[extropy-chat] volcanoes on titan

Hal Finney hal at finney.org
Thu Jun 9 04:27:11 UTC 2005


Russell Wallace writes:
> The Huygens images showed what looked like a river system, and I
> remember people saying at the time that they also showed a sea or
> large lake (presumably of something like methane or ethane), though to
> me the pictures looked too bland to tell either way - is the consensus
> now that there aren't any seas or lakes there?

It seemed pretty convincing to me, looking closely at the pictures taken
during the descent, that the probe landed in the dark areas which were
being suggested as possible oceans.  Since it obviously did not end up
in a sea, this suggests that the dark areas were dry at least at the
moment it landed.

I also thought, although I never saw anyone else mention it, that the
pictures from the ground showed light colored highlands in the distance,
further suggesting that the probe was sitting in the dark area.

As you note though the sinuous channels do somewhat resemble river systems
(although to me they didn't look quite right).  Many of the commentators
suggested that this might mean that there are intermittent rains and
that pools may exist only part of the time.  I'm not sure I buy it,
the whole picture doesn't really work for me.

There were also some claims that the impact sensor recordings were
consistent with a dry crust above wet sand, but then I saw some contrary
claims as well.  Sometimes when people have a preconception about
what they expect or hope to see, they try to interpret the data to fit
that model.  They really wanted there to be oceans, and so they try
to find some way to make the data suggest at least moisture.

All that commentary was quite preliminary though, it will probably be
several months before more detailed and considered analysis comes out.

Hal



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list