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NASA / JPL-Caltech /ASI
This radar image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, acquired on Sept. 26, shows a vast river system on Saturn's moon Titan. Check out the full-size version from NASA or the European Space Agency.
NASA's Cassini orbiter has spotted a river system on the Saturnian moon Titan that's reminiscent of the River Nile — except that this river is presumably filled with liquid ethane and methane instead of water.
The Titanic Nile shows up on a grainy, black-and-white picture from Cassini's radar imager, which can look through Titan's thick, smoggy atmosphere to map the surface features beneath.
The picture was taken on Sept. 26 and released today by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the European Space Agency. It shows a branching river valley, running more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) from its headwaters to Titan's Kraken Mare, a hydrocarbon sea that's somewhere between the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean in size.
Just as Earth has a water-based hydrological cycle, Titan has a weather cycle that moves ethane and methane around its surface and through the atmosphere. That's due to Titan's surface temperature (averaging minus-290 degrees Fahrenheit, or -179 degrees Celsius) and atmospheric pressure (one and a half times that of Earth's atmosphere).
"Titan is the only place we've found besides Earth that has a liquid in continuous movement on its surface," Steve Wall, the radar deputy team lead, said in JPL's news release. "This picture gives us a snapshot of a world in motion. Rain falls, and rivers move that rain to lakes and seas, where evaporation starts the cycle all over again. On Earth, the liquid is water; on Titan, it's methane; but on both it affects most everything that happens."
During the eight and a half years that Cassini has been passing over Saturn and its moons, the bus-sized orbiter has mapped Titan's seas, lakes and rivers in amazing detail. The orbiter even dropped a mini-probe known as Huygens down to Titan's surface for an on-the-ground view of the terrain.
From March 14, 2007: Cassini finds evidence of huge seas on Titan. NBC News' Dara Brown has the details.
Scientists have proposed sending out another, more sophisticated probe that would parachute through the atmosphere and float on one of the moon's seas — either Kraken Mare or another huge lake called Ligeia Mare. Two proposed missions are in the works, nicknamed TiME and TALISE. So far, neither of the missions have gotten the go-ahead for launch — but who knows? Maybe this view of an alien Nile will whet our appetite for a taste of Titanic seas.
More about Titan's lakes and seas:
- Tropical lake found on Titan
- Could Titan's seas harbor life?
- Orbiter sends images of Titan's seas
- One moon's forecast: Chance of methane rain
- Titan has a soft and crusty surface
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Anyone read Imperial Earth by Arthur C. Clarke? Titan may well end up being one of our first outposts. We could take fuel from there for thousands of years and never make a dent. Getting it all set up would be the main problem, but after that, cheap hydrogen...
I'd set up the 'No Smoking' signs first.
in space, no one can hear you explode... lol
Can you just imagine video sent back to earth from a floating rover? Bobbing around on a sea of liquid methane on the surface of Titan. What color is it? It's specific gravity?? Would stuff float on it? The black sky and weak sunlight glinting off the black liquid ethane would be very spooky. Make those Mars photos look almost like home.
.
Seas and rivers of pure hydrocarbons? Sounds like BP's version of paradise!
there is no doubt that will be a major refueling point for exiting the solar system, but better yet, it won't be that much longer till huge barges bring the stuff inwards towards us for use on this side of the asteroid belt. An imperial probe droid to titian (well a second one anyhow) is LONG overdue as it is. Yes good story by ac, decades since I last read it. (imperial probe droids are designed in imperial units, so you really got express it's speed in feet per second not some other archaic system).
I think I see 3 pyramids next to the river..
These reports always make me wonder if there could be methane based life on Titan. Why not? Sure it would be radically different from life on Earth in practically every way, but it would be life, none the less.
I have long been an advocate for a Curiosity type rover on Titan. I believe Titan is our best shot at finding life in our solar system and I wish they would do so in my life time.
Possible. I like Europa better. Liquid water works better for me than liquid methane. Brrrrr.
I think Titan is the next best hope for finding life next to Europa and Enceladus.
Not only should we land a probe to float on the sea, but if we're going to the trouble to launch and send a payload on a (12 year?) trip, we should deploy a small unmanned submerisible as well. Something very small and basic that would submerge and set off a beacon.
