Radar image of Titan’s Shangri-La Sand Sea taken from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft
NASA/JPL-California Institute of Technology/ASI/Paris Diderot University
The dunes on Saturn’s moon Titan may be composed of the remains of smaller moons that once collided with each other and turned into sand.
Titan has sand dunes that cover about 17 percent of its surface and are spread throughout its equatorial region. Many researchers suggest that this sand may be made up of organic particles that form in Titan’s thick atmosphere and then fall to the surface. However, laboratory experiments have shown that these types of particles tend to be so fragile that they may not be able to remain intact while drifting across the moon’s surface and forming dunes. Masu.
Bill Bottke Researchers at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado have come up with an alternative explanation that may better fit our observations of Titan’s dunes. The idea is that the sand particles may have come from far beyond Titan’s atmosphere. He presented the research on March 12 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.
Each of the giant planets in our solar system has an irregular set of satellites. This is a relatively small satellite that was once an asteroid or comet before being captured in orbit around a planet. These moons tend to be about the same size as the particles in Titan’s dunes, and are composed of particles that are much stronger than the organic matter in the atmosphere.
In the early days of the solar system, these moons likely collided frequently, wearing each other down and releasing large amounts of dust and sand. “Irregular satellites collide very effectively,” Bottke said. But will this period of pulverization produce enough debris to populate Titan’s dunes? According to the researchers’ simulations, Bottke said, “Titan will grow on the order of about 10.” said.6 Kilometers of cubic meters of material, which is several times the size of a sand dune. ” Direct impacts of meteorites and comets on Titan could add even more material.
“This model may be crazy, but it can be tested,” Bottke said. If this is how particles in Titan’s dunes form, debris of material could be left in the atmosphere, and they could have distinctly different properties than the organic particles that formed there.
“It might also be possible to test it using data from the Cassini-Huygens mission,” he says. michael marasca at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. And even if that data is not conclusive, NASA’s Dragonfly mission is scheduled to launch to Titan in 2028. It is planned to fly over the dunes and measure sand particles, which should solve this mystery once and for all.
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