quickly Hidden On Titan 39
MightyMartian writes "NASA scientists say Cassini has discovered that far fewer craters are visible on Titan than on the other moons of Saturn. The craters they have discovered are far shallower than other moons' craters and appear to be filling with hydrocarbon sand. On top of being another reason Titan's active geology is very cool, it adds to the mystery of where all the methane on Titan is coming from. 'The rain that falls from Titan's skies is not water, but contains liquid methane and ethane, compounds that are gases at Earth's temperatures. ... The source of Titan's methane remains a mystery because methane in the atmosphere is broken down over relatively short time scales by sunlight. Fragments of methane molecules then recombine into more complex hydrocarbons in the upper atmosphere, forming a thick, orange smog that hides the surface from view. Some of the larger particles eventually rain out onto the surface, where they appear to get bound together to form the sand.'"
Titan's active geology is very cool (Score:2)
cool
About 90 kelvins, right? Its only twice as cold as the coldest place on Earth, relative to normal Earth temperatures.
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The source of Titan's methane remains a mystery because methane in the atmosphere is broken down over relatively short time scales by sunlight
Hang on a minute: wasn't free methane being used as an indicator of life on Mars? So where does this methane come from?
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Cows produce methane. Isn't it obvious?
There could be gazillions of nano-cows on Titan ! (Score:2)
Cows produces methane on earth.
But cows can't survive on Titan's climate.
There must be a lot of "something" on Titan that are producing the massive amount of methane.
They could be nano-cows.
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http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/056/e/e/space_cows_by_jessicabane501-d4qxz3i.jpg [deviantart.net]
You just can't trust those cows. I mean, cows have people trained in India to starve before they will consider eating a cow. Cows are smarter than we give them credit for.
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Cows produces methane on earth.
But cows can't survive on Titan's climate.
There must be a lot of "something" on Titan that are producing the massive amount of methane.
Spherical cows, obviously.
Re:Titan's active geology is very cool (Score:5, Insightful)
The source of Titan's methane remains a mystery because methane in the atmosphere is broken down over relatively short time scales by sunlight
Hang on a minute: wasn't free methane being used as an indicator of life on Mars? So where does this methane come from?
Kind of. Methane could be generated on Mars either by biological means, or by geological means.
If its geological, then the sub-surface of Mars is more active than we thought.
If its biological in origin, well there's the biggest discovery in human history right there.
For the record, im guessing geological.
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Ok, then tell us how you would convert ethane into ethanol using a children's chemistry set in usable yields, dear AC.
As they say: put up or shut up.
BTW: I am a chemist and this transformation is certainly not trivial, because ethane has no functional groups and therefore you would need quite harsh conditions. Not something to find in your run-of-the-mill nursery. This is not even considering getting sensible yields.
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It's trivially converted by partial hydrolysis under high vacuum or, if you want to avoid the vacuum pump (which isn't part of kids chemistry sets), you could react the ethane to ethene and then enzymatically go to ethanol. Then it's just seperating the product by distilling.
A quick back-of-the-envelope guesstimate gives a yield of about twenty percent. Which isn't much, but when you have an entire planet full of ethane you can afford some loss.
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So where does this methane come from?
Sorry, that was me.
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Too bad this isn't on Europa, *and* there isn't a single black monoliths in sight, *and* Jupiter (well, Saturn, Jupiter is nowhere in sight either) isn't collapsing in on itself and isn't turning into a second sun, *and* there isn't a human crewed spacecraft there, *and* we're not receiving an ominous warning not to land there, *and* neither a psychotic computer nor Roy Scheider are involved, or you would be able to make a 2001/2010 reference.
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Have you read what they say about Titan's atmosphere? Of course you cannot see the monolith.
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"Reference" doesn't mean he has to tell the whole fucking story.
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But you could make a Kurt Vonnegut one :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirens_of_titan [wikipedia.org]
Well worth a read by the way
Wild theory (Score:2)
Maybe the source of the methane is some exotic life form: They feed on the more complex hydrocarbons and reduce them to methane (I'm no chemist, so I don't really know whether this would be a possible way to gain energy). They cannot consume the methane to gain more energy because they are lacking oxygen, therefore the methane is the end product, just like CO2 for earth's life. The methane then goes into the atmosphere where it gets combined into more complex hydrocarbons using solar energy (that process is
Re:Wild theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah its interesting but it should be possible to calculate the amount of biomass required to do that. There is a hell of a lot of methane in this cycle on Titan which implies a lot of life. My guess is that the stuff would have to blanket the planet and it would need a fast metabolism. For me that means it must be in a subsurface ocean. The surface is too cold for a high energy metabolism.
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They must be eating a lot of cheese.
I get that too:)
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IF and only IF the source of the methane is biological. Which is not necessarily the case.
The OP is implying a carbon cycle where, in effect, the sunlight alters (increases) the amount of net bond energy per carbon atom, by converting methane vapour into "higher" hydrocarbons ; then at the surface the metabolism of the (putative) organisms rev
Ultra-dense atmosphere at fault? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't Titan's ultra-dense atmosphere have something to do with this? Most meteors come in at a high angle of incidence, meaning they graze the atmosphere, then fall in as they're slowed down to a capture speed.
Titan's atmosphere is something like what, three times as dense as Earth's atmosphere? It's up there with Venus, not Mars or Io, so shouldn't we be comparing it to planets, not moons? Keep in mind that visually, Titan is only about 8% smaller than Mars, and quite a bit larger than Earth's moon.
The methane on Titan (Score:3)
stays mainly in the crater.
I know (Score:2)
Sort of like ... (Score:3)