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Scientific paper
Sep 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008epsc.conf..665k&link_type=abstract
European Planetary Science Congress 2008, Proceedings of the conference held 21-25 September, 2008 in Münster, Germany. Online a
Other
Scientific paper
Widely circulating opinion that titanian methane lowlands in a broad equatorial region are covered with eolian formations needs to be carefully checked. Of coarse, all three solid bodies with atmospheres in the inner solar system have dunes. Why do not have them on Titan? Most probably they do exist but discovered by radar up to now cross-cutting rippling features cannot be taken for them. For this there are several reasons. How it can be that prevailing "dune" strike coincides with prevailing wind direction? Normally (with some African exceptions) one sees real terrestrial dunes stretching across winds. And this is understandable from a point of view eolian dunes formation. This formation gives particular cross profile to dunes. Asymmetric profile - one slope is long and gentle and another one short and abrupt. But titanian "dunes" are mostly uniform and symmetric. And this characteristic is preserved for many hundreds of kilometers of very straight features. Then, the finest solid particles precipitation from the thick atmosphere of Titan should be distributed on the satellite surface more uniformly and cover dark lowlands and light icy highlands of the wide equatorial belt more or less evenly. But "dunes" are strictly associated with dark lowlands and tend to turn round light icy obstacles. Cindering smoggy particles to produce sands for making dunes is a pure imagination. Then, radar preferably sees one direction but nevertheless one or more crossing directions of rippling are distinguished (Fig.3, 4) They mean two wind directions at the same time or another wind direction at another time? If so, the earlier "dunes" should be more or less obliterated by the later ones. Nothing of the kind! Both crossing ripples directions are fresh. Then, eolian action is not seen at the higher latitudes (Fig. 5). There are no winds there? Probably it is not so. Only a liquid state of methane can help (but liquid should be disturbed by winds). Solid methane there is also probable. Very regular cross-cutting wavy forms hundred and thousand kilometers long have a spacing between ridges or grooves about 1-2 km (?) (PIA03555, PIA03566, PIA03567, PIA03568 ) or 10-20 km (PIA08454) -so called "cat scratches". The most long and wide ridge-groove system observed up to now (PIA08454 - a swath 6150 km long, 1120 km wide, almost a half length of the great planetary circle!) has the ridge-to-ridge spacing about 10-20 km; a width of ridges and grooves is nearly equal with variations to both sides; ridges are more bright, grooves are more dark; intersections of the ridge-groove systems creates chains of roundish features ("craters") of characteristic size (Fig. 3, 4). Observed wavy systems resemble dunes only at the first glance but actually are deformations of the ice-methane crust by very fine inertia-gravity waves aroused by the satellite movement in non-round elliptical keplerian orbit [3]. This movement with periodically changing accelerations arouse inertia-gravity forces and waves warping any celestial body notwithstanding its size, mass, density, chemical composition or physical state. In rotating bodies (but all bodies rotate!) these warping waves have a stationary character and 4 cross-cutting directions- ortho- and diagonal - producing uplifted (+), subsided (-) and neutral (0) tectonic blocks. Wavelengths are different but tied as harmonics. The fundamental wave1 produces ubiquitous tectonic dichotomy -two segments (2πR-structure), the first harmonics wave2 produces tectonic sectors (πR-structures) [1]. This structurization is adorned by individual for any body waves whose lengths are inversely proportional to their orbital frequencies: higher frequency - smaller waves and, vice versa, lower frequency - larger waves. These waves produce tectonic granules. There is a row of increasing granule sizes strictly tied to orbital frequencies: Mercury πR/16, Venus πR/6, Earth πR/4, Mars πR/2, asteroids πR/1. In this row Titan with its orbital frequency around its central body Saturn about 16 days occupies position before Mercury -πR/91 (Fig. 1). But Titan as a satellite has also another frequency around Sun - that of its master Saturn. A wave created by this frequency is too large to be confined in Titan (7.5πR granule) but it can, according to the wave theory modulate the higher frequency (the wave with granule πR/91) creating two side frequencies. They are obtained by division and multiplication of the higher frequency by the lower one: the modulations give the sizes πR/12 or 670 km and πR/667 or 12 km [(1/91 x 7.5)πR and (1/91 : 7.5)πR]. Both 670 and 12 km sizes are discernable on Titan's radar image PIA08454. The first as roundish white and dark areas (these granules were discerned and calculated earlier on the Hubble image of Titan in pre-Cassini era [2]). The second size is produced by an intersection of regular wavings-ripples (erroneously interpreted as dunes) with spacing about 10-20 km covering mainly smooth dark near equatorial parts of the satellite (Fig. 4). Titan's dichotomy -an opposition of mostly light (Xanadu) and dark hemispheres - is well known and also represents the wave structurization (2πR-structure). Often observed an essential difference in appearance and structure between tropical and extra-tropical zones of various heavenly bodies belonging to terrestrial rocky planets, giant gas planets, icy satellites (Fig.5, Titan) compels to look for a common reason of such phenomenon. All bodies rotate and their spherical shape makes zones at different latitudes to have differing angular momenta as a distance to the rotation axis diminishes gradually from the equator to the poles. As a single rotating planetary body tends to have angular momenta of its tectonic blocks equilibrated it starts mechanisms leveling this basic physical property. At equatorial zones (bulged also due to the rotation ellipsoid) the outer shell - crust tends to be destroyed, sunk, subsided and shrunk as a consequence. At Titan this common planetary feature is expressed very clearly: subsiding dark plains at the equatorial region are not only widespread but also intensively warped (Fig. 2-4). This ubiquitous cross-cutting rippling in response to subsidence should not be confused with eolian forms [3].
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