Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Apr 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010ttt..work...28m&link_type=abstract
Through Time; A Workshop On Titan's Past, Present and Future, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, April 6th - 8th, 2010. Edited b
Mathematics
Logic
Scientific paper
Titan's may be a world whose landscape is shaped by exogenic processes, with a relatively inactive interior and minor or negligible endogenic activity. Those landforms on Titan that are unambiguously identifiable can all be explained by exogenic processes (aeolian, fluvial, impact cratering, and mass wasting). Previous suggestions of endogenically produced cryovolcanic constructs and flows have been, without exception, lack conclusive diagnostic evidence. Minor tectonic activity could be driven by global thermal evolution or external forcing, rather than by active interior processes. A geologically quiescent interior is consistent with geophysical inferences. Titan might be most akin to Callisto with weather. We do not aim to disprove the existence of any and all endogenic activity on Titan, but instead to inject a necessary level of caution into the discussion. The hypothesis of Titan as a predominantly exogenic world can be tested through additional Cassini observations and analyses of putative cryovolcanic features, geophysical and thermal modeling of Titan's interior evolution, modeling of icy satellite landscape evolution that is shaped by exogenic processes alone, and consideration of possible means for replenishing Titan's atmospheric methane that do not rely on cryovolcanism. If Titan displays regions of degraded ancient cratered terrain (such as may be the case in Xanadu around 90°W), then this would have significant implications for Titan's history. Martian fluvially degraded cratered terrain still exhibits craters because fluvial activity largely ceased soon after the curtailment of heavy bombardment. For Titan to have such terrains and ongoing fluvial activity would imply at least three possible explanations: (1) alkane fluvial erosion on Titan is extremely inefficient relative to that by water on the Earth and Mars, or (2) fluvial erosion very rarely occurs on some regions on Titan; or (3) it has started raining on Titan only in geologically recent times.
Howard Alan D.
Moore Jeffrey M.
Pappalardo Robert T.
Schenk Paul M.
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