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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."
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. But the probe landed close to a channel and didn't see any liquid.
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 Methane or Ethane. So why are these areas different from the Huygens landing site? It is in a polar area (gee I wish we had a second probe now) but most of the heat on Titan comes from internal sources anyway so having the sun close to th horizon won't make it much colder.
In any event Arthur Clarke is looking more right then wrong at the moment, We should be on the lookout for a Methane Monsoon.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
We are pretty certain it has liquid lakes, but it may
have caves as well.
We know so little about our solar system.
I say that the oil companies will launch an exploratory probe and then report that no methane exists. Therefore the gas prices will remain at their artifically exorbitant high levels.
The range works like this (this is over-simplified btw):
While examining the data from the different automata with different rule sets, he noticed a "phase change" in the patterns of artifial life that came to be given the different rule sets, and found the complex/interesting "creatures" only would exist at around this phase change. He then went on to suggest that the origin of _real_ life may also only come to be where there is the right balance of order and chaos, and suggests that the phase changes seen in physical systems (solid/liquid/gas) are analagous to the rule sets in the cellular automata (Solids = Order, Gasses = Chaos*, Liquids = Right Balance). Finally this puts forward my hypothesis that life may only require liquids to form (i.e. perhaps it's not necessary to have liquid _water_, but just liquid something).
* The chaos of gasses and their simultaneous lack of informational complexity: Think about how with gasses: while there are shitloads of molecules flying about at insane speeds, the overall behaviour of the gas can be really simply summarized with a high degree of accuracy -- e.g. Pressure*Volume=Temperature
Carl Sagan in Cosmos suggested that some where out there, there might be some sort of hard-wired life (e.g. an electronics based life that is a solid), but the theories I mentioned here would suggest that the solid-life forms would not come about (at least not with out an intermediate period of development in a liquid). Finally, it is interesting to think about how life even once it left the ocean has maintained its base in liquids. Are there any examples of life that are more solid than liquid?
Hmmm..thinking I might get modded off-topic, but I think this is interesting and relevant enough to bring up.
The article was titled "Life at the Edge of Chaos" and its by Christopher G. Langton.