Lake, ahoy!

July 30, 2008

While debate swirls about allocation, taxation and mitigation of Earth’s key energy source -- i.e. oil -- scientists have confirmed the location of a huge, untapped pool of liquid ethane and methane that’s your’s, mine and our’s for the taking.

It’s a bit far though. On a moon of Saturn.

Still, the discovery, announced in this week’s issue of the science research journal Nature, underscores a key reason for undertaking space exploration: so we can learn what’s out there.

What the dazzlingly brilliant and disciplined minds behind the Cassini science mission at Saturn have uncovered is that yes, indeed, Earth is not the only place in the universe that has liquids on its surface. Scientists have long suspected Titan had the goods, but it has taken years of detailed, methodical investigation to deliver the evidence.

Confirmation comes from a team at the University of Arizona charged with operating Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, which can ID chemicals by dissecting and analyzing wavelengths of light. VIMS found spectral fingerprints of liquid ethane pooled together in an area roughly 7,800 square miles (20,000 square km), which is just a bit bigger than Lake Ontario. Hence its name: Ontario Lacus.

Explains UA’s Robert Brown, the lead scientist for VIMS: "We know the lake is liquid because it reflects essentially no light at 5-micron wavelengths. It was hard for us to accept the fact that the feature was so black when we first saw it. More than 99.9 percent of the light that reaches the lake never gets out again. For it to be that dark, the surface has to be extremely quiescent, mirror smooth -- no naturally produced solid could be that smooth."

Observations at 2-micron wavelengths apparently clinched the deal, when the signature of ethane appeared at the precise wavelength that ethane absorbs infrared light. Brown says tiny particles of ethane, small as cigarette smoke, are filtering out of the atmosphere and into the lake. Atmosphere ethane is made when ultraviolet light from the sun zaps methane molecules.

There’s more: Titan’s lake apparently is evaporating, as would be expected since its summer-time on Titan’s southern hemisphere, where the lake is located.

"We can see there's a shelf, a beach, that is being exposed as the lake evaporates," Brown said.

The beach is darker than the shoreline, indicating that it is wet with organics or covered with a thin layer of liquid organics. Scientists know what’s not there: water ice, ammonia, ammonia hydrate or carbon dioxide. And it’s cold -- about 290 below zero Fahrenheit. That’s why the hydrocarbons are in a liquid state, not gas.

Personally, but I don’t mind the extra charge to Uncle Sam’s credit card to keep Cassini flying. Takes the edge off all the other mindless stuff.

Comments

[Chris Cotton]

Looks like a foot print!! Seriously I find this as a tremendous discovery, but underneath it all does this not drive research in a particular field that we do not hear much about and that is life support systems that can be adapted to wide ranges of environments.

[A]

By the time we'll be able to successfully move stuff from as far away as Saturn we'll have other concerns.

Maybe 5-10 years from now we'll have a contraption able to lift of from Titan towards earth with a pay load of the size of a truck. Now you have to wait 2 years then slow it down, then shield it from blowing up on reentry.
I don't see it economically realizable to bring methane from Titan. There is plenty of methane reserves in solid form at the bottom of the ocean. However this does not help with global warming and oxygen consumption.

[Seadoo Bill]

@A - I don't think that was the point of the article.

It would certainly take several decades, and dollar amounts well into the billions or hundreds of billions, to actually retrieve even a couple hundred dollars worth of methane from Titan. Not much of an investment opportunity.

[Ted]

How about using Uncle Sam's credit card to pay Earth's scientists to create a renewable energy source, freeing us from depending on elements that will not only eventually run out and but more importantly fuel systems that pump CO2 into our atmosphere.
Otherwise, we would unfortunately keep treading down the same path that we're following and eventually encounter the same dead we're currently facing.

Einstein couldn't be more helpful in this situation:
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them."

[Irene]

I'm with Ted

[Debbie]

Isn't anybody else just plain CURIOUS to see what is out there? Has the air of entitlement made everyone so lazy that leaving your chair to see what is going on outside doesn't excite anyone? The simple curiosity of a child seems to be beaten out of every adult I meet. It's so sad.

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