The Rains Of Titan Change When They Hit Underground Reservoirs: Study

Thursday, September 4, 2014

The Rains Of Titan Change When They Hit Underground Reservoirs: Study

The Rains Of Titan Change When They Hit Underground Reservoirs: Study:

An illustration of a Titanic lake by Ron Miller. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Titan — that moon of Saturn that has what some scientists consider precursors to elements for life — is a neat place to study because it also has a liquid cycle. But how the hydrocarbons move from the moon’s hundreds of lakes and seas into the atmosphere and the crust is still being examined.

A new study suggests that rainfall on Titan changes when it interacts with underground icy clathrates, which are watery structures that can include methane or ethane. This can make it easier for reservoirs to be created.

“We knew that a significant fraction of the lakes on Titan’s surface might possibly be connected with hidden bodies of liquid beneath Titan’s crust, but we just didn’t know how they would interact,” stated lead author Olivier Mousis, a Cassini research associate at the University of Franche-Comté in France. “Now, we have a better idea of what these hidden lakes or oceans could be like.”

Artist's conception of a possible structure for underground liquid reservoirs on Saturn moon's Titan. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

Artist’s conception of a possible structure for underground liquid reservoirs on Saturn moon’s Titan. From top, the layers include a porous icy crust, alkanofer in porous icy crust, expanding clathrate layer in porous icy crust and a non-porous icy crust. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

This information is based on models of how the reservoirs would move through the crust of the icy moon. Clathrates would form at the bottom of reservoirs (which are filled with methane) and gradually split its molecules into solid and liquid components. Over time, this would transform the methane into propane or ethane.

“Importantly, the chemical transformations taking place underground would affect Titan’s surface,” the Jet Propulsion Laboratory stated.

“Lakes and rivers fed by springs from propane or ethane subsurface reservoirs would show the same kind of composition, whereas those fed by rainfall would be different and contain a significant fraction of methane. This means researchers could examine the composition of Titan’s surface lakes to learn something about what is happening deep underground.”

More about the research is available in the print version of the Sept. 1 edition of Icarus. Of note, the Cassini spacecraft is going to do another flyby of Titan in 17 days — its 105th, according to the spacecraft website.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

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UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Thursday, September 4, 2014