First Ocean Waves Spotted on Alien World of Titan

[Judi Lynn]

Source: International Business Times

First Ocean Waves Spotted on Alien World of Titan
By Hannah Osborne March 18, 2014 14:14 GMT

Waves have been spotted on an alien world for the first time by Nasa scientists studying Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

The space agency's Cassini spacecraft noticed several abnormal glints of sunlight on the surface of one of the moon's hydrocarbon seas, Nature Magazine reports.

Researchers have been looking for waves rippling on Titan's oceans for years but to no avail, until recently.

Scientists at the University of Idaho in Moscow noticed tiny movements, not more than two centimetres, disturbing the surface of Punga Mare, one of Titan's oceans.

Read more: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/first-ocean-waves-spotted-alien-world-titan-1440804

[Lucky Luciano]

1. Cool! nt

[jtuck004]

2. OH, hell yes...

[raccoon]

3. Brian Wilson can stick "Titan" in the song somewhere. nt

[dipsydoodle]

4. Was it a seal

waving ?

[Thor_MN]

5. Surf's up!! Some Titanic waves, bro!!!

[FSogol]

7. You're going to surf 2 centimeter waves?

[Thor_MN]

12. They are arguably Titanic...

[dgauss]

6. On a moon orbiting a planet almost 800 million miles from earth,

scientists have figured out a way to detect 2 cm waves on the surface of one of its hydrocarbon seas. Amazing stuff.

[former9thward]

11. But we can't seem to find a 777 on earth.

Weird.

[Thor_MN]

13. Where's Herve Villechaize when we need him?

(yes, I know he died 20 years ago.)

[Xithras]

16. Nothing weird about it. We've never found Earhardt's plane either.

Hell, it took almost 75 years to find the Titanic, and we knew roughly where it sank. It took two years to find the Air France flight that went down in the Atlantic, and we knew its flight path.

Somebody will find the Malaysian 777 someday, but that "someday" could be two days from now or two centuries from now.

[former9thward]

17. Yes, it is weird.

We can measure a 2 cm wave hundreds of millions of miles away but can't find a massive plane here on earth which was loaded with electronic communication equipment.

[Xithras]

19. Not really

It took billions of dollars and years of searching for that satellite to find that wave. If we spend billions of dollars and years searching for that 777, we'll probably find it too.

[Baclava]

8. cool

[psychopomp]

14. Nice picture but...

the sun is going to be much dimmer than that out on Titan. How many orders of magnitude, I can't say, but it'd look quite different.

[Baclava]

15. how dare you criticize my vacation pictures

you earthlings think you know everything from a couple foggy day pics

[Baclava]

18. so they say....'Saturn's Eccentric Orbit Could Explain Moon's Lopsided Lakes'

Saturn's eccentric orbit might be the cause of the uneven distribution of ethane and methane lakes on the ringed planet's moon, Titan.

Images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveal that liquid methane and ethane lakes in Titan's northern high latitudes cover 20 times more area than lakes in the southern high latitudes.


http://www.space.com/7662-saturn-eccentric-orbit-explain-moon-lopsided-lakes.html

[sufrommich]

9. Aren't Titan's seas made of natural gas?

I thought we already knew this?

[happyslug]

10. According to Wikipedia, yes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakes_of_Titan

The lack of evidence of waves possibly indicates the lakes contain heavier tar-like hydrocarbons making them more viscous than expected (calculations indicate wind speeds of less than 1 metre per second should whip up detectable waves in Titan's ethane lakes but none have been observed).[24] In such a case, Titan's lakes are rather more like giant tar pits. Another possible explanation would be solidification of hydrocarbons. The optical properties of solid methane surface (close to the melting point) are quite close to the properties of liquid surface however the viscosity of solid methane, even near the melting point, is many orders of magnitude higher, which might explain extraordinary smoothness of the surface.[25] Solid methane is denser than liquid methane so it will eventually sink. However, according to calculations presented in a 2012 paper by Jason Hofgartner[26] the methane ice is initially expected to float as it probably contains pockets of nitrogen gas from Titan's atmosphere. Temperatures close to the freezing point of methane (90.4 Kelvins) could lead to both floating and sinking ice - that is, a hydrocarbon ice crust above the liquid and blocks of hydrocarbon ice on the bottom of the lake bed. The ice is predicted to rise to the surface again at the onset of spring before melting.