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Titan's icy climate mimics Earth's tropics

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posted on Oct, 6 2007 @ 10:37 AM
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If space travelers ever visit Saturn's largest moon, they will find a tropical world where temperatures plunge to minus 274 degrees Fahrenheit, methane rains from the sky and dunes of ice or tar cover the planet's most arid regions. These conditions reflect a cold mirror image of Earth's tropical climate, according to scientists at the University of Chicago.

Titan, one of Saturn's 60 moons, is the only moon in the solar system large enough to support an atmosphere. Pierrehumbert and Jonathan Mitchell, who recently completed his Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics at Chicago, have been comparing observations of Titan collected by the Cassini space probe and the Hubble Space Telescope with their own computer simulations of the moon's atmosphere.

Their study of the dynamics behind Titan's methane clouds have appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their continuing research on Titan's climate focuses on the moon's deserts.

"One of the things that attracts me about Titan is that it has a lot of the same circulation features as Earth, but done with completely different substances that work at different temperatures," Pierrehumbert said. On Earth, for example, water forms liquid and is relatively active as a vapor in the atmosphere. But on Titan, water is a rock. "It's not more volatile on Titan than sand is on Earth."


Continue reading here - SOURCE

Umm, seams the more I read about Titan, it seems to potentially hold some sort of life. If it has seasons, rain of methane and potential ice...who knows!




posted on Oct, 6 2007 @ 10:49 AM
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Nice find Arawn


Titan really does resemble early Earth as far as its atmospheric and surface chemistry goes...All those organic molecules....Its almost like Titan is begging for life to develop


If we take out the temperature factor on the surface, with internal heating, who knows what kind of life could exist under the surface...Or even on the surface given what we've learned about microbes on Earth that can withstand extreme cold, oxygen-less environments and so on...

I hope we're able to get some serious gear down there before long, and carefully/respectfully check the place out

Peace

[edit on 6-10-2007 by Rilence]



 
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