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Titan, the largest of Saturn's more than 60 moons, has surprisingly intense rainstorms, according to research by a team of UCLA planetary scientists and geologists. Although the storms are relatively rare—they occur less than once per Titan year, which is 29 and a half Earth years—they occur much more frequently than the scientists expected.
"I would have thought these would be once-a-millennium events, if even that," said Jonathan Mitchell, UCLA associate professor of planetary science and a senior author of the research, which was published Oct. 9 in the journal Nature Geoscience. "So this is quite a surprise."
The storms create massive floods in terrain that are otherwise deserts. Titan's surface is strikingly similar to Earth's, with flowing rivers that spill into great lakes and seas, and the moon has storm clouds that bring seasonal, monsoon-like downpours, Mitchell said. But Titan's precipitation is liquid methane, not water.
"The most intense methane storms in our climate model dump at least a foot of rain a day, which comes close to what we saw in Houston from Hurricane Harvey this summer," said Mitchell, the principal investigator of UCLA's Titan climate modeling research group.
[...] On Earth, intense storms can trigger large flows of sediment that spread into low lands and form cone-shaped features called alluvial fans. In the new study, the UCLA scientists found that regional patterns of extreme rainfall on Titan are correlated with recent detections of alluvial fans, suggesting that they were formed by intense rainstorms.
The finding demonstrates the role of extreme precipitation in shaping Titan's surface, said Seulgi Moon, UCLA assistant professor of geomorphology and a co-senior author of the paper. Moon said the principle likely applies to Mars, which has large alluvial fans of its own, and to other planetary bodies. Greater understanding of the relationship between precipitation and the planetary surfaces could lead to new insights about the impact of climate change on Earth and other planets.
Methane hurricanes. Smoking not advised.
S. P. Faulk et al. Regional patterns of extreme precipitation on Titan consistent with observed alluvial fan distribution, Nature Geoscience (2017). DOI: 10.1038/ngeo3043
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday October 16 2017, @01:39AM (1 child)
Taco Bell is shit food and has always been. Now, Del Taco is where the real men eat. They're deluxe chili-cheddar fries, their Macho Combo Burritos, are heavy and cheap.
Well, this being California, the mom-and-pop burrito joints are the best and most authentic when you want to eat as Beaners do. But if you're gonna eat crap, eat good crap.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 16 2017, @12:05PM
In NYC the place to get that is the food trucks next to the soccer fields in Red Hook, Brooklyn, on the weekends. (It's about a block away from the Ikea.) They cater to the Latino families who gather to play and watch the matches, so it's authentic. Andrew Zimmer and Anthony Bourdain covered it in a show [youtube.com].
Washington DC delenda est.