The beacon would need several instruments, flashing lights, heaters, etc since we would not know what type of light spectrum any creatures in the water body would "see" in. We could have infrared cameras to film anything, it would be like night fishing, if there's anything there, it will swarm in a hurry!
Field testing these rovers/subs would be next to impossible, however, given the conditions we'd have to simulate on earth and the amount of damage they'd received from liquid hydrocarbons
I know parachuting in is not an exact science, but wouldn't it be cool to put the "floater" down in the "nile" and float it down the river and into the lake? There might be some interesting things to see along the riverbanks.
And, yes, a detachable submersible would be nice, or at least a camera on the probe below the liquid line.
On Titan they use liquid water for fuel. It's extremely rare and they have to disturb native petro-chemical environments to mine it. Once they spilled a huge tanker of water in the methane ocean. The hydrocarbon ecosystem was damaged for a decade and all the methane-sea fishermen sued for damages.
This highlights he need for an increase in NASA's budget for space exploration. We need to study Enceladus, Titan and Europa much more closely.
Wouldn't you just love to get a rover on either on of those moons? Curiousity is great and all, but lets go somewhere we know has liquid.
Mars does have liquid...
GeoHog... Sorry the only "water ice" that has been found are deposits in craters and the pols are Co2.. Or "dry ice".. no "liquid" has been found on Mars YET.. Though it is believed to have been "wetter" in it's past. I do agree with others though.. It seems a "floating" probe or a rover the size o Opportunity would be "cheap" and readily doable in the near term to Titan.
(Flame sings to tune of Teen Titans) P-R-O-B-E T-O T-I-T-A-N... PROBE TO TITAN.. LETS GO!!!
Europa is thought to be a moon sized ocean covered by ice. Be nice to send a probe that could melt its way through and then go for a swim. Given the life at the bottom of our oceans, hmmm.
I also agree that a probe to Titan would also be very cool.
To let the Feds know you want NASA to be fully funded, go to the White House web site with petitions, and add your signature to the petition for NASA. We have to let them know we WANT it!!!
As for this story, all I can say is wow, holy ch*t, and totally cool!!!
Flame77_7
Wrong. There is liquid water on mars that seasonally melts from ice flows. Go look on jpl's website for yourself.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2011-242
If you search Youtube there's a timelapse video of this stuff from the orbiter. It melts in the warm season and freezes in the cold season. And yes there is water ice on Mars. At the poles and in craters. We just haven't sent our rovers there. Instead we're looking for life in an area where we're pretty sure there hasn't been any for millions of years. I mean, why look where there's ice and water?
Sorry Dangerous Mind... So far Curiosity has only confirmed that Mars had a wetter past and the images with the accompanied article says "possible"... It it only surmised that the "runoff" could be "briny" and cause these "flows"... But the scientist are not certain... I'm glad you are optimistic but it is a transitory process at best with no "standing or persistent" liquid water.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2011-242
The atmospheric pressure (or lack thereof) does not enable water to exist in a liquid state on Mars, briny or not.
There is very strong evidence, however, of liquid beneath the subsurface. They've spotted a number of thermal eruptions on the side of escarpments through time-lapse imaging. Some as recently as last year. There is a clear eruption out of the hillside and a mass release. The amount of materials is fairly high, so what they have theorized is that while it is exploding out of a hillside and cascading down similar to a snow avalanche, it is rapidly boiling off into the atmosphere. It would definitely be something that would wreck your day if encountered...
This recent evidence has given new inspiration to a thermally active Mars, which in the past was thought to have been "dead".
Check this out
http://article.wn.com/view/2011/10/04/Water_water_everywhere_on_Mars/
What "Titanic" forces are at work on that moon which has kept it exploding? Especially after fiery impacts from meteors. If the atmosphere and liquids are methane, it would seem that moon would be a Bomb!
Give us time though. We'll figure out a way to mine it. Bring the methane back to Earth. And make Earth into Venus.
no oxygen there for the inflammable compounds to react with. they only get hot and form isotopes of one another, or more complex forms like propane, butane... possibly all the way up to amino acids... THEN when those amino acids might collect under the right circumstances....you get the picture. we could do far worse than go there for further exploration. i do agree with you though, we do not need to be burning these compounds in Earth's atmosphere. They are far too valuable.
