Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Apr 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010ttt..work...41l&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 landscape has been revealed by Cassini's radar and other instruments to be remarkably varied: it is interesting to compare Titan as we now know it with pre-Cassini predictions (Lorenz and Lunine, PSS, 2005). Some ideas e.g. "we may find Titan's surface replete with canyons and river valleys, but with few, if any, rivers actually flowing" have held up well, yet Titan has yielded many surprises. A landscape represents the competition between ongoing geological processes, and the fossils of past landscapes. The most usual ‘fossil' landform, impact craters, are remarkably scarce on Titan : in contrast to the saturated surfaces of other saturnian satellites, impact craters form only about 1% of Titan's surface area (compared with about 0.2% of Earth's) - a result in at least qualitative accord with "the rather enticing conclusion…that Titan may have a more evenly balanced set of processes (tectonics, cratering, erosion) than Earth—notably its impact crater population will be prominent and comparatively lightly eroded, but other landforms such as fluvial and tectonic features may, as on Mars, be well-represented." Some fluvial landforms seem to defy the capabilities of the present atmosphere, perhaps implying a one or more wetter eras than the present. Even without positing cataclysmic changes such as orbital evolution or belches of methane from Titan's interior, the balance of geological processes will have undergone secular change with time - geothermal heat flow (and the tectonics and cryovolcanism that may be driven by it) declines, while solar luminosity (and the aeolian & fluvial transport driven by it) will progressively increase. This balance also varies with latitude, as reflected in the striking variation of Titan's landscape from equator to pole. This talk provides an overview of Titan's landscape and what it may mean for the evolving processes that shape it.
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