Saturn’s Titan Has Dried-Up Lake Beds

1
1125

Bright Patches on Saturn’s Largest Moon Are Dried-Up Lake Beds

by Alex Fox/Smithsonianmag.com

Research suggests mysterious bright spots seen at the equator of Saturn’s moon Titan may be dried up lake beds, reports Lisa Grossman for Science News. The new research, published this week in the journal Nature Communications, offers an explanation for a phenomenon first observed in 2000.

Titan is the ringed planet’s largest moon and is the second largest moon in the entire solar system. The mega-moon is also the only one known to have a substantial atmosphere.



Between 2000 and 2008, radio telescopes at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia identified roughly a dozen spots at Titan’s equator that were bouncing anomalously bright radio signals back to Earth, reports Mike Wall for Space.com. Such signals, called specular reflections, happen when radio waves bounce off a surface at the same angle they went in at, like the sun glinting off a mirror, explains Grossman in Science News.

At the time, the prevailing wisdom was that Titan’s equatorial specular reflections were essentially sun glints on the surface of large bodies of liquid, which researchers had long suspected existed on the moon’s surface, Jason Hofgartner, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the study’s…..read more:

 

ATTENTION READERS

We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed
In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion.

About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy
Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT.

1 COMMENT

  1. The space program needs to commit to drones and forget human travel. The new data showing brain damage, was easily predicted and common sense. So, get a drone to verify , instead of filling a speculative news cycle with new hypothesis to keep the funding going.
    The shortest path to majority support of a space program is landing a drone ship on one of these bodies and collecting samples people can see at the local exhibit. Titan would be a great designation. My prediction of the new human space travel market is, “underwhelming for the money”. We are wasting time and resources.

Comments are closed.