Lake On Titan Winks From a Billion Kilometers Away

The Bad Astronomer writes "NASA's Cassini spacecraft took an image of Saturn's giant moon Titan earlier this year that serendipitously provides proof of liquid (probably methane) on its surface. The picture shows a glint of reflected sunlight off of a monster lake called Kraken Mare (larger than the Caspian Sea!). Scientists have been getting better and better evidence of liquid methane on Titan, but this is the first direct proof."

Comments

billion kilometers

[g0dsp33d]

Its called a terameter. What is the point of the metric system if you don't use the other scales?

Re:billion kilometers

[g0dsp33d]

It is generally accepted to try to use the prefix that will best keep the number of units between 1-999. More people might still speak parts of Latin if people used the correct terms. Also Slashdot is a technical crowd and I would bet that less than 1% doesn't know what a Tera means.

Re:billion kilometers

[noidentity]

Heh, reminds me of I think it was Enterprise episodes where they were talking of thousands and tens of thousands of meters from the ship. I kept wondering why they didn't say for example 3.5 kilomoeters, 20 kiliometers, etc.

Just be glad the headline wasn't "Lake On Titan Winks From a Giga Kilomoeter Away"

Where do the hydrocarbons come from?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Methane is an organic material. Organics are one of the key building blocks of life. In fact, it is one of many byproducts of life processes. An abundance of organic material bodes well for finding life (probably bacterial) on Titan.

The question is whether life arose there on its own or was seeded by wayward asteroids and comets.

Re:Where do the hydrocarbons come from?

[pclminion]

Methane is an organic material. Organics are one of the key building blocks of life. In fact, it is one of many byproducts of life processes. An abundance of organic material bodes well for finding life (probably bacterial) on Titan.

I doubt it. "Organic" is an artificially created classification. It just means anything that is prevalently composed of carbon atoms. There happen to be a lot of carbon atoms in the universe, due to its relatively low atomic mass. There's also a ton of helium. It is not really surprising that these common elements might be found, in combination, in large quantities. We have large deposits of hydrocarbon here on Earth as well. Yes, these compounds are, according to our own definitions, "organic", and in fact originated from living matter, but we do not see organisms thriving in the deep oil wells.

I do not see how an excess of methane would indicate the likelihood of finding "bacterial" life. What would the cell walls be composed of? It would have to be something like a lipid bi-layer, so that the membrane wouldn't just dissolve into the methane. But then, what's INSIDE the cell? Probably, it would be more hydrocarbons. These non-polar materials are ill-suited as stages for complex, biological chemical reactions. They cannot dissolve ions. Without soluble ions, hell, without soluble polar compounds, there isn't a whole hell of a lot of interesting chemistry that can take place.

If we found tons of water that would be far more indication of the potential for life. Water has dozens of extremely unusual properties all of which make it conducive to life.

Fossil Oxidisers

[MichaelSmith]

If it was possible to mine or drill for oxidizers under the surface of Titan, then you would have a complete energy economy.

Frozen Nitrous Oxide anyone?