Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Very interesting results on Titan

New analysis of Titan seems to indicate that it has a subsurface ocean made of liquid water. Given the organic matter that seems all over the moon, it sure seems possible that something living made out of that stuff might be swimming in the ocean. But they certainly can't tell if the subsurface ocean is aerobic or anaerobic.

All signs point to hidden ocean on Saturn's moon Titan

So Baland and her colleagues crunched Cassini's numbers in even greater detail. They found that Titan's orbital behavior indeed makes sense if the moon is assumed to have a solid interior surrounded by a liquid-water ocean, which itself sits beneath an icy "shell."

The sizes of these various layers are tough to pin down at the moment, but the researchers said their modeling work suggests the icy shell might be 93 to 124 miles (150 to 200 kilometers) thick and the ocean 3 to 264 miles (5 to 425 km) deep, with the solid interior making up the rest.

Titan is about 3,200 miles (5,150 km) in diameter.

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