Titan’s liquid hydrocarbon ocean may have waves
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/University of Idaho
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has rocky coastlines around its methane seas and lakes that appear to have been carved out by waves, and a NASA mission launching in 2028 may be able to get a closer look.
Titan is the only body in the solar system other than Earth that has liquid on its surface. It has lakes and oceans made of hydrocarbons such as liquid methane, ethane, and other organic molecules. Scientists think that winds in Titan’s thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere drive the waves in these lakes, but this has never been observed directly because Titan’s atmosphere is too hazy to see through.
now, Rose Palermo Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey in Florida and their colleagues found that the shape of Titan’s coastline is best explained by the presence of waves that have eroded the ocean surface over eons.
Palermo and his team looked at the shorelines around Titan’s largest oceans and lakes, including Kraken Mare and Ligeia Mare, and compared them to coastlines on Earth with known origins, such as Lake Rotoef in New Zealand, which initially formed by floods and later was eroded by waves. The team then created different simulations of Titan’s oceans, including those in which the shores were eroded by waves or by dissolving their edges.
Photographed by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, Ligeia Mare on Saturn’s moon Titan has a variety of edges that appear to have been carved by waves.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/Cornell
The researchers found that images of Titan’s coastline, best depicted by wave simulations, resemble Earth’s wave-eroded coastlines.
“It’s still preliminary, but I’m very excited about it.” Ingo Muller-Wodarg The Imperial College London researchers say that although the study did not observe waves themselves, it is very strong evidence that waves exist. Dune-like structures.
The only way to truly verify that waves exist is to send a spacecraft to the surface, like NASA’s Dragonfly drone mission, scheduled to launch in 2028, Mueller-Vaudergues said.
Studying Titan’s coastlines may also help us understand how the first coasts on Earth formed, Palermo says: “Titan is a unique laboratory for studying coastal processes because it is not influenced by humans or plants. It’s a place where we can study coasts only as physical processes.”
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