Saturn’s moon Titan is a distant and frigid world, but it also carries intriguing similarities to Earth’s own terrain. Liquid lakes and seas dot its landscape, though the methane and ethane that fill them are a far cry from terrestrial water. Now a new theory suggests that some of these bodies of liquid may have literally exploded into existence. If so, Titan may share another similarity with Earth: climate change.
In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers propose that pockets of liquid nitrogen may have exploded from the moon’s crust in response to warming atmospheric conditions. The resulting craters may then have filled with liquid methane.
Study co-author Jonathan Lunine, an astronomer at Cornell University in New York, says that data from NASA’s Cassini mission inspired the new theory. The spacecraft spotted “odd, very striking features” around some of Titan’s lakes. The lakes were surrounded by ...
