Saturn’s moon Titan is a very strange world. It is bigger than our moon, it is even bigger than the planet Mercury. He is frozen to the bone. Temperatures on its surface hover around minus 180 °C. At the same time, it is the only moon in the Solar System to have an atmosphere that is poisonous yellow, rich in organic matter, and very dense, in fact about 50 percent denser than Earth’s atmosphere.
Titan’s surface is covered by dark dunes of organic material and, compared to Earth’s, rather shallow seas of liquid methane and ethane. To make matters worse, radar images of these peculiar seas, such as the now famous Kraken Sea (Kraken Mare) in the northern hemisphere of Titan, there are bright spots that are obviously moving and also only exist for a limited time, only a few hours to a few weeks.
Scientists discovered these spots in 2014 in the images of the Cassini-Huygens probe. They were amazed and christened them “magical islands” (Magic Islands). Since then, a number of hypotheses have emerged that attempt to explain the nature of these phantom islands. Waves, real islands made of some materials or perhaps massive bubbles of nitrogen were considered.
Organic materials that float like icebergs
Planetary scientist Xinting Yu from the US University of Texas at San Antonio and her colleagues have explored in detail the relationships between Titan’s atmosphere, hydrocarbon seas and solid materials on the surface of this amazing moon.
Their models showed that the “magic islands” are most likely massive chunks of frozen and at the same time highly porous organic materials that float like icebergs.
Due to their composition of liquid methane and ethane, the seas on Titan have a very low surface tension. Most solids would be too dense to sink immediately on such a liquid. Therefore, it is probably a material that is porous like emmental. If such a material had the right ratio of voids and channels, it could stay on the surface for a relatively long time.
Researchers too offer an explanation for the unusually smooth appearance of Titan’s seas and lakes. This could be due to a thin layer of frozen organic matter on their surface. If Yu et al. the truth, so they immediately explained two of the mysteries associated with the moon Titan.
2024-01-08 10:46:04
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