Lakes on Titan.Minnesota is called the land of 10,000 lakes for good reason: There are natural pools of water everywhere. Scientists have long thought that liquid-rich lands such as Minnesota are unique to planet Earth. New evidence suggests otherwise. Recent radar images show that Saturn's moon Titan has lakes, too. The liquid in Titan's lakes isn't water, however. It's a substance called methane. Still, this is the first evidence that bodies of liquid exist anywhere in the solar system solar system, the sun and the surrounding planets, natural satellites, dwarf planets, asteroids, meteoroids, and comets that are bound by its gravity. The sun is by far the most massive part of the solar system, containing almost 99.9% of the system's total mass. besides Earth. In the new images, Titan's north polar region North Polar Region See Polar Regions. looks a lot like Minnesota. Underneath the moon's atmospheric haze, there are lots of lake-shaped, dark areas with channels running between them. There are also signs of shorelines and wind-driven waves. The smallest lakes are less than a kilometer (0.6 mile) wide. The largest is 90 kilometers (56 miles) wide. NASA's Cassini spacecraft took the images on July 22. Cassini has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004. It's bitterly cold on Titan. At -180 degrees Celsius (-1,275 degrees F), any water there would freeze instantly. Instead, Titan's lakes are probably filled with liquid methane and maybe some ethane ethane (ĕth`ān), CH3CH3, gaseous hydrocarbon. It is a continuous-chain alkane. As a constituent of natural gas, it is used for fuel. It can be prepared by cracking and fractional distillation of petroleum. . These substances are known as hydrocarbons hydrocarbons (hīˈ·drō·kärˑ·b  nz),n. . Methane makes up 5 percent of Titan's atmosphere, but the hydrocarbon breaks down over time when exposed to sunlight. Scientists suspect that methane moves back and forth between the atmosphere and the surface of Titan, just like water cycles between ground and sky on Earth. These observations support the idea that Titan is The Titan I was the United States' first true multistage ICBM. It was the first in a series of Titan rockets, but was unique among them in that it used LOX and RP-1 as its propellants, while the later Titan versions all used storable fuels instead. similar to what Earth was probably like long before life started here. A few more flybys should confirm whether the moon is Minnesota-like or not. In October, Cassini's radar system will capture images of Titan's north pole North Pole, northern end of the earth's axis, lat. 90°N. It is distinguished from the north magnetic pole. U.S. explorer Robert E. Peary is traditionally credited as being the first to reach (1909) the North Pole. In 1926, Richard E. from a different angle. Then, in 2008, it will take radar images of the moon's south pole South Pole, southern end of the earth's axis, lat. 90° S. It is distinguished from the south magnetic pole. The South Pole was reached by Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer, in 1911. See Antarctica. . http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20060823/Note2.asp From Science News for Kids Aug. 23, 2006. |
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