Titan's Lakes of Methane and Ethane

Rob Carr writes "During the most recent Cassini fly-by, the surface-mapping radar spotted what appear to be lakes in the high northern latitudes of Titan. From the article: 'The channels have a shape that strongly implies they were carved by liquid. Some of the dark patches and connecting channels are completely black, that is, they reflect back essentially no radar signal, and hence must be extremely smooth. In some cases rims can be seen around the dark patches, suggesting deposits that might form as liquid evaporates.' At Titan's temperatures, water is a solid; the lakes would be comprised of methane and ethane. The fluids are different, as are the temperatures, but these lakes cement Titan's status in the solar system as the place with the most earth-like weather — except for Earth, of course."

Comments

Re:Grammar Nazi

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

"is composed of" or "comprises"... not "is comprised of"

You are correct, but:

1) The meaning is quite clear.

2) The American Heritage Dictionary sez:

Even though careful writers often maintain this distinction, comprise is increasingly used in place of compose, especially in the passive: The Union is comprised of 50 states. Our surveys show that opposition to this usage is abating. In the 1960s, 53 percent of the Usage Panel found this usage unacceptable; in 1996, only 35 percent objected. See Usage Note at include.

Let's get the slashdot editors to fix basic grammar & spelling before we start worrying about edge cases of grammar :-)

And the hand-wringers say there is no reason

[popsicle67]

None at all to explore the solar system. We are wasting money that would be better spent feeding people who are too lazy too feed themselves. I just love democrats, I just got through being berated by my ex-mother in law for being excited about this story and space exploration in general. I guess she doesn't get that we'll have to move out there one day because this planet will be too crowded. She says people need to wise up and stop breeding so fast so we can achieve a stable population with zero growth. What say all of you? Do you wanna give up screwing so smarter-than-thou intellectuals will be comfortable? Just what I thought,Fat Chance.

Re:Fluid

[Tablizer]

I remember that when the Huygens probe landed there were lots of pictures of dark areas presumed to be lakes with channels leading into them from higher ground.....Later the consensus was that the channels seen from Huygens were dry channels left over from flows in the past. The evidence in this case seems to be the darkness (in radar) of the "lakes", which imply that we are seeing liquid...So why are these areas different from the Huygens landing site?

The darkness in the areas where Huygens landed was photographic darkness, not radar darkness. I don't know if they used radar on the Huygens area yet. But the dark area near Huygens extended quite far so perhaps they've already radared that area and found it radar-light.