The cost to mine and return these resources to earth are too high (in pure energy terms, even if we got near pure efficiency, the required energy expenditure to transport the methane would be higher than the methane itself).
And yet we have "oceans" of methane hydrate here on earth - enough to last thousands of years at current burn rates and save the planet at the same time from a methane outburst.
In fact the deep oceans have so much methane dissolved into them all we need to do is pump the water to the surface.
Methane is not soluble in water. The hydrates are not methane dissolved in water, but a solid made up of water and methane at very specific temperatures and pressures. That's why they are so dangerous - a little change in the water temps, and they could easily release the methane as gas. So there's no pumping of the water to get at the methane "dissolved" in it. Might make it easy to mine it though. Use a heated probe, collect the methane as it bubbles off the hydrate solid, and transport should be easy.
Big thing to worry about - once you start breaking the hydrate structure, how do you control the release? You really do not want that process to get out of control...
@Brisaber:
Excellent comment. Isn't that kind of mishandling of the methane structure, what caused the BP Deep Sea Horizon, Oil Rig explosion in the gulf? This is really dangerous stuff. WIth planet wide consequences if done wrong. Forget about mining the methane on Titan! We don't know how to do it safely on Earth yet.
The UN itself needs to be the governing body that has 100% responsibility for any kind of Deep Space, mining operations for terrestrial or interstellar usage. Especially for downstream integration into Earth based purposes. IMO Man should NEVER export gaseous or solid alien matter into the Earth ecosystem (bypassing Earth's natural protective/conditioning mechanism). That to me is a dangerous game of planetary Russian Roulette. Not to even mention how we may inadvertantly be contaminating alien bodies like Titan.
I think it would be an excellent alternative to coal and oil, if it can be mined safely. We are a long ways off from trying that, though. Problem is the deposits are massive, and it's not something you can really try on a small scale to make sure you get it right. Very hard to get to, because of the depth and pressure.
I'm kinda iffy about the whole UN regulation thing. They've never proved to me to be real effective in that kind of thing. All you have to do is look at the North Korea "ban" on missile and nuclear technology. They haven't really handled that very well, have they?
If we could extract it by lowering the atmosphere, say in a hose which has a pressure low enough to conver the liquid to a gas, then we would lift it to higher orbits. From there we could place it on vehicles that could ferry it out into space where we could have massive cargo ships, re-pressurize it to a liquid form and allow the vacuum of space to freeze it solid; then use a potion of the fuel to carry the shipment to earth, deposit it in an orbital storage facility then save another portion for the return trip to titan to gather more. We could have storage facilities on Mars, the Moon, even at space stations along the route.
The only way this would be net-energy positive would be if we can construct a gravity-fed system, like the ones they have worked out to get to the moon and Mars. Basically, you take a very large mass as a conveyor. This mass uses a bare minimum of thrusters to keep on track as capacity modules are joined or released at different points in the orbit. The orbital mechanics allow gravitational pull to be used as a boost near one of the large masses in order to counter the effects of drag due to space debris, solar wind, and changing amounts of mass.
I'm not even sure if we could construct one of these gravity highways to Saturn. The only two I've ever heard proposed were for the moon and Mars. Going outside the asteroid belt might be problematic, not only because of the necessity of burning fuel to align a proper path through the asteroids, but also because Jupiter has such huge gravity that if it got in the way, there might not be enough capability to avoid being locked into its orbit, or thrown out of the solar system entirely.
But, burning enough in fuel using the methane/ethane mixture would probably use the entire supply collected just to get back. After all, when all the extra mass is added, it's that much more mass you have to accelerate.
So if the sun gets close to burning out we could send a match?
The Sun burns at the rate of 100 billion 1 mega ton hydrogen bombs per second.
The Earth receives the equivalent of 40 1 mega ton hydrogen bombs per second.
The Sun seems somewhat under utilized?
16 x (Sun Radius)^2 / (Earth Diameter)^2
The energy from the sun travels out in ever expanding area. So the amount of energy received is an inverse factor of the distance from the sun to the fourth power.
