Spacecraft Spots Probable Waves On Titan's Seas 82
sciencehabit writes: It's springtime on Titan, Saturn's giant and frigid moon, and the action on its hydrocarbon seas seems to be heating up. Near the moon's north pole, there is growing evidence for waves on three different seas, scientists reported at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Researchers are also coming up with the first estimates for the volume and composition of the seas. The bodies of water appear to be made mostly of methane, and not mostly ethane as previously thought. And they are deep: Ligeia Mare, the second biggest sea with an area larger than Lake Superior, could contain 55 times Earth's oil reserves.
does not compute (Score:5, Insightful)
bodies of water made of methane?
Tomorrow's news (Score:1)
USA starts war on Titan (to liberate its aliens from their evil totalitarian dictator)
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USA starts war on Titan (to liberate its aliens from their evil totalitarian dictator)
Charlie don't surf! [youtube.com]
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This is only the 5,000th time I've heard this joke.
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No, our argument is that Titanian hydrocarbons will be used locally, to support development of the asteroid belt. Asteroids appear to be rich in metals, but have no hydrocarbons that we can currently detect. Everything we eat is made of hydrocarbons, so we're going to need them.
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In space, closeness is defined by the cost of lifting from gravity wells, not just distance. in terms of cost and gravity wells. If we do find highly carbonaceous asteroids, that would be even better.
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Saturn's gravity well is certainly a factor, but you need to compare lift from Titan to lift from Earth itself, not from Earth orbit. There are no hydrocarbons in Earth orbit.
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Umm, this is not the methane you simple person know; or think you know. For one thing, temperatures on Titan are somewhat different than that on Earth, so please try again to recompute what you once thought you knew. Seas of frozen methane do exist, take Titan for example.
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Water is H2O, methane is CH4. You can certainly have seas of methane on Titan, but they are not "bodies of water".
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Umm, this is not the methane you simple person know; or think you know. For one thing, temperatures on Titan are somewhat different than that on Earth, so please try again to recompute what you once thought you knew. Seas of frozen methane do exist, take Titan for example.
He's just being pedantic about a phrase in the summary.
The bodies of water appear to be made mostly of methane, and not mostly ethane as previously thought.
A "Body of water" can't be made of methane.
Not that it matters. People like to post stuff like this AC and then mod themselves up... so they get to post AND mod in the same thread. I wish they'd just stop allowing AC posts to get modded, but oh well...
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I wish they'd just stop allowing AC posts to get modded, but oh well...
Would be awfully convenient for you considering how often you've been wrong and have had AC posts correcting what you said because there seem to be people knowledgeable in several sciences fields around here posting as AC...
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To be fair, the Slashdot summary does say "bodies of water":
(Emphasis mine.)
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With so much hydrocarbons (Score:2)
climate change must be rampant over there.
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Well, not much change, but according to wikipedia:
"Atmospheric methane creates a greenhouse effect on Titan's surface, without which Titan would be far colder.[55] Conversely, haze in Titan's atmosphere contributes to an anti-greenhouse effect by reflecting sunlight back into space, cancelling a portion of the greenhouse effect and making its surface significantly colder than its upper atmosphere.[56]"
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And that same theory applied here on Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]
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Titan needs some freedom and democracy, me thinks. (Score:1)
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The Fox News runs deep within this disciple. Let the hate flow, flow, let it consume you so your descent into the dark side is complete...
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Awww, you're so cute when you're trying to act all grown up like that.
I'll name one thing wrong - you posted at all. People like you do nothing but exacerbate problems. You take a joke and turn it into seething political flamebait, spewing the Fox News Greatest Hits soundbytes as you go. Do you think YOU added anything but bile and hate to the conversation? It was about astronomy, in case you forgot and were distracted by your own stupid, unnecessary commentary.
Spare us next time you get the urge to pos
yeah right (Score:5, Funny)
The bodies of water appear to be made mostly of methane,
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Also what makes them think there's oil there? Would that not have required having life there that died and rotted away and got buried for centuries??
Re:yeah right (Score:5, Interesting)
They worded it poorly, as the seas are methane, which is not oil - on earth it's the prime component of natural gas, so the better term would simply be "hydrocarbons". That said, hydrocarbons do not need life to form - just hydrogen, carbon, and a shortage of any oxidizers that could break them down into the lower energy states of H2O and CO2. Even longer chain hydrocarbons can form naturally - on Titan, that happens in the upper atmosphere by photochemical reactions.
It's important not to overgeneralize Earth to other celestial bodies. For example, you can even have bodies with oxygen atmospheres without life. We see this (to a tiny extent) on Europa, which has an extremely thin oxygen atmosphere from photolysis of water ice. It's quite possible that in other systems there could be an environment that produces a denser O2 atmosphere through a similar process - or through other processes, both known or not yet conceived of.
