It rains on Saturn's moon Titan. But it's not water falling from the sky
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is a world both familiar and alien and the mysteries just keep getting better.Cloaked in a thick, yellowish haze, Titan is the only place in our solar system besides Earth where rain falls from the sky and fills lakes and rivers.But on Titan, the rain is not water-it's liquid methane and ethane, hydrocarbons that are gases on Earth but behave as chilly liquids in Titan's frigid environment.advertisement
Recent observations by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, along with images from the Keck II telescope, have provided the first evidence of cloud convection in Titan's northern hemisphere, over an area dotted with lakes and seas.
These images of Titan were taken by Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope on July 11, 2023 (top row) and the ground-based W.M. Keck Observatories on July 14, 2023. (Photo: Nasa)
These clouds, made of methane, form much like water clouds on Earth: methane evaporates from Titan's surface, rises, cools, and condenses into clouds, which sometimes unleash oily methane rain onto the icy ground.This methane rain feeds Titan's lakes and rivers, mostly found near its North Pole, where the landscape is shaped by cycles of evaporation and rainfall.advertisementTitan's weather is driven by a methane cycle that mirrors Earth's water cycle. Methane clouds form, rain falls, and the liquid gathers in lakes and seas before evaporating again. Unlike Earth, where water is the key ingredient for life and weather, Titan's atmosphere and surface are dominated by methane and ethane. The surface temperature is a bone-chilling -179C, so water is frozen as hard as rock, while methane flows freely.Scientists are fascinated by Titan's complex chemistry. Webb's recent observations even detected a molecule called the methyl radical (CH), providing a glimpse into the ongoing chemical reactions in Titan's atmosphere.
The chemicals behave as chilly liquids in Titan's frigid environment. (Photo: Nasa)
These reactions, driven by sunlight and Saturn's magnetic field, break apart methane and build more complex organic molecules-some of the building blocks of life.Titan's methane is slowly lost to space, so scientists believe there must be underground reservoirs or processes that replenish it, keeping the rain and lakes going.If that supply ever runs out, Titan could become a dry, dusty world. For now, Titan remains a place where it truly rains from hydrocarbon clouds-reminding us that weather, in the universe, can take many strange and wonderful forms.Must Watch
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