An unnamed crater on Titan. Credit: NASA/JPL
Mar 24, 2014
Lakes are supposed to exist on Titan. Could that be a misinterpretation of electrical effects?
The then named Cassini-Huygens mission was launched October 15, 1997 on a mission to explore Saturn and titan, its largest moon. With the Huygens lander included, Cassini was the largest interplanetary space probe ever launched. It is 6.7 meters high, four meters wide and weighed 5712 kilograms on launch day. Cassini entered orbit around Saturn on June 30, 2004.
On December 24, 2004, the Huygens lander separated from Cassini and began a twenty-day journey to Titan, reaching a speed of nearly 20,000 kilometers per hour relative to the surface of the moon. The first pictures from Huygens revealed a surface covered with pebbles suspended in what looked like icy slush.
Titan is the fifth largest rocky body in the Solar System, with a diameter of 5150 kilometers. It is larger than Mercury (4878 kilometers), the Moon (3474 kilometers) and Pluto (2274 kilometers). Of all the planetary moons, only Ganymede is larger than Titan, with a mean diameter of 5262 kilometers, just 112 kilometers difference. What makes Titan stand out from the rest is that it has an atmosphere, something even Ganymede doesn’t have, although Ganymede possesses an intrinsic magnetic field, which Titan does not have.
Data from Cassini also seems to indicate oceans of ethane in Titan’s north polar region. In one case, a “lake” of liquid hydrocarbon is said to have an area as large as 26,000 square kilometers. Based on an analysis of data from flybys of Titan, liquids flowing on the surface was given greater credence. In fact, the volume of hydrocarbon precipitates is was predicted to be far greater than what was previously reported.
In an image centered at 70 degrees north latitude there are features suggesting a “…coastline and numerous island groups of a portion of a large sea.” Comparing surface feature coordinates over several years, planetary scientists discovered that several of the putative lakes moved from their previous positions by as much as 30 kilometers. Since Cassini’s synthetic aperture radar is able to see through the normally opaque cloud cover that obscures Titan, geographical landmarks were mapped and then compared to archived telemetry from earlier flybys.
The unexpected dislocation was attributed to a “disconnection” of Titan’s crust from its core by an intervening layer of liquid, allowing the 50 different markers to “slide around”. The grid-plotted formations included “river valleys”, mountains, canyons and other terrain that would normally be slow to change in just two years of observation. NASA researcher Bryan Stiles, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote: “We believe that about 100 kilometers (62 miles) beneath the ice and organic-rich surface is an internal ocean of liquid water mixed with ammonia.”
Was that interpretation of radar telemetry accurate? Could the movement of river valleys and canyons be something else entirely?
Titan is an electrically charged body that is constantly bombarded by intense ion beams from Saturn. It shares many characteristics with its cousin moons, Io and Europa, that orbit the planet Jupiter: a particle fountain from its poles, a toroid of charged particles in a sheath, and exchanges of massive electric charge.
In a Picture of the Day about volcanoes on Io, the fact that the calderas of several “hot spots” moved by several kilometers in a few short months was attributed to the plasma beams that complete an electric circuit with the moon and Jupiter. Points where plasma discharges from Jupiter touchdown on Io exhibit an intense glow. Similar electrical phenomena could be influencing Titan’s geology.
Electric Universe theorist Wal Thornhill wrote: “The idea that Titan may have a considerable amount of low density liquids or ices came originally from calculations of its density. However, estimates of the composition of celestial bodies assume that we understand the real nature of gravity. We obviously don’t. So there is no reason to assume that the gravitational constant, ‘G,’ is the same for all bodies in the universe, particularly when it is the most elusive ‘constant’ to measure on Earth. So we cannot be confident about the calculated ratio of rock to ices on Titan. But the presence of methane in Titan’s atmosphere seemed to require an ocean of liquid hydrocarbons as a reservoir that could provide a source of that gas lasting for the conventional age of the solar system. The radar image [above] of Titan fits more closely with some of those returned by the Magellan Orbiter from dry and rocky Venus. The methane puzzle has not been solved.”
Stephen Smith
