Cymek said:
Tau.Neutrino said:
Cassini data shows first evidence of organic dust storms on Titan
The Cassini mission continues to pay dividends long after its demise. The latest insights come from data gathered during its flybys of Saturn’s largest moon Titan between 2004 and 2017, which indicate that the satellite has dust storms. Not only does this make Titan only the third body in the system with dust storms after Earth and Mars, it’s the only one where the dust is made up of complex organic molecules.
more…
Titan is a interesting moon, in fact the moons of both Saturn and Jupiter are all so different which makes exploring them so exciting.
> unlike Earth and Mars, this dust is made up of complex organic molecules formed by the intricate cryo-chemistry of the Titanian atmosphere. These molecules form in clouds and are generated in such quantity that they “snow” down on the surface at the equator to form large dune fields. Scientists already knew about this dust from when the unmanned Huygens probe touched down on the surface of Titan, but that didn’t mean there weren’t surprises in store. We believe that the Huygens probe, which landed on the surface of Titan in January 2005, raised a small amount of organic dust upon arrival due to its powerful aerodynamic wake. But what we spotted here with Cassini is at a much larger scale. The near-surface wind speeds required to raise such an amount of dust …
Nice. Now how do they know that it’s organic?
As a general comment, Titan’s nitrogen atmosphere is thicker than Earth’s. With a surface pressure of 1.5 bar. Couple that with a high amount of complex organic molecules for food, and it becomes a really pleasant place for an Earthlike ecosystem to move if the Sun ever gets too hot for us here.
I wonder … the Earth’s average temperature is much hotter than the Moon’s because of the heat retaining quality of our atmosphere. Is Titan’s average temperature similarly that much hotter than the adjacent moon Rhea?