Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is very similar to Earth when it comes to landscape formations, according to new models produced by a team of planetary scientists at Stanford University in California, USA.
A moon decorated with lush lakes and rivers
When viewed from space, this moon contains rain-filled rivers, lakes, and seas , although on Titan the rain is not water condensed from atmospheric water vapor, but liquid methane, which falls via nitrogen winds.
Titan is one of the most Earth-like worlds ever discovered, and therefore a prime location to search for extraterrestrial life. It is like an alternate reality of our world, where its bodies of water flow full of methane ; where if we immersed ourselves in its “waters”, we would burn; if we drank, we would suffocate but… maybe other life could potentially live in such extreme conditions.
Precisely in search of such strange Titan-style life forms, scientists have modeled its environment to better understand how it works. They have published their findings in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Sand dunes
On Titan, the loose solid particles (or sediments) are likely made up of grains of soft hydrocarbon , prone to rapidly decomposing into dust. But the dunes have been active for several hundred thousand years, suggesting that some unknown mechanism must be producing sand-sized particles at these equatorial latitudes.
In the new work, the researchers explored the hypothesis that a combination of abrasion , when grains are carried by winds or rivers of methane, and sintering, when at rest, could produce sand grains that maintain an equilibrium size.
They found a solution by looking at a special type of sediment found in Earth’s shallow tropical seas, known as ooids , small spherical grains that form when calcium carbonate is pulled out of the water column and sticks together in layers around it. of a grain, such as quartz.
So distant, but so similar
“Our model adds a unifying framework that allows us to understand how all of these sedimentary environments work together. If we understand how the different pieces of the puzzle and their mechanics fit together, then we can start to use the landforms left behind by those sedimentary processes to say something about Titan’s climate or geological history, and how they might impact the prospect of life on Titan.” explains Mathieu Lapôtre, a geologist at the Stanford School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences.
Atmospheric modeling and data from NASA’s Cassini mission reveal that winds are common near the equator, supporting the idea that less sintering and thus fine sand grains, a critical component , could be created there. of the dunes. Sand grains are also necessary for the formation of the moon’s labyrinthine terrain near the poles.
“We are showing that on Titan we have an active sedimentary cycle that can explain the latitudinal distribution of landscapes through episodic abrasion and sintering driven by the seasons of Titan,” says Lapôtre. “It’s quite fascinating to think about how this alternate world exists so far away, where things are so different and yet so similar.”
Referencia: Mathieu G. A. Lapôtre, Michael J. Malaska, Morgan L. Cable. The Role of Seasonal Sediment Transport and Sintering in Shaping Titan’s Landscapes: A Hypothesis. Geophysical Research Letters, 2022; 49 (8) DOI: 10.1029/2021GL097605
