Lake spotted on Titan?

jahead writes "It looks like a lake has been seen on Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini probe. But don't get too excited yet. As mentioned by Elizabeth Turtle in the article, it could also be a dried up lake that left dark deposits."

Comments

Act now!!!

[1967mustangman]

And now, for a limited time only, I can sell you lake front property on said lake on Titan for the astonishingly low price of $20 an acre!!!

What would be the significance of this?

[bc90021]

I'm not trolling, I'm curious. Surely, liquids exist in space, and surely they must pool? If it were a *water* lake I'd say that'd be something (life!?), but on a planet where there's likely methane rain, there's likely methane lakes.

Re:What would be the significance of this?

[bc90021]

What do you moderators not understand about "I'm not trolling, I'm curious."? I'm looking for more knowledgeable people in the Slashdot community to answer the question of the finding's significance. It's one thing to find something, and report it, but TFA gives no reason as to why this is important. Does it allow for future bases on Titan to somehow suck up methane for fuel? Is there the possibilty of methane-based life that might live in a methane lake? I'd like to know why this is important.

Re:What would be the significance of this?

[ProfaneBaby]

It's based primarily on the assumption that liquid pools are more likely to harbor the beginnings of 'some form' of life. Methane, being a carbon derivative, could perhaps provide the initial basis for simple lifeforms.

I basically agree with you - the 'wow' factor is nice, but the true value is still pretty questionable.

Re:What would be the significance of this?

[p3d0]

Surely, liquids exist in space, and surely they must pool?

Amazingly, no. This would make Titan only the second known celestial body that currently has liquid on its surface.

Liquids require pressure (see this) while solids and gasses don't, and pressure is a rare thing in space.

Re:What would be the significance of this?

[mazarin5]

Well, besides beings merely interesting, it's nice to see what were previously thought to be Earth-unique features on other bodies. Lakes and rivers aren't really found anywhere else, maybe at one point Mars, and maybe longer ago on Venus. To find a lake and a full water cycle, even if it's really methane, is significant because that brings our counter of objects which have lakes and rain up to 2. The more often we see simliar features and objects on other bodies, the more we can expect to find a useful combination of those same features out there sometime in the distant future. For some, it's comforting to know that you're not a fluke.

Re:What would be the significance of this?

[AnonymousJackass]

I think the major thing of interest here is that Titan is so different to any body in our solar system (other than Earth, of course). The fact that liquid of any kind exists is quite remarkable. It means it has been able to retain pretty much all of it's initial components, unlike most other rocky bodies that heat up and lose a lot of their original constituents. Titan is, I believe, a kind of mini proto-planet. It's similar to how Earth would've been when it was young. The difference, however, is that Earth was in a position to heat up and eveolve, whereas Titan is perpetually frozen. There's a lot of fascinating science there.

As for methane-based life, I think it's unlikely just because of the extraordinarily low temperatures on there.

Re:What would be the significance of this?

[Kombat]

You would hope us humans would have learned out lesson about draining the natural resources by then.

Uhm, not to be obtuse, but why shouldn't we drain and use the oil here on Earth? Do you think that if we leave it in the ground, it'll somehow eventually turn back into dinosaurs? It's a plentiful, efficient, portable, cheap (relative to the alternatives) energy source.

The problem with oil isn't that we're using it - it's that we have no plan to handle the byproducts produced by using it. The pollution is the problem. Global warming, smog, and all that. There's no benefit to leaving the oil in the ground and switching to more expensive energy sources before it's necessary.

Re:What would be the significance of this?

[Leroy_Brown242]

"The problem with oil isn't that we're using it - it's that we have no plan to handle the byproducts produced by using it."

So the hangover is the problem, not the drinking?

One is caused by the other. If we can't effectivly eliminate the issues our planet suffers by using fossil fuels, then we need to stop.

Re:What would be the significance of this?

[Alex P Keaton in da]

From my limited astronomy background (wasn't my major, but it fascinated me so I paid attention): Through modeling, we can assume that what holds on Earth, should hold on other planets, other galaxies etc.
I think what we are forgeting is that it seems that we know less about space than sometimes we think. For example, if memory serves me right, there is a lot of dark matter in the fringes of the galaxy- we know it is there because something is having an effect on other bodies there, however we can't detect it because it doesn't seem to emit any known energy source... (Caveat- I am not an astronomer, just a hobbyist, so take my assertion with a salt grain)
So in my line of reasoning, it seems that this lake on Titan may not have the same characteristics as a similar lake on Earth, for a plethora of reasons that we may not understand yet.
All that aside, how cool would it be to swim on another planet, even if in a lake of methane...
And for those with tinfoil hats- keep in mind that some assume that we don't get real info from NASA- such as those who say that gravity on the moon is much closer to the Earth's gravity, unlike what we are told, but this can't be released because it would throw a Geurilla Wrench into the theory of relativity....

Re:What would be the significance of this?

