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Artist impression of Sikun
Labyrinthus region on Saturn's moon
Titan.
Credit: NASA/JPL/ESA/SSI and M.
Malaska/B. Jonsson
Reminders of Titan
Apr
13, 2011
Are the features found on
Saturn's moon Titan something other
than they appear?The recently
renamed Cassini-Solstice spacecraft
has been analyzing information from
the planet Saturn and its family of
moons for almost seven years. Its
primary mission target continues to
be Titan, the largest moon in the
Solar System and the only one with
an atmosphere.
Titan has
puzzled planetary
scientists for as long as Cassini
has been sending data. For example,
methane gas is constantly escaping
from Titan because of its low
gravity. Sunlight also causes the
methane molecule to dissociate into
its carbon and hydrogen
constituents. Conventional theories
state that Titan is billions of
years old, so why does a dense
atmosphere continue to exist?
Cassini mission scientists
believe that there are "oceans" of
methane on the surface of Titan,
replenished by a "drizzle" of liquid
methane raining out of the
atmosphere. Images sent from the
surface by the Huygens lander
revealed a rocky landscape with
the consistency of damp sand. A
field of
small pebbles extended to the
horizon. Spectrographic analysis
established that the "rocks" are
made of water ice. It is easy to
understand how ice can appear to be
like rock when it is at a
temperature of - 179 Celsius. What
Huygens did not detect was liquids
of any kind.
No methane droplets were falling
from the clouds; there was no
precipitation, and no pools of
methane were visible within the
lander's field of view. If there are
no methane oceans to feed the
atmosphere, how is it generated?
Cassini team members speculated
for some time that so-called "cryo-volcanoes"
were keeping Titan's atmosphere
replenished. These supercooled
eruptions were thought to bring the
necessary gases out from the
interior as Titan is heated up while
being squeezed and twisted by
Saturn's tidal forces.
Recent data from Cassini
has dispelled that notion, however.
Titan retains its atmosphere
because it is a relative newcomer to
the Solar System born from Saturn in
an electrical conflagration. Saturn
contains a great deal of methane in
its atmosphere, so if Titan came
into existence just a few thousand
years ago, it has not had time to
lose what it was born with.
A
previous Picture of the
Day noted that
flowing methane (or
ethane) has never been found on
Titan and that the entire line of
reasoning follows from an assumption
without foundation. The so-called
“river valleys” on Titan do not look
as if they were carved-out by
flowing liquids. Electric Universe
advocates
predicted that an
examination of the images would
reveal the "rilles" going uphill and
downhill, rather than always
downhill, as a moving stream would
do. Rather, what we see on Titan are
probably electric discharge effects.
"Sinuous rilles" occur on most
rocky planets and moons. Although
they superficially resemble some
river systems on Earth, there are no
catchment areas or feeder streams
and the tributaries are short, often
meeting the main channel at right
angles, a sign of electric arcs
traveling through the terrain. Also,
rather than ocean basins, the flat
depressions on Titan could have been
etched out by energetic plasma
discharge events.
Titan is an electrically charged
body that is constantly bombarded by
ion storms from Saturn. It has a
particle fountain flowing out of its
poles, as well as a torus of charged
particles encircling it. The
banding around its north
pole indicates that streams of
charged particles are circling Titan
in the same way that electrons and
positive ions circle Earth in
opposite directions. In other words,
there is a plasma ring surrounding
Titan that influences its geology
and its weather.
Orbital images confirm
that it has a dry surface where
dunes several meters high march
across the terrain in parallel rows.
The so-called "dunes"
are large, being visible from the
Cassini orbiter thousands of
kilometers away. They are quite
distinct, with well-defined, almost
solid-looking ripples and waves that
pass over craters and around "yardangs."
They appear to follow wind patterns,
but they also have some
characteristics that
might mean they are not
wind-generated in the conventional
sense. Many of the
dunes look like
fingerprint patterns, with whorls
and arches.
In response to the reported
"anomalies" found on Titan, Electric
Universe theorist
Wal Thornhill wrote:
"Huygens' descent to Titan's
surface was an acid test...In
particular, the expectation of
channels carved by cosmic lightning,
similar to Venus, was confirmed. The
channels on Titan bear the hallmarks
of cosmic lightning imprinted on the
surface. Also, the lack of a methane
ocean was predicted because Titan's
atmosphere is very young and a vast
reservoir of the gas is not needed
to make good the losses expected
over the 4.7 billion years required
by the solar nebula model. Titan is
a Rosetta Stone for planetary
history once the context is
understood...Titan's surface – and
the other bodies in the solar system
– can be deciphered when it's
realized they repeat what is 'said'
in plasma discharges."
Stephen Smith
 New
DVD
The Lightning-Scarred
Planet Mars
A video documentary that could
change everything you thought you
knew about ancient times and
symbols. In this second episode of
Symbols of an Alien Sky, David
Talbott takes the viewer on an
odyssey across the surface of Mars.
Exploring feature after feature of
the planet, he finds that only
electric arcs could produce the
observed patterns. The high
resolution images reveal massive
channels and gouges, great mounds,
and crater chains, none finding an
explanation in traditional geology,
but all matching the scars from
electric discharge experiments in
the laboratory. (Approximately 85
minutes)
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