Liquid Sea on Saturn's Titan

djm · Post by **djm** » Tue May 29, 2007 10:11 pm

This whole "sea of hydrocarbon" business just strikes me as wrong. Why can't that simply accept that it's black and leave it at that?

djm

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Tue May 29, 2007 10:27 pm

Well, I built me a raft and shes ready for floatin
Ol mississippi, shes callin my name

Rod Sprague · Post by **Rod Sprague** » Tue May 29, 2007 11:04 pm

I looked at the picture and thought it looked like an upside down map of Greece. I groaned inwardly when I realized a hydrocarbon sea would look like grease.

djm · Post by **djm** » Wed May 30, 2007 7:10 am

Catfish are jumpin'
That paddle wheel thumpin'
Black water keeps rollin' on by just the same

(Sorry, couldn't resist: http://youtube.com/watch?v=KqZ95a249p0)

djm

crookedtune · Post by **crookedtune** » Wed May 30, 2007 8:09 am

Sorry, catfish are bottom-feeders. They do not jump.

djm · Post by **djm** » Wed May 30, 2007 1:29 pm

Obviously you are not inhaling.

djm

Coffee · Post by **Coffee** » Wed May 30, 2007 2:02 pm

The ecologist in me is quite interested in Titan.
I wonder what kind of life (if any) could exist in an environment such as that. What would it look like? What would it eat? Is there enough energy there for anything to actually metabolise? Even assuming they run off of liquid methane rather than H2O, with temperatures that low there'd not be a lot of ambient energy in the sysem.
(It'll probably be a long time before I try to build any population models for Titan eh?)

Key_of_D · Post by **Key_of_D** » Wed May 30, 2007 3:09 pm

crookedtune wrote:Sorry, catfish are bottom-feeders. They do not jump.

Oh but catfish do jump. I watched my dad hook a 15 pound channel catfish on a waterdog and soon after he did, it came to the surface and made quite the splash, after the fish did that thus began the stripping of line off his reel as he headed for the bottom again. 20 minutes later we got ol' whiskers in the boat for a photo shoot. I think that was the only time I ever saw a catfish jump.

Neat photo as always Denny.

Aanvil · Post by **Aanvil** » Wed May 30, 2007 6:54 pm

Black gold! Titan Tea!

Rod Sprague · Post by **Rod Sprague** » Wed May 30, 2007 6:56 pm

If you get down into the water layer, you might find some interesting things going on. If there is enough of a temperature gradient and enough geothermal heat flux to make enough energy containing compounds, you might find an active ecology. Perhaps around hot spots much like the undersea ecology formed around geothermal vents in the deep ocean of our world. I imagine the available chemical energy used to make oxidizers stored by the food chain equivalent of plants that could form the basis for a food web, used to oxidise the reducing compounds in the water. I can also imagine perhaps seas of hydrocarbons that might overlay holes in the surface ice, so water and the hydrocarbons can meet. That could be an interesting zone, ecologically.

Perhaps there is enough of a temperature differential just between the high-pressure ice and the surface ice to drive a complex ecology. I imagine phytoplankton growing on the compounds formed deep in the oceans, feeding in the rising convection currents. Then vast forests of sessile filter feeders on the underside of the surface ice. Or swimming filter feeders harvesting the rising phytoplankton. The phytoplankton might not be at the mercy of the convection currents if it can generate and control enough buoyancy to keep at the right temperature zone in the water. There could be predators feeding on the filter feeders and other predators.

I should write science fiction. Or admit I’m really Verp Tlethl.

Coffee · Post by **Coffee** » Thu May 31, 2007 1:49 am

I think the liquid water layer is kept such by pressure of the ice above rather than by being above 273k. For hot spots to exist on the ocean floor Titan would (I think) need to be geologically active. I don't know if it is or not, but if it is that could have some interesting ramifications. Of course, I could always look that up.

djm · Post by **djm** » Thu May 31, 2007 5:59 am

Just because Titan has a solid core does not mean there is anything active or energetic about it, i.e. no indication that there is any significant source of heat there. Before geologic activity, what you need is a sufficiently radioactive centre to generate sufficient heat. Titan really could be a big lump of frozen dirt with a thin outer layer of water ice.

djm

Rod Sprague · Post by **Rod Sprague** » Thu May 31, 2007 2:49 pm

Life can function at many different temperatures. With the right chemistry driven by even a weak temperature differential, things could be going on. There could also be some tidal heating, but that would involve some sort of odd resonance effects, as Saturn probably has a rather quiet neighborhood, gravitationally, with the stable rings and all. Or the existence of such odd orbital resonance effects could be what keeps the rings stable. Titan probably had some significant sorting of material, with the inputs of gravitational energy during its formation.

I’m simply having fun. I never said any of my speculations are actually true.

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Thu May 31, 2007 3:09 pm

stable from back here

Saturn's largest ring might appear solid when viewed from Earth, but closer inspection by NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveals it is composed of tightly packed clumps of particles in constant collision with one another.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... rings.html