Pictures of Titan's Lakes

sighted writes "For decades, scientists have wondered if the thick orange haze that shrouds Saturn's giant moon Titan hid lakes of liquid methane on the surface, but there was no way to confirm it, until now. The Cassini flyby of July 22, 2006 took these striking images and were released today."

Comments

Confirmed?

[Cthefuture]

You mean "more evidence suggesting liquid"?

Hardly proof.

Re:why is liquid methane a big deal?

[darkonc]

The reactions that we're used to will obviously not work on Titan, but there's always a (very small) possibility that other forms of life could could evolve in the context of methane seas. If nothing else, a liquid base would allow simple life forms to develop without having to figure out the physics of supporting themselves and move around (as per the way that life is believed to have evolved on earth).

However, given that just about any chemical process is gonna run rather slow at the kinds of temperatures that exist on Titan we shouldn't expect any life that we find there to be very developed.

The next obvious step is to send something down to swim in the methane oceans of titan, and see if it gets eaten (or, at least, finds signs of (non)organic life. I don' think that it's that much lower a probability than finding life signs on mars (presuming that we figure out how to look for methane-based life), although it's admittedly a bit more expensive to go to Jupiter than it is to go to Mars.