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Saturn's massive moon is one of the largest solar panels in the world. NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which studied Saturn for over 13 years, is a great deal of time.
Now, a new paper published in Nature Astronomy reveal the existence of a rather peculiar feature of the moon's hazy atmosphere. A massive stretch of water dominates the world of midsection, stretching for nearly 4,000 miles, and its discovery has left scientists wondering what caused it.
Water ice is known to exist on Titan's surface, but it was thought to be isolated to small, localized areas. Liquid lakes also have a surface that is incredibly deep, but they are filled with extremely cold liquid methane rather than water.
"Our analysis detected an ice-rich linear feature of bedrock, which extends to 40 percent of Titan's circumference," the researchers explain. "This corridor is puzzling because it does not correlate with topography or measurements of the subsurface. Ice-rich lands in other areas of the earth, which is currently only available in local areas,
Whereas researchers continue to examine what mechanics may be at play to allow such a massive stretch of water to have collected on Titan's surface, the work is definitely worthy of praise.
Cassini collected an incredible amount of data during its 100+ flybys of titan. The researchers used a technique called major component analysis to identify and effectively cancel out certain aspects of the data that can be overwhelm more subtle differences. This form of analysis acts in the form of an analysis of the subject. In this case, a massive run of water has been hiding beneath the planet's foggy face.
Image Source: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona
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