In 2006, a NASA spacecraft flew by Saturn’s largest moon and found evidence of large liquids on the surface of this strange world. The shocking discovery means Titan’s terrain is very similar to Earth’s. These two worlds are the only ones known to have rivers, lakes, and oceans on their surface.
However, Titan’s coastline is not as attractive as our coastline. The liquid flowing through Titan is not water, but an unholy mix of methane, ethane, and other hydrocarbons. If that doesn’t sound hardcore enough, a new study suggests that waves of greenhouse gases could be crashing into the moon’s shorelines, shaping its wet landscape.
A group of MIT geologists are trying to unravel the mystery of Titan’s coastline and whether waves eroded it into its current shape. Researchers used computer models to simulate the different types of erosion that could produce the shoreline pictured here. Images taken by the Cassini mission nearly 20 years ago.
“If we could stand at the edge of Titan’s sea, we might see waves of liquid methane and ethane lapping at the shore and hitting it during storms. They could erode the shore’s constituent materials,” said MIT professor , study co-author Tyler Perron said in an emailed statement. this Discover published in journal Scientific progress.
Scientists have debated whether waves exist on Titan for years, with some believing the moon’s liquid objects are mirror-smooth while others believe Titan’s coast is rugged. Rather than investigating whether Titan had waves by looking at images, the researchers on the new study looked at the shape of the coastline to try to figure out what might be causing its erosion.
The researchers simulated a flooded ocean with a marginal river valley and experienced three scenarios: no coastal erosion, wave-driven erosion, and uniform erosion, in which liquid passively dissolves coastal material over time as the coastal material absorbs water under its own weight. Gradually fall off.
“We had the same starting shoreline, and we found that under uniform erosion and wave erosion, you get completely different final shapes,” Perron said. “Because the river valleys are flooded, they both look like flying spaghetti monsters, but these two types of erosion produce very different endpoints.”
The team used Cassini’s radar imagery to map the coastline of each of Titan’s oceans and applied its modeling to the coastline of each ocean. The study found that all four oceans fit the wave erosion model as the most likely mechanism to explain their shapes. “Based on our findings, we can say that if the coastline of Titan Sea is eroding, waves are the most likely culprit,” Perron said.
Researchers are now preparing to study Titan’s winds to see how strong they must be to stir up waves powerful enough to erode the lunar coast.
“Titan presents a completely untouched system,” Rose Palermo, a former MIT graduate student, U.S. Geological Survey research geologist and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “It could help us learn more about the basics of how coasts erode in the absence of human influence, which may help us better manage our planet’s coastlines in the future.”
more: New image shows Saturn’s moon Titan in incredible detail
