Saturn's Moon... 'Waves' detected on Titan moon’s lakes

[Cidersomerset]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RrKnNWWmEn8

18 March 2014 Last updated at 14:27

'Waves' detected on Titan moon’s lakesBy Paul Rincon

Science editor, BBC News website, The Woodlands, Texas

Titan and Tethys Titan, seen here with Tethys in the background, is shrouded in an
orange haze of organic chemicals


Scientists believe they have detected the first liquid waves on the surface of
another world.The signature of isolated ripples was observed in a sea called Punga
Mare on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.However, these seas are filled not with
water, but with hydrocarbons like methane and ethane.These exist in their liquid
state on Titan, where the surface temperature averages about -180C.Planetary
scientist Jason Barnes discussed details of his findings at the 45th Lunar and
Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Texas this week.


Titan is a strange, looking-glass version of Earth with a substantial atmosphere and
a seasonal cycle. Wind and rain shape the surface to form river channels, seas,
dunes and shorelines.But much of what's familiar is also turned sideways: the
moon's mountains and dune fields are made of ice, rather than rock or sand, and
liquid hydrocarbons take up many of the roles played by water on Earth.

The vast majority of Titan's lakes and seas are concentrated around the north polar
region. Just one of these bodies of liquid - Ligeia Mare - is estimated to contain
about 9,000 cubic km of mostly liquid methane, equating to about 40 times the
proven reserves of oil and gas on Earth.

An image of Titan's north pole taken by the Cassini probe during a flyby in July
2012 shows sunlight being reflected from surface liquid in much the same way as a
mirror re-directs light. This phenomenon is known as a specular reflection.


Titan - 'Looking glass Earth'



Titan surface

Titan is Saturn's largest moon and the second biggest in the Solar System
It is the only moon in the Solar System with clouds and a substantial atmosphere
Wind and rain create similar features to those found on Earth, such as dunes, lakes
and riversBut on Titan it rains liquid methane, filling the rivers, lakes and seas with hydrocarbons

Dr Barnes, from the University of Idaho in Moscow, US, used a mathematical model
to investigate whether the features in the image were compatible with waves.

"We think we've found the first waves outside the Earth," he told the meeting.

"What we're seeing seems to be consistent with waves at just a few locations in
Punga Mare [with a slope] of six degrees."

He said other possibilities, such as a wet mudflat, could not be ruled out.

But assuming these were indeed waves, Dr Barnes calculates that a wind speed of
around 0.75 m/s is required to produce ripples with the requisite slope of six
degrees. That points to the waves being just 2cm high. "Don't make your surfing
vacation reservations for Titan just yet," Dr Barnes quipped.

However, Titan appears to be on the brink of major seasonal changes, which
present important opportunities for scientists to gain a better understanding of this
complex and endlessly surprising world.

"The expectation is that any day now, the winds will start getting strong enough as
we move into northern summer, and the waves will start picking up," Ralph Lorenz,
from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) in Maryland, told BBC News.

"You can also get a phenomenon known as wind set-up, where wind over a body of
water will cause the liquid to pile up, potentially causing a storm surge."

He added: "A metre of storm surge, a metre of tides, is certainly within the realms
of possibility for Titan. Whether we can see that [with Cassini] is another matter."

Dr Lorenz said he was hopeful that sea level rise of a metre in height could cause
shorelines to migrate and that this could be picked up from orbit.

Titan operates on a 30-year seasonal cycle, with the northern region currently
approaching summer solstice, which it will mark in 2017.



Titan's lakes Titan's lakes and seas are concentrated at the saturnian moon's north
pole Computer models of Titan's weather suggest that the northern summer is
approaching the rainy season, in which liquid hydrocarbons are "pumped" from the
south pole to the north by the climate cycle.Sometime soon, scientists expect,
clouds will start to gather at the north pole and it should start to rain.

"We have a long-term picture of liquid levels rising in the north and declining in the
south. But that's against the backdrop of seeing what we think are evaporite
deposits around the northern seas and lakes," Dr Lorenz explained.

These evaporite regions are Titan's equivalent to salt flats on Earth where bodies of
water evaporate, leaving behind minerals that had previously been dissolved in the
water.

"That suggests that while the sea level is rising in the current epoch, at some time
in the past, the liquid level was much higher than it is today. We've now mapped
most of the surface and there aren't large areas where you could hide another sea,"
he explained.

The amount of moisture in the climate system might fluctuate because methane is
continuously destroyed in the atmosphere by sunlight. But scientists think it could
also be re-supplied via volcanic belches from beneath the moon's surface.

