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The surface of Titan is a frigid flatland that has a temperature of minus 180 C (292 F)

According to scientists, Saturn's moon Titan a dozen lakes that are most likely made up of methane.  Researchers speculate that the lakes are the cause of obscuring smog in Titan's atmosphere.  The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft took the radar images of Titan's high latitudes while conducting a fly-by of the moon recently.  The liquid that fills the lakes is most likely a type of liquid hydrocarbon -- methane being the most likely natural gas.  Some of the lakes are connected by channels -- other lakes have rivers that flow into them.  Smooth, black areas that are considered ovoid features are said to be lakes, but has yet to be confirmed.  Besides Earth, Titan is the only other body in the solar system that has lakes.  According to a PRNewswire:

"What we see is darker than anything we've ever seen elsewhere on Titan. It was almost as though someone laid a bull's-eye around the whole north pole of Titan, and Cassini sees these regions of lakes just like those we see on Earth," said Larry Soderblom, Cassini interdisciplinary scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Ariz. "Titan has turned out to be like a musical crescendo -- each pass is more exciting than the last."

NASA's Cassini spacecraft last year found a liquid hydrocarbon lake located at Titan's south pole, but this is the first time multiple lakes had been found.  It is difficult to properly study the moon because of its smoggy atmosphere.

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What I find most interesting..
By masher2 (blog) on 7/31/2006 1:42:22 PM , Rating: 1
Titan's atmosphere is essentially nothing but thin gasoline. Made, I might add, without the help of decaying dinosaurs...or any other organic matter.

I expect that, once the purveyors of the abiotic theories of terrestial petroleum pick up on the fact, it'll provide a substantial boost to their theories.




RE: What I find most interesting..
By Dantopia on 7/31/2006 5:28:11 PM , Rating: 2
Well, except that you're completely wrong. Titan's atmosphere is not made of "gasoline", it contains trace amounts of Methane (1.6%) which is a combustible hydrocarbon quite different from gasoline. The rest of Titan's atmosphere (98+%) is essentially nitrogen (Earth's is also mostly nitrogen).

The methane on Titan is not extracted from petroleum products as it is on Earth; even if there is an abiotic explanation for the origin of petroleum deposits on Earth, it has nothing to do with the processes that create natural gas on Titan.



RE: What I find most interesting..
By masher2 (blog) on 7/31/2006 5:50:35 PM , Rating: 2
> "Well, except that you're completely wrong."

Oops, I'm not. Here's a press release from Berkeley:

quote:
"The atmosphere of Titan has a significant amount of methane gas, which is chemically altered by ultraviolet light in the upper atmosphere, or stratosphere, to form long-chain hydrocarbons". These hydrocarbons, which could be like oil or gasoline, eventually settle to the surface...


http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/0...

If you're not familiar with what exactly a "long-chain hydrocarbon" is, here's a USC press release, oriented a bit more towards laymen:

quote:
That rich organic soup covers Titan in a gooey mud of methane, ethane, acetylene and propane — what on Earth would be considered one colossal oil refinery. If oxygen were present, Titan's air would ignite with the stroke of a match...


http://viterbi.usc.edu/news/news/2005/2005_03_09_t...

> "The rest of Titan's atmosphere (98+%) is essentially nitrogen..."

Old data. The amount of methane and complex hydrocarbons has been scaled up several times since the Cassini mission began. The current figures are more like 5-6% hydrocarbons, of which somewhat more than half is methane.

> "Methane (1.6%) which is a combustible hydrocarbon quite different from gasoline"

Err, no. Methane is the simplest hydrocarbon...gasoline is a mix of many different hydrocarbons, mostly in the pentane/heptane/hexane/octane range, but there are trace amounts of higher and lower fractions in it. Furthermore, all the hydrocarbons are not chemically "quite different"...they only differ in the length of the chain and can easily combine to form heavier fractions, or (under the right conditions) 'crack' to form lighter ones.

A gasoline refinery is essentially just a large facility for adjusting hydrocarbon chain lengths to the mix desired for the output products.


RE: What I find most interesting..
By Dantopia on 7/31/2006 6:57:32 PM , Rating: 2
You call my data old, yet one of the links you provided was published before Cassini arrived at Titan. Furthermore, your own references cite a figure of 3% for the methane content and 5% if you count all hydrocarbons (one does, the other only says a "significant" amount). Note: significant can mean different things according to context. In the context of celestial bodies, 3% is high, but you have to agree saying the atmosphere is "made of gasoline" is significantly less accurate and misleading than my figure of 1.6% methane. Uranus for example has a higher percentage of methane than Titan does, but most planets do not.

And yes, "Gasoline" is totally different than Methane, even if gasoline happens to contain hydrocarbons. Most gasoline contains hydrocarbons with 5-12 carbon atoms, methane has 1. Starch, cellulose and glucose are just strings of carbohydrates, yet I wouldn't say sugar, starch and wood are the same thing (nor would I claim that the atmosphere of Titan is made of wood even though it contains Carbon and Hydrogen as does Methane).

You are implying that Titan's atmosphere is made of gasoline, using that as a point in your main argument that it is a point for the proponents of abiotic petroleum formation. This is my main complaint, it is not related in any way. The petroleum on Earth is very chemically different than small amounts of simple hydrocarbons on Titan. The methane does not imply that Petroleum forms elsewhere without any biologic process. As far as I know, petroleum (as we know it on Earth) has not been found anywhere in the solar system except on Earth.



By masher2 (blog) on 7/31/2006 7:12:27 PM , Rating: 2
> "You call my data old, yet one of the links you provided was published before Cassini arrived at Titan"

What's your point? Both were more accurate than your original figures. I can scrape up more current data still, but those were sufficient to prove the point.

> "Uranus for example has a higher percentage of methane than Titan does, but most planets do not"

If the longest chain hydrocarbon in Titan's atmosphere was methane, I wouldn't call it gasoline. The fact is it contains large amounts of complex hydrocarbons which are the same as those alkanes which comprise gasoine. Calling the atmosphere "made of gasoline" is a sensationalist way of putting it, I agree-- but I'm not the first to do so. Several of the Cassini scientists have been quoted as such.

> "The petroleum on Earth is very chemically different than small amounts of simple hydrocarbons on Titan"

No it isn't. If you exclude the presence of some trace biologic tracers in petroleum (which some geologists believe as being evidence of biotic origin, and some do not), the material found on Titan is nothing but a very light-grade petroleum.

This fact undermines the entire argument of the biotic petroleum camp, which is that the higher alkanes *cannot* form from nonbiological processes. If they can form on Titan in the absence of life, they can form here in the same manner.





Black helicopters
By Misty Dingos on 7/31/2006 2:54:40 PM , Rating: 2
I wonder when Exon will own Titan or if it already does? And who is going to design the first double hull super tanker for space. Can't have oil spills in space.




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