Friday, September 29, 2006

More Lakes Found on Titan



I think they call this one, Lake Rorschach .

Cassini's radar team is now convinced that they are seeing lakes, says deputy radar team leader Stephen Wall of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US.

"I forced them to spend an hour coming up with other possibilities and no one came up with any that even passed the laugh test," Wall told New Scientist.

One alternative offered was that the dark patches are actually soot-like accumulations of organic molecules. But channels leading to the dark areas indicate that they are filled with liquid, not organic gunk, Wall says.

"Whatever that black stuff is has to be extremely mobile, which leads us to think that it's liquid," he says. The only substances that would be so fluid at Titan's surface temperature of about -180°C are liquid methane and ethane, he continues.

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