Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.p11d..01l&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #P11D-01
Other
5220 Hydrothermal Systems And Weathering On Other Planets, 5455 Origin And Evolution, 5462 Polar Regions, 5470 Surface Materials And Properties, 6281 Titan
Scientific paper
Titan exhibits ample surface and crustal processes including lakes and seas, fluvial erosive features, indirect for subsurface reservoirs of liquid, and rainfall. Together these constitute strong evidence for a multi- composition hydrological system, composed mostly of methane and ethane as well as trace amounts of other alkanes. Estimates of the volume of liquid methane required in streams and rainfall to produce erosional features suggest that these could be relatively recent, perhaps periodically renewed as the overall climate cycles between dry and wet epochs. The end state of the longer-term chemical processing of methane in the upper atmosphere is expressed on the surface in the form of deposits of solid organics (acetylene, and other hydrocarbons and nitriles) organized into dunes, and ethane (in the lakes). The long-term evolution of the methane cycle may have involved episodic resupply of methane to the surface or gradual depletion of a larger surface reservoir of methane, but in either case removal of large amounts of ethane from the surface remains a puzzle. The tectonic style of Titan is less well understood, in part because of the likely burial of features by the dunes and other organic deposits. Poorly organized mountains, hills, and chains of mountains do not show an obvious pattern, with the exception of the concentration of such features on the large "continent"-like feature Xanadu. It is not even clear what the ages of most features are on the surface, though the crater density has been interpreted in the published literature to be consistent with an overall surface age between 0.2-1 gigayear. This, in turn, requires interior models that maintain a thin crust until relatively recent times (~ 1 gigayear ago), after which the crust has thickened. The inference from Titan's rotation state of a subcrustal, presumably water, ocean is consistent with a number of published thermal evolution models of the satellite. Some evidence for mobilization of water in the form of cryovolcanism exists. Continued mapping of the surface in the Cassini Equinox and possible additional extended missions will help address some of these problems, but inevitably a Titan orbiter along with in-situ probes will be needed to pursue a deeper understanding of this intriguing world.
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