The second power, it is an inverse square law.
now if we could just make use of all those exta neutrons the sun pelts us with daily...
a good design with the proper catalysts and an imperial probe droid oughta be able to live off the land so to speak....
I think that Arthur Clarck long time ago predicted this for Titan and Europe
"All these worlds are yours..."
Didn't the article mention 7 years to get there? I am sure it would take longer to move a large frozen block of hydrocarbons longer than 7 years from there to here. But the funny part is.. the first thing that comes to mind when we find a type of fuel out in the universe is.. lets bring it here and burn it! .. sad. where are the pipeline supporters asking to build a pipeline ? :) sorry, it seems I have lost all faith in my fellow man.
In all seriousness, this is totally amazing and we defiantly need to do more of this type of exploring. A small fraction of what we spend on wars would go such a long way towards funding space exploration, If we make exploring our solar system a priority, who knows what else we can find! We live in the most exciting time in history, I want to grow very old just to know what we are going to find during space exploration.
So this planet has crazy levels of methane being
released into its atmosphere every day toohuh? Why isn’t Al Gore and his clique
over there screaming about how Titan’s global-temperatures have risen from -288
to -290 in the past fifty years then? And what about all of those cows that are
partly responsible for this methane release by crop-dussting every area they
walk by because of the fatteneing- grains that the Titan people must be
force-feeding them everyday for mass consumption? The fact that no one’s up in
arms over this misuse of Titan’s chemical-reserves is a real double-standard
and I’m glad that stories like this one are exposing it.
Nobody cares about your weak attempt to politically troll.
problem with free speech there DM????....seems to be a theme lately. We only elected a president, we DID NOT rewrite the constitution, which you seem to of not read very closely...also a common theme lately......THAT is the true danger, and I stand against it.
I just wanted to point out that that might be ....risen from -290 to -288.... I do so because if I do not pay attention, I may miss the minus sign in an upcoming mit 3.091 exam.
Didn't Arthur C. Clarke write the book Chariots of the Gods, and wasn't that made into a movie in the 70s?
You've got two stories going there. Arthur C Clarke wrote many books concerning moons and the potential for life, such as the 2001 series. He was brilliant in his visions.
But Chariots of the Gods was written by Erich Von Daniken (sp) and concerned alien visitations to Earth.
Tfnj please keep your oprah book-talk club where
it belong, this thread is about the chemical-rivers found on a distant moon and
it has nothing to do with potential alien-visitation of any kind stop trying to
sensationalize this scientific discovery to areas that don’t concern it please.
When the Titanian overlords take you away tonight, Littlehater, you will regret doubting their existence.
Oh go figure you didn’t read the story that you’re
trying to sound smart about yet again. It actually takes a little over seven
years for something to travel from earth to the moon tita or
visse-verma so even if you’re stupid fictional titan kings were going to
try and get me because of they saw what I said I’ll still have plenty of time
to get my fourth masters degree and start another family so I’ll be fine but
thanks for the heads-up anyway tfnj you’re such a great guy.
I hope they are people eaters.
Well since I have multiple firearms and advanced
martial-arts capabilities I hope that they are too so that when they try and
break into my house I’ll have the probable-cause to waste them right thhen and there.
If an alien race has the technology to get to Earth your firearms and martial-arts capabilities are likely to be useless in defending yourself.
Exactly. He thinks just because he can master moves on a human, they would work on the Alien's 10 tentacles.
Well assuming that 10 fists and 10 tentacles
equalls the same amount of force-potential then yeah I’ve already proven that I can best that
amount of power two summers ago at a Pink concert when these five thugs tried
to jump me and my wife outside of the V.I.P. enterance after the show was over
and that’s when I was stilla little liquored-up and not fully within my
normal-capacities so this alien thing probably won’t be all that much of a
challenge especially if it’s trying to steal my stuff.
See, you are assuming this would be a fist issue. But the Alien surely mastered the art of grappling and holds by now. While you are busy with your futile attempt to punch one of the arms, his other 9 would wrap you up and smother.
Defeat.