'Tidal roar'

In his own presentation at the LPSC, Dr Lorenz focused on a narrow "throat"
feature that separates the two main basins of Titan's largest sea, Kraken Mare.

Dubbing it the "Throat of Kraken", he said it was similar in size to the Straits of
Gibraltar and might generate fast-moving tidal currents through the narrow channel.

Dr Lorenz pointed out that on Earth, such circumstances can produce whirlpools,
and in the case of the Corryvreckan off the coast of Scotland, a tidal maelstrom
generates a roar that can be heard 16km away. Whether such phenomena existed
at this location on Titan was pure speculation, he said.

Dr Lorenz explained: "It's really getting quite exciting, because we're starting to get
a literal big picture, in the sense that the radar coverage [of Titan's surface] is close
to complete. But because we're moving into northern summer, there's better
lighting, which means the camera and the near-infrared spectrometer on Cassini
are also able to map the northern seas."

"Everything is really starting to come together, and the seas and lakes are very
much becoming the central topic in Titan science."

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26622586

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Titan - A Place Like Home (Full Documentary 2005)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=r7oFgGuECcc

Investigation of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, after the Cassini spacecraft's seven-
year trek landed the Huygens Probe on its surface. Does it reveal how life on Earth
began?

Titan's landscape and surface similarities with Earth could shed valuable light on
what sparked the life explosion on Earth, and how possible it might be for life to
exist on other planets.

[Cidersomerset]

Artist's conception of Titan's surface as the Huygens probe descends and lands on the moon. The Cassini spacecraft is flying overhead. Craig Attebery/

[Cidersomerset]

National Geographic....

Titan Methane Lakes Cassini Flyover 2013 NASA-JPL Animation from Saturn Orbiter

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ilxfVKXuM-E

No Place Like Home:

4 days ago

Saturn’s Largest Moon Would Host Really, Really Weird Life
by Nadia Drake

Ah, Titan. Saturn’s largest, haziest moon had a brief starring role in last night’s
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Toward the end of the episode, Neil DeGrasse
Tyson eases his spaceship into one of the moon’s dark, oily seas. He wanted to see
what was down there—more specifically, what kind of life might be down
there.After spending most of an hour describing the evolution of life on Earth, it
was time to turn toward alien terrains and chemistries—to a place that, while not so
very far away, could host some very, very strange lifeforms.

“There’s a world I want to take you to, a world far different from our own, but one
that may harbor life. If it does, it promises to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen
before,” Tyson says, in the episode.

Titan is deceptively Earth-like. It has a thick, nitrogen atmosphere. Seasonal
rainstorms produce wet patches that are visible from orbit. It has lakes. In fact,
Titan is the only place in the solar system, besides Earth, with stable liquids on its
surface. Those liquids flow through rivers and streams, pool into lakes and seas,
sculpt shorelines and surround islands, just like on Earth.But Titan’s puddles aren’t
filled with water—the moon is soaked in hydrocarbons. Methane and ethane,
compounds that are gassy on Earth, are liquid on Titan’s frigid surface. Here,
temperatures hover around -179 Celsius (or -290 Fahrenheit). It’s so cold that
water ice is rock-hard—in fact, the rocks littering the moon’s surface are made from
water. Water is everywhere on Titan, but it’s locked in a state that’s inaccessible for
life-sustaining chemistries.Ask an astrobiologist about the prospect of finding life on
Titan, and they’ll say the shrouded, orange moon is the place to go if you’re looking
for bizarre life. Life that’s not at all like what we know on Earth. Life that, instead of
being water-based, uses those slick, liquid hydrocarbons as a solvent. Life that, if
we find it, would demonstrate a second genesis—a second origin—and be
suggestive of the ease with which life can populate the cosmos.

Life that’s worth taking a chance to find?

“We will never know if liquid water is the only special solvent in which life can form
and propagate unless we go and sample these damn lakes and seas,” planetary
scientist Jonathan Lunine of Cornell University said during a recent astrobiology
conference. Lunine has spent years studying Titan; at one point, he and his
colleagues designed a spacecraft that could land on the moon and float in one of its
hydrocarbon seas [pdf].



