River System Spotted on Saturn’s Moon Titan

I thought this was a cool article and wanted to post. Makes you wonder what is out there...

Hopefully we go to Titan soon with a rover.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has spotted a river system stretching more than 200 miles on Saturn’s moon Titan.

Though it isn’t the Nile — which is more than 20 times as long — the mighty river provides further evidence that this odd little moon is a wet world not unlike our own. Many lakes and small rivers have been found already on Titan but the newly discovered stream is the largest yet and represents the first time scientists have seen such a vast liquid system on any world other than Earth.

Titan’s mini-Nile doesn’t flow with water, which freezes to be hard as stone on the moon, but rather liquid hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane, which are stable in the moon’s -290 degree Fahrenheit average temperatures. From its headwaters, the flow follows a fault line and runs into the Kraken Mare, one of three gigantic seas that cover Titan’s northern hemisphere. Titan’s liquid cycle also includes seasonal downpours, which have been spotted from orbit. Whether all this liquid improves the chances for life on Titan remains an open mystery.

source: www.wired.com...

And also a field of Bacon has been spotted on Pluto. It just needs to be thawed since its all cold out there and junk.

reply to post by TheHistorian


Very cool.
Thank you.
S + F !

I always wonder what variety of extremophile might be lurking in these river systems. Extremophile to us, run of the mill on Titan.

The more we learn, the more I am reminded of how much we really do not know.

Very cool [pun intended],
Nice find!

I've always wondered about the primordial soup that is titan.. wasn't it already common knowledge titan had rivers and lakes?

Titan sounds more and more weird. Underneath it has liquid water, on the surface it has liquid Methane under pressure?

Not long from now, I suspect the paradigm that all life requires water will be shattered. Why couldn't a being come about that lives off of methane?

S&F. Thank you for this. We stare up at the night sky and wonder if somewhere in the far reaches of space life exists, and it seems more and more that our own backyard is full of wonders.

Cool times ahead. Thanks again.

Originally posted by TheHistorian
I thought this was a cool article and wanted to post. Makes you wonder what is out there...

Hopefully we go to Titan soon with a rover.

[

source: www.wired.com...

I think you made a mistake rover? how about rower

I have mentioned this before in another ATS thread but do not remember any replies or related comments.

I am curious what these rivers and lakes of hydrocarbons means to the production of hydrocarbons here on earth as I always heard they were related to fossils ie "fossil fuels".

So does this mean one of these 2 things?

1) That somehow ages ago life existed on Titan in abundance enough that "fossil fuels" could somehow be created on the surface of Titan without the required heat, time, and pressure that we have been taught is necessary for the production of hydrocarbons.

Or...

2) That creation of hydrocarbons is not related to animal or plant life at all, that it is actually an abiotic process here on earth and as we now see, likely to be on every celestial body in the Universe.

I know that this is not really what a thread is talking about but its answers to these questions that I must know.

If production of hydrocarbons has nothing to do with what we've been taught and it's a simple chemical process why can't we produce hydrocarbons in a lab?

Someone please answer me this...

How is it that we can get detailed enough images of Titan to see small streams, but we're left with grainy undecipherable images of Mars and even our own Moon? It just makes no sense to me.

reply to post by wastedown

Those are good questions. I'd like to hear the answers to those myself.

Originally posted by wastedown
2) That creation of hydrocarbons is not related to animal or plant life at all, that it is actually an abiotic process here on earth and as we now see, likely to be on every celestial body in the Universe.

I know that this is not really what a thread is talking about but its answers to these questions that I must know.

If production of hydrocarbons has nothing to do with what we've been taught and it's a simple chemical process why can't we produce hydrocarbons in a lab?

What makes you think we can't produce hydrocarbons in a lab? This process specifically produces methane for example: en.wikipedia.org...

Someone please answer me this...

How is it that we can get detailed enough images of Titan to see small streams, but we're left with grainy undecipherable images of Mars and even our own Moon? It just makes no sense to me.

Grainy, undecipherable images? There are literally robots on the surface of Mars taking photos, and we have images of the moon at 0.5mpp resolution, higher than any body other than Earth.

What makes you think that the images of Titan are somehow better than images of Mars for example?

reply to post by wastedown


I do not agree with the abiogenic hypothesis. Biotic origin, as of right now, makes more sense to me. With that stated, if we could prove abiogenic origin, I would be happy to be wrong.

reply to post by wastedown


Not all hydrocarbons are the same. Methane and Ethane (which are found on Titan) have well understood abiotic AND biological origins. Petroleum is known to only have a biological origin.

There have been people who proposed hypotheses for abiotic origins for petroleum, but most of that work has not held up to peer review. Look up "Thomas Gold".


EDIT TO ADD:

Originally posted by wastedown
Someone please answer me this...

How is it that we can get detailed enough images of Titan to see small streams, but we're left with grainy undecipherable images of Mars and even our own Moon? It just makes no sense to me.

See LROC and MRO for very high-res orbital pictures of the Moon and Mars (hi-res enough to be able to resolve something at least as small as a large beach ball). And, of course, we have Mars rover images that are up close and personal.

reply to post by steve1709


Rower or rover... Same thing (kind of)

Scientist call this the Kraken Mare, similar name to the monster kill by Perseus, anyhow, it's 5 times bigger than the Lake Superior.

Temp is freakin cold down there well below 200 'C

Originally posted by TheHistorian
reply to post by steve1709

 

Rower or rover... Same thing (kind of)

sorry if I flustered you, I was making a bad joke.

Like we need to "row" on the river on titan ok, ok it wasn't a bad joke, it was a REALLY bad joke

Can you imagine what Titan would be like if it had an oxygen atmosphere the first probe/rover we sent there would create the biggest fireball in history followed by rivers of fire followed by the kraken mare of fire followed by a charred crispy titan trailing smoke into space and mission control saying whoopsy scratch that mission...

So does this work... there is a sea of methane and other chemicals, but there is a water ocean underneath that!?