7 years is how long Cassini has BEEN at Saturn, not how long it took to get there. Cassini took it's time getting there because NASA went cheap on the rocket and let the thing coast around the inner solar system for a while gathering speed. I think it went around Earth (from the Sun) at least twice, not to mention Venus and Jupiter.
I’ve already fought against people with “suprerior
grappling abilities” and if you asked them if they would ever challenge me
again they’d all violently shake their heads until the damn things fell off so
I think I’d be fine here. Also I wouldn’t be trying to punch it in one of its
arms I’d work it with body shots until I break a rib or two and really tire it
out and then zone in on the head once it starts moving too slow to duck out of
the way of my lightening-quick riight upper-cuts. If the ref still hasn’t
called the fight by the time I’ve given it a severe concussion then I take no
responsibility for what will happen after that…
And probably lost. You fight with people who have superior spelling and grammar abilities here in the posts and lose.
Is this guy serious? There is no hope for the human race...
I came to that conclusion long ago. Littlehater is just the final seal.
Tony, LOL
Those who are really good at fighting usually have no reason or desire to brag about it. Just sayin...
I love how that doofus ranted and raved about Al Gore, then his very next post is complaining that other posters are off topic talking about science fiction books. At least the science fiction novels are based closer to reality than litterhater's pscycho Fox-programmed talking points. For sure they're closer to on topic....
Cassini & The probe Huygens is one of the MOST SUCCESSFUL of any Deep space missions we as humans have undertaken.
The Probe Huygens that descended and actually took photos and and readings is SO COOL. That is WAY OUT THERE.
I believe if people were able to survive in liquid methane you wouldn't be able to float. You would sink right to the bottom. It would be almost equivalent to having a 70 pound weight on you if you were in water.
Change that to a 50 pound weight and that’s what
I do for my morning-workout six days a week rozzy and I’m pretty confidant that
if my life or the lives of others were on the line that I could easily take on the
extra twenty pounds to survive. Stop assuming that people can’t survive in
adverse-conditions because they have been for thousands of centuries now.
There is no oxygen. Boom. You're dead. This macho stuff is lame man. You don't need to try and prove yourself to everyone, we understand you're a badass who can fight aliens with 10 arms and you can run on methane oceans, blah blah blah.
Yeah James because I don’t have the money to buy
an oxygen-tank if I knew that I were going to be in an alien-environment, get
real ... obviously you have no idea about what this story’s about of you wouldn’t
be here right now talking about irrelevant issues that aren’t directly connected
to the story in question.
Hater, you're the only one being irrelevant in this discussion. All you're good for here is a troll alert. Nobody cares how big your biceps are dude. Go shoot some more steroids or something in case you get in a fight mouthing off political talking points that have no basis in reality and everything to do with delusion.
I can't believe that the 'Big Oil' companies, and their political zombies, are so short-sighted that they can't see the advantages of using some of their giga-zillions of money to supplement NASA funding toward exploration of Titan, and developing the technology for the mass-transferring of resources and raw materials back to Earth.
After all, in space there are no Snail-Darters, Owls, Polar Bears, or Rain Forrest to protect from industrial development/exploitation. No Environmental Impact statements to file, no ground-water to contaminate, no natives to re-locate..., nothing to kill at all! Just enough minerals, resources and petroleum products to power Earth for the next 2000 years or so. And they could own it all!
And all they have to do to start the ball rolling toward that future is to triple NASA's budget right now ( which would be only a drop in their huge bucket!), and develop their own reactors for building supplies of plutonium 238. They would then own the only supply of fuel that powers any space exploration, and would be in a position to direct all space projects in whatever direction they wanted it to go.
My gasoline already costs ~$4.00 a galloon when
it comes from the Middle East, I can only imagine what it will cost when it’s
shipped from the distant moon Titan. Also aren’t we supposed to be lessening
our depedency on petroleum not looking for inter-galactic ways to bring more
here and burn it in even greater-quantities?
Actually, I hate big oil & business too. I'm just trying to trick them into backing progress into areas that will allow the future survival of the Earth, instead of just their interest in padding their own bank accounts.
If there is such a thing as methane base life wander what the fishn here would be like......how about jet ski on a methane lake with less gravity than ours....wow did ya see him jump that wake great hang time. just don't rip your wet suit here.....it will kill the fun...
Cool.