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Possible Cryovolcano Discovered on Titan

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the cold-showers dept.

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."

4 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Titan Climatology by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's "crême brulée," jackass.

    Actually, it's 'crème brûlée', ass-jack. ;-)

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    Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  2. Re:Titan Climatology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    All of us in the English-speaking world owe a debt of gratitude to the medieval Englishmen who had the foresight to establish an alphabet free of all those silly little tickmarks.

  3. Re:NOT the most interesting of Saturn's moons by tylernt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "I don't know why this hasn't received more coverage"

    Maybe because that link is five huge pages spouting a bunch of conspiracy-theory pseudo-science... finally coming to the conclusion that the moon is, in fact, a disguised "Death Star"?

    Yeah, I don't know why it hasn't received more coverage... in The National Enquirer!

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    DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
  4. Re:NOT the most interesting of Saturn's moons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Looks to me like standard low gravity crystallization, with a pressure ridge at the former equator where the freezing crust met, then was deformed upward as the underlying material cooled and compressed.

    It's too cratered for any surface features to be remarkable at this point. We'll just have to wait for better pictures.