Continents on Titan?

Saint Aardvark writes: "CNN reports here that a second bright spot has been found on Titan. The speculation is that it's a continent, but scientists can't be sure until Cassini arrives at Saturn and drops the Huygens probe through the atmosphere."

Comments

"snow" is solid precipitation

[coyote-san]

"Snow," in this context, refers to solid precipitation out of the "atmosphere." That can refer to water ice on the surface the earth, iron flakes at the boundary of the inner and outer core, or hydrocarbons on the surface of Titan.

Nowhere does the article claim that Titan has water snow - it says "hydrocarbon rain and snow". The "hydrocarbon" applies to both.

Bright spot explained

[Ukab the Great]

http://slashdot.org/articles/01/05/03/1617211.shtm l

Guess where Dell put all those recalled laptops that catch on fire...

Re:According to the article..

[Soft]

One would think that after all this time, that the system (weather) on Titan should be more or less at a steady state condition.

It could be snowing steadily? And there's still the change in sunlight every few weeks, as Titan revolves around Saturn...

It is too cold on Titan to allow for liquid water so the snow couldn't melt.

Wait, who said it would be water? It is supposed that various hydrocarbons `rain' or `snow' to the surface, definitely not water.

It can't evaporate either since, according to scientists in the article, the atmosphere is 10 times thicker than here on earth. Snow isn't going to vaporize at 10atm.

"Thicker" doesn't mean "higher pressure". IIRC the pressure on Titan would be around 1.5 atm; however, since it is much colder than on Earth and the atmosphere doesn't have the same composition, its density can very well be ten times as much as ours.

That is, if Cassini manages to listen to Huygens!

[Soft]

Let's hope they figure out a solution to the design flaw that was discovered last year, that the radio receiver on Cassini won't be able to compensate for the Doppler shift as Huygens rapidly changes speed in Titan's atmosphere...

That could be bigger than the 1999 double Mars probe failure, Galileo's jammed antenna, or Hubble's nearsighted mirror!

Re:So does this mean there's life?

[Soft]

First of all, as far as we know, Titan probably doesn't have any liquid water; it's too cold out there.

I don't understand this conslustion that if a planet has water it will have life. I know all living things need water. But it doesn't mean it's going to have some type of primative lifeform.

Very true. But we're looking for life anywhere we think it's likely to appear, and optimists think that it will evolve anywhere with the right conditions.

Furthermore, I recall some crazy idea mentioned in Stephen Baxter's Titan, that life could exist there, based on nitrogen, ammonia and cyanide instead of oxygen, water and carbon dioxyde... Who knows? Not us, and that's why we're trying to get a look.

According to the article..

[Freija Crescent]

It might be snowing on that planet. This brings up two interesting points.

Firstly, where did i put my ski equipment? I think there are some pretty cool mountains in that telescope image.

Now for the serious thing. Where do the scientists come up with ideas like that? Granted, i do have a few years of Chemical Engineering under my belt, but how could it be snowing? One would think that after all this time, that the system (weather) on Titan should be more or less at a steady state condition. It is too cold on Titan to allow for liquid water so the snow couldn't melt. It can't evaporate either since, according to scientists in the article, the atmosphere is 10 times thicker than here on earth. Snow isn't going to vaporize at 10atm. The last possibility is that strong winds could be picking snow up from the surface and lifting it to the atmosphere where it can rain down once more. This contrasts with another NASA article stating that the 'fog' on Titan is not turbulent, but dead still, this was stated to shut out theories that these 'bright' spots were merely weather phenomena like seen with Jupiter's Red Spot.

Anyone want to enlighten me or comment on this further, this article has me quite intrigued.

Re:That is, if Cassini manages to listen to Huygen

[zardor]

Even if they don't fix the doppler problem, the Cassini 'mothership' has a radar system on board, which they will use to 'scan' Titan every time they pass, (probably about a dozen times during the mission), and from the radar echos, they will be able to map out a fair percentage of the moon's surface. The Huygens probe will give a 'close up' of the properties of the atmosphere, and if they're lucky, a small section of the surface.