Titan May Have an Ocean

olsmeister writes "Titan has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans. Now it looks as if Titan is even stranger still. The evidence comes from careful observations of Titan's orbit and rotation. This indicates that Titan has an orbit similar to our Moon's; it always presents the same face toward Saturn and its axis of rotation tilts by about 0.3 degrees. This data allows astronomers to work out Titan's moment of inertia and points to something interesting. The numbers indicate that Titan's moment of inertia can only be explained if it is a solid body that is denser near the surface than it is at its center."

Comments

Re:ice float because it's LESS dense!

[PhilHibbs]

I'm not sure what the ice on the surface would be made of, or what the density of the liquid methane ocean would be since density depends on pressure, but Methane Clathrate ice is about twice as dense as liquid methane is at atmospheric pressure. Pure methane ice is less dense than liquid methane, so would behave like water ice, but I think it's unlikely to be pure.

Re:Interesting Stuff

[Kjella]

Honestly, Titan would be as "done" as the Moon is "done" today. Been there, done that, pretty boring piece of rock in the sky really that nobody's bothered to visit for almost 40 years. If we go there, yeah there's methane in fluid form but it's sterile like an operating room it will be just another one of those rocks.

If you really wanted to be the inner geek, you should go back to Leonardo da Vinci's time, when you could be a multi-discipline genius and most of his inventions really were hands on. Between electron microscopes, giant telescopes, huge particle colliders, robots and probes it's mostly reading stuff out of devices. And when it comes to space on the one side the Mars landers aren't being on Mars, on the other it'll take most of the "news" out of going to Mars. Now here's images just like the landers - except with people in them.

Personally I think one of the most exciting parts of space - searching for other earth-like planets - is happening right now. Good candidates are likely to show up in my lifetime, not in 500+ years. If we can find some, then going to Titan is a lot less interesting. Then people will dream of crossing the interstellar void and reaching "new earth". That's the thing about science, we always move the goal posts.