Titan’s surface, snapped by the Huygens lander. NASA/ESA/JPL/University of Arizona

Thinking about life on Titan isn’t new. In the 1970s, Carl Sagan and chemist Bishun
Khare, then at Cornell University, were already publishing papers describing the
organic chemistry that might be taking place on the Saturnian moon. At that point,
though, the large bodies of liquid on the moon’s surface hadn’t yet been spotted, so
Sagan and Khare were thinking about the types of reactions that might be taking
place in the moon’s atmosphere (in 1982, Sagan and Stanley Dermott proposed
that such lakes might exist). Later, Sagan and Khare would show it was possible to
make amino acids using the elements found in the moon’s haze.

In the 1990s, the Hubble space telescope offered hints of a wet world, but it
wouldn’t be until NASA’s Cassini mission that scientists got a good look at the
moon. In 2004, the spacecraft began peering beneath Titan’s cloudy shroud; in
2005, Cassini sent the Huygens probe parachuting through the haze to a spot on
Titan’s equator. Data sent back to Earth revealed a world that looks very much like
ours—just with a completely different chemistry.

What that different chemistry means for the possibility of life is still speculative.

“Think about life on Earth—we’re all either in water or we’re fancy bags of water,”
says astrobiologist Kevin Hand of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “On Titan, life in
the lakes would be ‘bags’ of liquid methane and/or ethane. That 90[Kelvin] liquid
would be the solvent and then whatever is dissolved into the lakes would be the
material that’s used to build the other components needed for life, and to power metabolism.”

Powering metabolism is tricky at those temperatures, though, which is one of the
reasons why some scientists are hesitant to focus on sending a probe to Titan.
Nonetheless, astrobiologists are studying the reactions and pathways that life might
use to gain some traction on Titan—including things like breathing hydrogen and
eating acetylene.

“Which elements are easy and which elements are hard to access if you’re a ‘weird’
microbe living in Titan’s lakes?” Hand says. “At this point we don’t really
know—work is ongoing.”

I had a few questions after watching the Cosmos depiction of Titan’s alien seas.
First, if I were a weird life form on Titan, would I be able to see Saturn through
Titan’s hundreds of kilometers of haze? Or would the most spectacular planetscape
in the solar system be hidden behind that smoggy curtain?

“Even with the human eye, Saturn would be visible as a faint, bright-ish blob in the
nighttime haze,” Lunine says. “And if you have eyes that extend even a bit beyond
human sight into the nearest part of the infrared, the ringed world would be clearly
seen floating ethereally in the skies of Titan.”

Phew.

Second, the scene with Tyson in the spacecraft shows a craggy, chaotic seafloor,
with things that look like hydrothermal vents. How much do we really know about
Titan’s seafloors?


Large bodies of liquid in Titan’s northern hemisphere, mapped by Cassini in 2006. NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS

Turns out, we know quite a lot about Titan’s seashores, and slightly less about its
seafloors. Until now, scientists had mostly used seashore shapes and surrounding
topography to infer what the seafloors might be like. But in May 2013, the Cassini
spacecraft aimed its radar at the depths of Ligeia Mare, the second largest sea on
Titan (Kraken Mare, which Tyson took a swim in, is the largest). Using the radar
data, the team created a map of the sea’s floor—its bathymetry—and saw that
Ligeia Mare plunges to a depth of 160 meters (524 feet). The northern seabed is
gentler and smoother than the southern, which is riven with flooded valleys and
punctuated by steep peaks.

Getting the depth profile meant that scientists could estimate how much liquid
hydrocarbon rests in Ligeia Mare: As much as 100 times more than the oil and gas
reserves on Earth combined.

Next up? Peering into the depth of Kraken Mare, which covers an area of at least
400,000 square kilometers, or approximately equal to the size of Germany. “Kraken
appears to consist of no fewer than three distinct basins, each about the size of
Ligeia Mare,” Lunine says. “So there’s a lot of sea to see on Titan.”

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/03/17/saturns-largest-moon-would-host-really-really-weird-life/

[swoods_blue]

I thought it was fascinating that within a day or two of this, other scientists rushed forth to say that new Cassini data showed exactly the opposite:

New Cassini Radar Shows Titan's Seas Glass Smooth Nixing Hints of Waves

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

I think this is a wonderful thread that somehow I didn't see -- wth!

Thank you for posting this Cidersomerset

The 'waves' are interesting; I wonder what sorts of strange life could exist down there -- they say that methane-based life is exposed to less oxidization, corrosion, acidity, etc... there could be complicated lifeforms there that evolved much more quickly than on Earth...


and did you notice, NASA admitted that "volcanic processes" produce the methane and restore it!
That means it's an entirely renewable, wonderful resource on young planets and even some old ones, apparently.
I think perhaps this is one of the better things they've released recently... lots of information in here.

Thank you! <3