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Jinny Tran
IS THERE LIFE ON TITAN?
WHAT IS TITAN?BACKGROUND INFO.
o Titan is Saturn’s largest moon
o 1 day on Titan is equivalent to 16 Earth days. Titan orbits Saturn in the same length as its day, on its same side
o Titan is the most Earth-like in our Solar System
o Titan has been visited by two spacecrafts (Voyager 2 in 1980 and the Cassini spacecraft since 2004) and one space lander (the Huygens probe, carried to Saturn by Cassini in 2005)
THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES TO EARTH
o Similar atmosphere; mostly nitrogen and layered
o Like on Earth there’s a water cycle, but on Titan it’s with methane
o Similar geological features, such as, large bodies of liquid, seas, lakes, rivers, hills, vast dunes
o Also there’s seasons, clouds and rain
TITAN’S ATMOSPHERE
o Titan’s atmosphere extends 10 times higher into space than Earth’s because Titan is less massive and so its gravity is not as strong
o Low gravity and dense atmosphere
o It’s lowest layered atmosphereinfluences the climate and weather
o It only rains a few times a decade, mostly at the poles where they pool into vast lakes and ponds
o Each season on Titan lasts about 7 earth years
o Titan’s surface “has the consistency of soft, wet sand with a fragile crust on top”
o There’s evidence that Titan has taken impact (i.e. - craters)
o Titan has lakes, seas and flowing rivers & streams on its surface, with the liquid being methane (CH4) and ethane (C2H6)
o There’s also mountains, hills, and vast dunes
TITAN’S SURFACE
WHAT IS THE MAIN SUBSTANCES THAT EXISTS ON TITAN?
A. oxygen / nitrogen
B. argon / lithium
C. methane / ethane
D. helium / krypton
WHY THERE MIGHT BE LIFE ON TITAN
o Titan's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen (N2), like Earth’s but denser
o Habitable life is thought to be in the methane and ethane seas, lakes, streams, rivers
o There is water everywhere on Titan but the -290° Fahrenheit makes it into rock hard ice
THE SCIENCE OF IT…
o “High in the atmosphere, methane and nitrogen molecules are split apart by the sun's ultraviolet light and high-energy particles accelerated by Saturn's magnetic field, and the products of this splitting recombine to form a variety of organic molecules. (Organic molecules contain carbon and hydrogen, and often include nitrogen, oxygen and other elements important to life on Earth)”
QUESTION TIME!
If you could go to Titan and live there, would you?
Why or why not?
WORKS CITED
o http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Sat_Titan
o http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/03/17/saturns-largest-moon-would-host-really-really-weird-life/
o http://www.universetoday.com/92723/titans-layered-atmosphere-is-surprisingly-earth-like/
o http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/index.cfm?SciencePageID=75\
o http://www.space.com/18033-saturn-moon-titan-surface-huygens-landing.html
