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I bet they find out that Titan is a moon of frozen water at the surface and liquid water below the surface. Hence the Mud. Tidal forces are keeping the interrior warm thus melting the ice. Decaying bacteria like in septic tanks emitting vast quantities of methane from below and venting through the ground into the frozen atmosphere. Any bets?
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Rescind suggestion. Thanks.
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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No, if it is cold enough to liquify methane, then it would be so cold that any water near the surface would be renderd frozen permafrost. The "mud" on Titan isn't water/dirt mud, its Methane/heavy hydrocarbon/dirt mud.
If there were enough heat to maintain a liquid water table it would warm up Titan too and it would be measurably warmer.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Well the surface ice could acting like a blanket of insulation.
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No, because the heat would still have to GO someplace. It could not simply stay bottled up under the ice layer. Ice and rock are lousy heat conductors too.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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The heat can vent through the crust like on the moon Io that orbits Jupiter and a liquid ocean can exist under the frozen ice like on Europa.
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Nooo, if that were the case then we would see the geisers of water with spectrum analysis.
Europa is coverd with a sheet of ice, not permafrost. It is a different situation there.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Nooo, if that were the case then we would see the geisers of water with spectrum analysis.
Perhaps, the energy is not suffecient to create large geysers but large enough to make it flow out of the ground thus creating the channels we see?? Sort of like geothermal spring!!
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No, too cold. The "springs" would freeze almost instantly.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Not if they were salty.
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No, not even very salty water would withstand those temperatures. Besides, if it were boiled from underground and condenced near the surface, there wouldn't be that much salt.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Perhaps, it comes to the surface vent, freezes then blows apart into those ice chunks we are seeing. After it blows apart then the water rushes down hill and erodes those channels we are seeing. Then the water just seeps back into the ground before it freezes again,then another ice block forms on the vent to repeat the cycle again.
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No Errorist, I don't think you have a clue of just how cold it is on Titan... its SO cold, that water, even hot water, would freeze instantly on contact with the ground. If it sprayed into the air, it would instantly freeze into snow. Either way, the water would NOT remain liquid long enough to erode.
The liquid on the surface of Titan is Methane.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Either way, the water would NOT remain liquid long enough to erode.
Indeed, the pebbles seen on Titan's surface in the last probe images are as likely to be water as anything else. Water could easily form the rocky portion of Titan's soil, much like silica sand here on earth (with about the same consistency).
What would form moisture in that soil is something a lot of people would very much like to know, because it appears to have some.
The liquid on the surface of Titan is Methane.
Do we know that for certain? The surface temperature is just high enough and the apparent bodies of liquid are just big enough to call this into question.
We sure as heck know they're not water, though.
"We go big, or we don't go." - GCNRevenger
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Hey, they said the ice rocks are rounded and eroded looking. Perhaps, the ice rocks have eroded the channels once the water was forced up from below the surface and is quickly frozen.
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The rocks would just sit there, not roll down hill and gouge out gullies. If the water were ejected from underground under pressure, it would form kind of a "shield volcano" of ice, only broader and flatter. Not gullies.
If it were ejected with enough force, it would spray into the air and snow, which isn't detected.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Hi CM.
The melting point of methane is -182.5 deg.C and its boiling point, at 1.013 bar, is -161.6 deg.C. (I assume the boiling point at the roughly 1.5 bar surface pressure on Titan would be somewhat higher than that figure.)
The last I heard, the temperature on Titan's surface was measured at -180 deg.C, which would indicate that liquid methane is stable there - but not by much! 2.5 deg.C colder, and maybe a tad cooler again to mop up the latent heat of fusion, and the methane would solidify.
The fact that the partial pressure of methane seems to increase from higher altitudes down to the surface, is another indicator that there's a source of methane on that surface - presumably reservoirs of liquid methane.
Your comments make me think you're harbouring a pet theory of your own about all this (?). ??? :;):
Or am I mistaken?
The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down. - Rita Rudner
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Also besides CH4, there are more complex compounds made by solar light. These compounds would end back mixing with the methane seas, inriching the seas over time. Since there is a hydrocarbon cycle on titan, there are rivers, canyons, deltas just like here on earth. Over time the ice rock would wear away and from sand, mud, silt like sediments. That in adition to any rocks on the surface to. Since titan fromed with a mixed of rok and ices, methian must by locked up in the water ice in the from of a cathrate. As the ice is broken down into smaller pieces methian is given off. This degassing from minearal ices would replace the methian that gets converted into other compounds over time. I also bet that their is NH3 mixed in the ice too that is also degased, when destored by solar rays N2 is left which would explain why titan still has a thick atmosphere of N2 so long after it fromed. I think that other large ice moons of jupitor had thick atmosperes too back it was too warm and their mass too low to hold onto their old atmospheres. I think that the jupitor moons may still have large quanity of NH3, CH4, still locked up in cathrate ices in their ice crust. With large mirrors those ices could be sublimed away to make atmosphere for those large jupitor moons. The degased NH3 and CH4 could also aid terraforming efforts on mars.
I love plants!
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The heat can vent through the crust like on the moon Io that orbits Jupiter and a liquid ocean can exist under the frozen ice like on Europa.
LO
Europa is mainly water. Water ice is lighter than water.
So, you can have liquid water under a water ice shelf
On Titan, it's mainly methane, methane ice is more dense than liquid methane so that methane ice sinks.
So, you can't have a methane ice shelf over a liquid methane sea
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