Liquid Lakes On Saturn's Moon Confirmed

Riding with Robots writes "Scientists have been using the robotic spacecraft Cassini to explore what looked to be large lakes of hydrocarbons on the surface of Saturn's planet-sized moon Titan. But they couldn't be entirely sure that the features were actually liquid lakes, and not simply very smooth, solid material. Now, new findings seem to confirm that the observations really do show extensive seas of liquid ethane and other hydrocarbons. In fact, Titan seems to have an entire 'water' cycle of ethane evaporation, rain and rivers."

Comments

Re:goody

[IAAE]

Other than burning hydrocarbons, what would you do with them?

TFA says that theres methane, ethane and other light hydrocarbons. You can make CFCs, HCFCs, HFCs and that kind of fun stuff with methane and ethane, but to make polymers you need ethylene or other hydrocarbons with double or triple bonds.

It probably wouldn't be feasible to transport hydrocarbons from Titan back to Earth for consumption here, the energy costs alone would be astronomical; that and the whole climate change and tendancy to move away from hydrocarbons... The only thing I can see this being "useful" for is if we wanted a "refueling station" in space where we could just load up a spaceship with what is essentially natural gas. The only problem would be finding oxygen to combust it with...