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NASA has found hydrocarbon-filled canyons on Titan:
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found deep, steep-sided canyons on Saturn's moon Titan that are flooded with liquid hydrocarbons. The finding represents the first direct evidence of the presence of liquid-filled channels on Titan, as well as the first observation of canyons hundreds of meters deep.
A new paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters describes how scientists analyzed Cassini data from a close pass the spacecraft made over Titan in May 2013. During the flyby, Cassini's radar instrument focused on channels that branch out from the large, northern sea Ligeia Mare.
The Cassini observations reveal that the channels -- in particular, a network of them named Vid Flumina -- are narrow canyons, generally less than half a mile (a bit less than a kilometer) wide, with slopes steeper than 40 degrees. The canyons also are quite deep -- those measured are 790 to 1,870 feet (240 to 570 meters) from top to bottom.
Liquid-filled canyons on Titan (open, DOI: 10.1002/2016GL069679)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 14 2016, @07:42PM
Does it strike anybody else as highly improbably that a soup of water and hydrocarbons could mix and churn in Saturn's tides for billions of years and not spark some kind of life? Sure, it's cold, but... slow life?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 14 2016, @07:44PM
Oh baby. Oh yeah. Slow motion porn is my fetish.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday August 14 2016, @07:48PM
I rate it a big meh, same for all of these other icy worlds and subsurface oceans. But they have found some of the complex components that might be needed to start life all over the place, like amino acids.
There's hope for Titan though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)#Future_conditions [wikipedia.org]
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(Score: 1) by jimtheowl on Monday August 15 2016, @08:06PM
It does not strike me as highly improbable, nor probable, but your observation is a worthy one albeit a very difficult one to verity.
We have little data on the subject because there is no such environment on earth, and nobody to my knowledge has run experiments long enough to offer any insights.
If we ever make it there, it will take a while before we can sample anything on Saturn.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 15 2016, @09:10PM
We're already there, but just with a flyby... we need to graduate to orbiters and landers. The challenge, as you say, is that we don't really know what we're looking for, so clever instruments will be very hit or miss. If we could land a team who could roam about Titan to a half dozen locations for a total of 6 months or so on the surface, we'd probably know it when we saw it... now, who's up for a mission that will take you away from Earth for 10 years, and likely give you terminal cancer before you even get to Titan - you'll probably live to complete the mission, but if a team of 6 goes, it's quite doubtful that all 6 will make it back to Earth alive.
Fun fact: with a population of 7 billion, you'd have more applicants for that mission than you could possibly interview in a year's time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by jimtheowl on Tuesday August 16 2016, @02:30AM
I was referring to sampling Saturn; it is the third largest gravity well in the Solar system, so any type of probe entering the atmosphere is not going to happen in the foreseeable future.
Indeed, we will likely get to know Titan.