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Possible Cryovolcano Discovered on Titan
Rei writes "NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is reporting that the Cassini spacecraft has observed what appears to be a cryovolcano on Saturn's moon Titan. Given the absense of a global methane sea on Titan, the snail-shaped structure with what appears to be a caldera on top could explain how Titan's methane stays replenished. It could further explain the dry drainage channels discovered by the Huygens lander as being formed by heavy methane rainfall after eruptions."
... methane can be found at Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania... Neptune, Titan...
astronomy dominee
Although they are made out of "solid" matter the flows seem almost liquid in nature. Don't think of the methane as one huge frozen lump, but rather many solid lumps in motion.
Actually, they decided the creme brulee hypothesis was wrong - the first thing the lander hit was a rock, which it then slid off, which gave a similar reading to the impactometer as creme brulee.
... And before anyone asks, yes, they did indeed test the sensor against real crème brûlée!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
"Cryovolcanoes are pseudo-volcanoes believed to be present on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Unlike volcanoes on Earth which spew hot lava, cryvolcanoes bring super-cool "lava" to the surface of their planets. They are volcanic-like vents that spew forth ice, water or vapor-phase volatiles, with some gas driven solid fragments instead of lava. It is suggetsed that they could be present on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. However it has only been seen on Triton, the biggest of Neptune's moons. Also it is said that they might be active in Europa and Enceladus.
This term was coined by NASA in late 2004, when the Cassini space probe observed cryvolcanoes and cryogenic lakes for the first time."
definition quoted from explore-dictionary.com
sig.
Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day show a nice picture of this.
If you're interested in this stuff, bookmark http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html, which just points to the current picture of the day.
Please stop misusing Catch-22 to describe chicken-egg problems or other paradoxes that are not Catch-22.
While a lot of things are possible (at least until we have more data), most of these gas giant moons seem to derive whatever internal heat they have from tidal deformation. It's the same thing that happens when you take a wire and bend it back and forth really fast.
I haven't seen the numbers crunched that would tell how much energy Titan could derive from it's orbital eccentricity, but it wouldn't take much to drive methane ice at cryogenic temperatures.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system to have a substantial atmosphere
Triton, Neptune's large moon also has a substantial Nitrogen atmosphere, enough to entrain geyser plumes that move downwind. Ganymede has a thin atmosphere as well.
the hypothesis is that this feature is probably formed by plumes of frozen methane, forced from underground, which then slowly evaporate into methane gas.
It will be interesting to see what style of volcanism dominates on Titan - "cryoclastic" eruptions of methane gas and ammonia-hydrate ice crystals, or gooey water/hydrocarbon flows. The light colored lobate features surrounding the caldera in the TIMS image suggests the later. The apparent ring faults surrounding the caldera also suggest that this is a shield profile volcano built by effusive eruptions. It will be interesting to measure its profile with Cassini's radar to find out for sure.
an ill wind that blows no good
Cryptovolcano
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A volcano-like feature on a planet or moon, that may or may not be an actual volcano. Examples have been found, for example, on the surface of Ganymede.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cryptovolcan
TFA says there is no methane ocean on Titan. I thought that's what the "large black Lake-like" features were. I think I missed something... When was it established that those weren't hydrocarbon lakes?
The Hyugens probe appearently landing on one of those "lakes". They speculate that it is a dried-out lake-bed. Appearently it fills up when the vocanos errupt.
Table-ized A.I.