In 2006, a NASA spacecraft flew by Saturn’s largest moon and found evidence of a huge liquid mass on the strange planet’s surface. This shocking discovery meant that Titan’s topography is eerily similar to that of Earth, the only planets known to have rivers, lakes, and oceans on their surfaces.
But Titan’s coastline is less inviting than Earth’s: The liquid that flows across Titan isn’t water, but an ominous mix of methane, ethane, and other hydrocarbons. That might not be shocking enough, but new research suggests that waves of greenhouse gases could be washing up on Titan’s coastline, creating its wet landscapes.
A team of geologists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology wanted to unravel the mystery of Titan’s coastline and understand whether waves could have eroded it into its current shape. Using a computer model, the researchers simulated different types of erosion that could have created the coastline shown in the image. Images taken by the Cassini spacecraft About 20 years ago.
“If we could stand on the edge of Titan’s ocean, we would be able to see waves of liquid methane and ethane washing up and crashing onto the shore during storms, which could erode the material that makes up the shoreline,” Taylor Perron, an MIT professor and co-author of the study, said in an email. Investigation result Published in the journal Scientific progress.
Scientists have debated for years whether Titan has waves. Some scientists argue that the moon’s liquid is mirror-smooth, while others think its coasts are rough. Rather than looking at images to see if Titan has waves, the researchers behind the new study looked at the shape of its coastlines to try to figure out what could have caused erosion.
The researchers simulated an ocean surrounded by flooded river valleys and carried out three scenarios: no coastal erosion, wave-driven erosion, and uniform erosion, in which liquids passively dissolve coastal material over time, gradually peeling it away under their own weight.
“We found that starting from the same coastline, uniform erosion and wave erosion end up with very different shapes,” Perron said. “It looks like a flying spaghetti monster because of the flooded river valley, but the two types of erosion end up with very different shapes.”
The team used Cassini radar images to map the coastlines of each of Titan’s oceans, then applied the model to the coastlines of each ocean. They found that all four oceans fit the wave erosion model as the most likely mechanism to explain their shape. “Our results suggest that if the coastlines of Titan’s oceans are eroding, it is most likely due to waves,” Perron said.
Researchers are now preparing to study Titan’s winds to determine how strong they would need to be to churn up waves strong enough to carve away Titan’s coasts.
“Titan provides an example of a completely untouched system,” Rose Palermo, a former MIT graduate student, research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “This discovery may help us learn more fundamental things about how coasts erode without human influence, which may help us better manage coastlines on Earth in the future.”
more: New images reveal Saturn’s moon Titan in astonishing detail