[htrp]

What we mean to say is that on planets that have any kind of atmosphere, there will be some kind of fluid present. If you look at a phase diagram (crack out your old chem books), you'll realize that liquids can only exist at certain temperatures and pressures before becoming either solid or gas. As the majority of space is rather cold and the pressure is rather low, this tends to favor the formation of solids and gases.

As for your venus question, I would venture to imagine that lava, as a higly viscous fluid would remain liquid at a relatively low pressure. The other mention is that the surface of venus is basically a massive cooking oven from all of the cloud cover of various Sulfur oxides, which would provide both sufficient temperature (from the greenhouse effect) as well as indicate a high amount of atmospheric pressure.

What's significant about this was that it was initially hypothesized that since titan had a considerable atmosphere of methane and other hydrocarbons, that the surface of Titan was possibly covered in either a massive liquid methane ocean or a methane ice sheet. However once the Huygens probe landed, that hypothesis was disproved (the one about liquid methane on the surface).

With what looks like a lakebed (even if it's dry) on the surface of Titan, this provides evidence that there once was/still is some liquid which eroded the landscape, which confirms that Titan's atmosphere may be more substantial than other planet's and that it may be more like earth.

Re:What would be the significance of this?

[mopomi]

Umm. . . No.

Io was the second known body to have liquids on its surface (1979 Voyager flybys discovered active, extrusive volcanism). Titan was next, though we couldn't see through the clouds, so we had no idea. Triton was the fourth to possibly have liquids on its surface, though we still don't know for sure. Venus also likely has some liquid lava on its surface, though we've not seen actual volcanism. Plus, Venus probably sometimes has sulfuric acid rains, but we're not sure. Mars may also have transient liquids on its surface.

Titan's cool because it's probably got an active hydrologic cycle (don't read hydro- to mean water, read it to mean fluid). Earth does, Venus might, Io has. . . something, Mars had one, it might still, occasionally. Triton has. . .something, and that's about it for the bodies in the solar system.

Earth is a big body, so it still has radionuclide heat, and it's close to the sun, so it's got an abundance of energy to drive a hydrologic cycle. We can't see through Venus' clouds with more than RADAR, so we don't know what's going on there. Mars is small, so its heat has mostly left it, and it gets nearly 1/4 the energy the Earth gets from the sun, so it's cold and has little atmosphere left. Io is in a weird, slightly eccentric, orbital resonance, so its energy comes at the expense of Jupiter (and Ganymede and Europa). Titan's also in an eccentric orbit, but it doesn't have the resonance with other sats that Io has, so it "should" have lost most of its energy--one of the mysteries is why such a small body has such a huge atmosphere (and thus a hydrologic cycle). Triton might have a bit of an atmosphere, and why is also a mystery.

So, of the many, many bodies in the solar system, there are only a few that have atmospheres, and fewer that have an active, observable hydrologic cycle. . .

Strewth...

[gowen]

I knew Ricki Lake had a fat ass, but I didn't know you could see it from space.

Not a lake

[Glog]

The announcement was later rectracted by NASA officials after it was confirmed that the "dried-up lake" was, in fact, Joan Rivers vacationing in the new Klingon botox retreat.

Re:Great deal

[IEEEMonkey]

Actually Methane gas has no odor. We add impurities to it in order to make it detectable.

Got a match?

[tzuriel]

In other news, Titan went up in flames earlier this morning when a careless tourist ignored the "No Smoking" signs clearly posted in the vicinity of "Methane Lake". When will these off-worlders learn to pay attention?

Re:Tough troll

[daniil]

You're weak, dude. Let me show you how it's done:

A few weeks ago, a lake mysteriously went missing in Russia. Back then, many people suspected that the lake had gotten fed up with the villagers throwing garbage into it, and just walked away. I guess we now know where it went :7

Re:Light please!

[MightyMartian]

There's no free oxygen in Titan's atmosphere. You couldn't even get the match to burn.

Look in the volcano

[EccentricAnomaly]

Sunlight breaks down methane, so to have it in Titan's atmosphere (particularly at such high levels) it has to be continually replaced. You can make methane on Titan via either life or some sort of weird chemical process. So the methane is a hint at possible life.

Titan's atmosphere is also full of a haze of complex organic molecules that continually rain down on the surface... leaving deposits of hydrocarbons on the surface hundreds of meters thick.

Now if only these complex organics could get mixed in with water. (And it has to be water, because you need the oxygen). Guess what 'rocks' on Titan are made out of :)

So you might have something happening in this methane lake with methane being the liquid and oxygen coming from ice... but this would be completely different from life as we know it...

My own bet is on the volcano to look for life (The volcano on Titan erupts molten water). Also there might be life in Titan's mantle (it's made of liquid water + ammonia mixture).

(This website: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/products/pro duct-presentations.cfm has lots of good inside information about the science results... the end of the "Titan: First Views of an Alien World" discusses where to look for life on Titan)