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.

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.

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.