What's the Weather Underneath Titan?

Like peeling an onion, scientists think they have discovered what lies underneath the icy crust of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Water, of course. By observing how features on Titan's surface have moved over time, scientists have intuited that Titan's crust, made primarily of ice, is probably floating on top of an ocean of water which decouples it from Titan's rocky core. The observations come from data obtained by the Cassini probe, a joint venture between NASA and the European and Italian space agencies.

Data obtained from the Cassini mission had previously led scientists to discover weather on Titan, with hydrocarbons, mostly methane, evaporating, precipitating, and flowing over and pooling on Titan's icy crust in a process very much analogous to what occurs on the earth with water as it flows over and pools on the earth's rocky crust. But whereas the earth's crust is only 10-20 kilometers thick, depending on where you are, the crust of Titan is more likely about 100 kilometers thick. So you would have to go pretty deep before you hit liquid water.

Of course, this is all exciting to news to scientists, since liquid water and hydrocarbons are the stuff of life. Could there be something alive down there? Who knows? Obviously, no sun light is going to make it down there, so you would need a different energy source to fuel it. The vast majority of all life on earth is ultimately solar powered. There is some evidence, though, of very deep ocean ecosystems--too deep to get much, if any, sunlight--that actually run on geothermal--they derive their energy from deep ocean volcanoes. So, you never know what could be going on down there.

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