Saturn’s most mysterious moon may have a weather system that is potentially worth billions of dollars! Many scientists suspect that Titan’s clouds may rain down methane from on high, which would probably explain the existence of those methane lakes that dot the northern pole.
(Saturn Today) A giant cloud half the size of the United States has been imaged on Saturn’s moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft. The cloud may be responsible for the material that fills the lakes discovered last year by Cassini’s radar instrument. [...]
These findings reinforce the idea that methane rains down onto the surface to form lakes, and then evaporates to form clouds. Scientists compare this methane cycle to the hydrological cycle on Earth, dubbing it ‘methane-ologic cycle’.
Ground-based observations show this Titan cloud system comes and goes with the seasons. A season on Titan lasts approximately seven Earth years. Based on the global circulation models, it seems that such cloud activity can last about 25 Earth years before almost vanishing for four to five years, and then appearing again for 25 years.
Some scientists think that during the seasonal change that the clouds may reappear on in the south pole, although we will have to wait for a Cassini flyby to confirm that theory.
Although Titan lies almost a billion miles away from Earth, it certainly has not lost the attention of astronomers and may become an OPEC in the solar system as methane could be the fuel to take us beyond Saturn, helping us to colonize not only Uranus, but Neptune and Pluto as well.
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