According
to new research published in the journal 'Nature Geoscience', Saturn's
hazy moon has surprisingly extreme rainstorms. While these methanestorms
are rare on Titan (less than once per Titan year, which is about 29.5
Earth years), they occur much more frequently than researchers expected.
“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," said study co-author Dr.
Jonathan Mitchell, from the University of California, Los Angeles. But
Titan’s precipitation is
liquid methane, not water."
The researchers took advantage of
computer simulations to study Titan's hydrologic cycle due to the
difficulty of observing actual precipitation on Titan and the length of
each year on the moon.
“We 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,"
said the authors.
“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.”
Read more about this fascinating story at: http://www.sci-news.com/space/methane-rainstorms-titan-05321.html
Image credit: David A. Hardy, AstroArt / NASA.
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Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Intense Methane Rainstorms Batter Saturn's Moon Titan
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