Titan

[miriam_e]

I can hardly believe the lack of interest the media are displaying in the Huygens probe's landing on Titan! We have mind-bogglingly Earth-like views of another world and almost nobody gets to see them.

This weird little world is one of our best shots at finding some kind of life. Yes, it is incredibly cold there (-179°C or -290°F), but it generates more warmth than it receives from the sun, and it is brimming with the stuff of life. It has water, hydrocarbons, and liquids. The atmosphere is 94% nitrogen -- the only body in the Solar System with significant amounts of atmospheric nitrogen other than Earth (78% of our atmosphere is nitrogen). The rivers and rain are liquid methane. The "rocks" are ice. There are hydrocarbons everywhere.


The color picture is from the little space robot after it landed. The ice "rocks" in the foreground are about a handspan in size and the ground looks wet with liquid methane.

The other two pictures were snapped on its way down. Titan really looks remarkably like Earth, doesn't it.