Posted on 01/21/2005 7:17:19 AM PST by Dallas59
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Saturn's moon Titan is covered by "dirty" ice ridges and seas of liquid natural gas, a team of scientists said on Friday after a week of research into data from the space probe Huygens.
"We've got a flammable world," said Toby Owen, an atmospheric scientist, at a news conference from European Space Agency offices in Paris monitored on NASA (news - web sites) TV.
After a seven-year piggyback trip from Earth on board the Saturn probe Cassini, the European-designed Huygens separated in December and fell toward Titan, entering the moon's atmosphere last Friday.
The probe, part of a $3 billion joint mission involving NASA and the European and Italian space agencies, sent back readings on the moon's atmosphere, composition and landscape.
Slowed by parachutes, Huygens took more than two hours to float to the icy surface, where it defied expectations of a quick death and continued to transmit for hours.
That surface, which scientists have said was the consistency of wet sand or even creme brulee, features ice rocks, channels, and abundant indications of liquid from rain.
"There's lots of evidence of fluid flow," said Marty Tomasko, the principal investigator for Huygens' on-board imaging instruments. While it does not rain every day on Titan, Tomasko and colleagues speculated there must be some sort of regular precipitation on the surface.
The methane can exist in liquid form on Titan's surface because it is so cold, -290 degrees Fahrenheit (-179 degrees Celsius). Methane is also a key component in Titan's atmosphere, along with nitrogen. But as opposed to the Earth, the atmosphere of Titan lacks oxygen, which is essential to fire.
"There's no source of oxygen available, which is a good thing or Titan would have exploded a long time ago," Owen said.
YEARS OF STUDY
Though the mission teams collected just a few hours' worth of data, they expect to spend years analyzing it for clues as to how Titan formed, how it works and what it can say about the Earth's own development.
Titan is larger than the planet Mercury and, because of its atmosphere, a popular setting for science-fiction tales of human colonization and exploration.
And while manned missions are not necessarily on the horizon, researchers are already talking about what they might do next with Titan, if they had enough money to launch a mission that could probe the solid surface more actively.
"This is highly possible, we can now dream seriously of sending rovers to Titan," said Jean-Pierre Lebreton, the Huygens mission manager for the ESA.
Before that, though, the researchers -- some of whom have worked on the project for the better part of two decades -- will probably catch up on their rest.
"Some of the scientists did not sleep for days and nights, so we are a bit tired I must say," Lebreton said.
The Cassini-Huygens mission to study Saturn's rings and moons was launched in 1997 and is named after two 17th-century European astronomers: Christiaan Huygens, who discovered Saturn's rings and Titan, and Jean-Dominique Cassini, who discovered the planet's other four major moons.
The problem with oxygen as Lonesome noted is that it's very rare in the Universe to have free oxygen just floating around. When oxygen gets into a molecule it's stuck in there pretty good. Asteroids don't have free oxygen floating around.
It took blue-green algae and photosynthesis to give earth the free oxygen we currently have.
I did a search on hydrogen sulfide and this is what I always wanted to know, but never had the nerve to try!
grandma_fish (g_fish@email.com) -- 1.13.2003
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"If it's liquid, how is it gas?"
Just like propane (LPG or Liquified Petroleum Gas). Store it under intense pressure and it liquifies until released to normal atmosphere.
Al-Reuters via Yapoo is the best comment. Perfect characterizations.
Rumor over at DU is Bush will grant Halliburton the rights to build a pipeline from Titan to Texas!!! ;-)
Taking into account that I almost flunked Chem in college, my assumption is that the nuke would vaporize the water in the comet, providing "free" oxygen. If, after the intial flash of the nuke, there was excess oxygen gas, then would it be possible to ignite the methane?
Oh, and for the "peaceful" people on this board who don't like the thought of using nukes, perhaps we could use a gigantic Zippo lighter instead....
"Sounds like an ideal future refueling point for extrasolar exploration."
Exactly what I thought.
I wonder how much would be consumed, however, lifting off from Titan.
Some sort of Lando-Calrisian-Cloud-City-Refining might be the practical answer, believe it or not.
In that world, oxygen would be the fuel. You can send oxygen to a bunson burner, for example, in a methane atmosphere and get what is, by all appearances, an ordinary flame.
Are you agreeing with me, disagreeing, or simply adding imput? ambiguous post.
Hey Thoughtomator! what's up?
I think we, (The United States) have the capability to bring this resource to earth, and we can create new jobs, capitalize on it, it's an easy take for us, the rest of the world can scramble cause we can have the monopoly for a while
We can make methane gase prices plummet to worthless. Can we make it happen? China can buy lots and we'll buy the weapons from them, same with NK,Irn, france, well. France, we can just blow our noses on those white flags. ;) /sarc over
Can methane be converted to a safe useable fuel in our cars?
OTOH, if you could bombard titan with frozen oxygen asteroids enough, you could turn all that methane into water (which would promptly freeze solid, negating the actual utility of such an endeavour).
Oh, considering the minor issue of transport costs of Methane from Saturn to Earth, I bet we could get the cost of our space Natural Gas down to maybe 50 million dollars per cubic foot. That will be sure to put earth-based Natural Gas producers out of business.
Not liquid. Liquified. "Liquid" natural gas would be stupid. They say liquified natural gas because liquified methane wouldn't be understood by as many people.
Disagreeing..... My hypothesis is that the nuke would sever the H and O bonds, providing the free oxygen that would allow burning...
No Oxygen = No Explosion.
"So.... If we reshape the orbit of an ice comet... providing the "O", and torch off a 1 megaton nuke, how long would Titan burn? "
In H2O "ice comet" wouldn't burn at all Water doesn't burn. A liquid oxygen planet colliding with Titan would be a different story however.
That's not what I heard...
Now if Exxon & NASA could only build a realllly big tanker.....
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