The universe is a weird place. Think about what a tidally locked rocky planet orbiting close to its parent star would experience. I read about one planet whose night side temperature was expected to be earthlike but with a hot side temperature of thousands of degrees. So think about it for a second, what's going to happen? The hot side is going to constantly boil off, potentially even to plasma, be circulated around to the cold side, and then rain down rock. Rockstorms. Depending on the properties of the rock, the rate of boil-off, the rate of redistribution, and the properties of the atmosphere, it could be anywhere from dust to large chunks, and anything from volcanic-like ash to pele's hair (rock wool) to breccias to gemstones. Lightning would be tremendous, like in some volcanic eruptions. Given the amount of energy at hand, winds in storms could get up to ridiculous intensities. The redistribution of mass is going to cause a continual planetary slump from the cold side to the hot side, so one would expect frequent, super-intense earthquakes and frequent volcanic eruptions. You might get some intense magnetic effects via an exceptionally strong dynamo effect, plus the star's magnetic field itself would be orders of magnitude stronger. Aurora could be intense enough to light the sky on the cold side and power photosynthesis. Aurora could be intense enough to light the sky and power photosynthesis on the cold side. Liquid water would be stable in certain places (if it managed not to be all blown off over geological timescales, that is, the planet would have to be large), but would be thrashed about to biblical extends by the other aforementioned processes. If the magnetic fields are strong enough, flowing saltwater may even be visibly dragged by Lorentz forces and build up charges when constrained. The dissociation of the rock on the hot side would free up oxygen into the atmosphere, which would not be all immediately consumed on the cold side (some oxidation reactions are slow). And on and on. So it's potentially possible to have livable, breathable planet with a soil made from regular rains of rock wool and gemstones, lit by aurorae and in a constantly undergoing one catastrophe after the next.
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OK, that makes more sense - thank you. Then again, what did I expect from an article with "lakes of water that is methane"? I am a fan of exoplanetary research, so I am familiar with most of what you said. However, the "full of oil" came out of left field and threw me momentarily...
Not /. - that's TFA and science journalism (Score:2)
That idiotic quote comes straight from TFA. It amply demonstrates the quality of what passes for "science journalism". In this case, not only the author, but also the editors of ScienceMag give the impression that they think methane is some weird form of water.
Actually, the author not only thinks that methane is water, he simultaneously thinks that it is oil, because he also writes that one of the methane seas "could contain 55 times Earth's oil reserves". Alternatively, he may be mixing information from un
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I'll take a truckload, I need something to insulate my house with.
Is Titan slowly drying off? (Score:2)
The liquid only appear at the poles even though the entire moon is covered with liquid carved features, so I'm wondering if Titan is an even more frigid version of Mars with all the liquid slowly evaporating away over the eons and escaping from the atmosphere, and maybe in another few hundred million years or so will be bone dry.
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Probably not, but the hydrocarbon cycle on Titan is still very poorly understood. I really look forward to the next Titan mission, but unfortunately everyone's obsessed with Europa so the next launch window is almost certainly going to be missed and it'll be decades before a new spacecraft gets there. The presence of seas and the low gravity plus a dense atmosphere leaves one with a plethora of great exploration options (all nuclear powered, of course, there's essentially no sunlight): hydrogen blimp (it's
Springtime on Titan (Score:2)
Sorry, even at 64 years old, I couldn't resist that.
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[PRODUCERS]
It's Springtime
For Titan
And Jupiter!!
Saturn is happy, and gay!
[/PRODUCERS]
Oil Reserves. (Score:5, Interesting)
I like how the body of water is measured in "Oil Reserves". Not gallons, not compared to any oceans or seas, or land mass, but "Oil Reserves"
Wonder who owns that media...
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FTFS:
It's springtime on Titan
I'm wondering how it is springtime on the whole moon at once.
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I like how the body of water is measured in "Oil Reserves".
It's a body of methane, not water, and it is chemically much more closely related to oil than water. So it arguably makes more sense to compare it to the amount of oil on earth than to the amount of water.
Methane != Oil (Score:2)
made mostly of methane
And they are deep: Ligeia Mare, the second biggest sea with an area larger than Lake Superior, could contain 55 times Earth's oil reserves.
Cautious? (Score:2)
Um, wouldn't those things be even more awesome? Trust me, I won't be disappointed if there's geological activity causing bubbling from under the seas (heat plus organics!), or if there's floating objects (cryopumice / super fluffy snow? organics foams? something else? what the heck floats on methane, after all?)
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And examples of these which could plausibly be on Titan are....?
There's not much in nature that's that light.
China builds an island (Score:2)
World Energy Crisis (Score:2)
All that fuel to burn on Titan, and no air ...
The perfect inter-planetary refueling depot, and no oxidizer ...
What to do???
wait for it.. lame WMD joke engaged! (Score:2)
Next up: Spacecraft finds weapons of mass destruction on Titan
They have WMD's we should invade (Score:1)
Probable waves? (Score:2)