Great Kraken, huge The methane sea on Saturn’s moon, Titan, is at least 300 meters deep near its center, more than enough for underwater exploration projected on a human mission.
After examining data from one of Titan’s last Cassini fliers, researchers at Cornell University detailed their findings in a bathymetric study published in Journal of Geophysical Research.
“The depth and composition of each sea of Titan had already been measured, except for the largest sea in Titan, the Great Kraken, which not only has a big name, but also contains about 80% of the world’s fluids. Surface of the Month, “Principal Author Valerio Poggiali, a research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Sciences (CCAPS) at the College of Arts and Sciences, said in a statement.
1.5 billion kilometers from Earth, frozen Titan is shrouded in a golden cloud of gaseous nitrogen. But when we look through the clouds, the lunar landscape looks similar to Earth, with rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane, according to NASA.
The explorations of the titans paid off
In fact, data for this discovery were collected in Cassini’s flying Titan on August 21, 2014. The spacecraft’s radar scanned the Big League, a smaller sea in the Moon’s northern polar region, to search for the mysterious disappearance and reappearance. of the “magic island,” which was a previous discovery by Cornell.
While Cassini sailed 900 kilometers above the surface of Titan, the spacecraft used its radar altimeter to measure the depth of the liquid in the Great Kraken and Moray Sinus, an estuary at the northern end of the sea.
Scientists at Cornell, along with engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, learned how to discern the bathymetry (depth) of the lake and sea by analyzing the differences in radar return time from the surface of the liquid and the seabed. as well as the composition of the sea by recognizing the amount of radar energy absorbed during transit through the liquid.
It appears that the Moray Sinus is about 90 meters deep, less than the depths of the center of the Great Kraken, which was too deep for the radar to be measured. Surprisingly, the composition of the liquid, primarily a mixture of ethane and methane, was dominated by methane and was similar to the composition near the Great League, the second largest in size of Titan.
Earlier scientists had speculated that the Kraken might be richer in ethane, both because of its size and its extent to the lower latitudes of the moon. The observation that the liquid composition is not significantly different from the other northern seas is an important finding that will help evaluate the models of the Titan Earth-like hydrological system.
Titan has an Earth-like atmosphere
Beyond the depths, the Great Kraken is also huge, close to the size of the five large lakes combined. Titan is a model environment for a possible early Earth atmosphere, Poggiali said.
“In this context,” he said, “it is important to understand the depth and composition of the Great Kraken and Moray Sines, as this allows for a more accurate assessment of Titan’s methane hydrology. However, we have many mysteries to solve.”
Such a puzzle is the origin of liquid methane. Sunlight on Titan, about 100 times less intense than on Earth, constantly turns methane in the atmosphere into ethane; Over periods of about 10 million years, this process would completely deplete Titan’s surface reserves, according to Poggiali.
In the distant future, a submarine, probably without a mechanical engine, will visit and navigate the Great Kraken, Poggiali said.
“Thanks to our measurements,” he said, “scientists can now deduce the density of the liquid more accurately and therefore better calibrate the sonar on board the ship and understand the directional flows of the sea.”
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