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:No ethanol?

[Anonymous Coward]

bring oxygen!

Re:Grammar Nazi

[creepynut]

Hmmm, me not know what your talkin' aboot... Basic grammer & spelin has never been issue hear. /ha

Fixed:)

Fluid

[MichaelSmith]

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.

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.

Titan is amazing

[GreggBz]

We are pretty certain it has liquid lakes, but it may
have caves as well.

We know so little about our solar system.

Re:Just throw a rock at it

[CogDissident]

And god help you if that rock strikes a spark against another one.

WHOOM! Oops, half the planet is on fire...

Yes, I know that it wouldn't burn without oxygen in the atmosphere, but work with me here people.

Liquid suggested as vital component of prelife

[weemattisnot]

I just recently finished a fascinating article in "Artificial Life II" from the Santa Fe Institute in the Sciences of Complexity. The author used Cellular Automata (think Conway's game of life) to show that complex structures only occur when the rules of the Cellular automata fall within a certain range of the possible sets of rules.

The range works like this (this is over-simplified btw):

• If the rules tend too much towards the "quiescent state" (think all the cells turning black in conways game of life), then the automata is too simple, there is no way for any self-replicating order complex or even simple to develop.
• If the rules don't tend towards the quiescent state enough, then the automata is too chaotic. Forms self-interfere in too chaotic a way, and it is impossible for order of any kind to develop.

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.

Re:Liquid suggested as vital component of prelife

[weemattisnot]

The article arguing that the ability to pass on information happens spontaneously given a system with a certain ratio of chaos and order. Unless I misunderstand what you're saying, this passing on of information is analogous to the "instructions" that you mentioned in your post.