Scientists discover dust storms on Titan, Saturn's largest moon

There are only a handful of places in the solar system that experience all types of weather conditions as we define them on Earth, and not a single body that is confronted with the diversity of conditions and events that we have here. Dust storms, for example, are only known on Earth and Mars – but now we've also captured them on Titan's moon.

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, intrigues astronomers and scientists because it represents a partial glimpse of the conditions on the primitive Earth, even at considerably lower temperatures. With its thick atmosphere, Titan has a methane cycle instead of a water cycle, with liquid hydrocarbon lakes on its surface. Its surface characteristics are shaped by rain and wind. There is no sign of plate tectonics, but scientists have identified structures that could be cryovolcans, which implies that Titan's geological history has been shaped in part by jets of frozen material rather than by magma. the mantle or core of the planet. And now, scientists have found evidence of dust storms for the first time, making Titan the third site (apart from Earth and Mars) to be known for its types of storms.

These discoveries are courtesy of Cassini, who may have fallen into Saturn a few years ago, but who still contributes to our greater knowledge of the cosmos. Titan is the only body in the solar system beyond the Earth where it is known that there is liquid rain and puddles of fluid on the surface. As the sun warms the moon, especially around the equinox, it can create huge storms. By studying storms, researchers gradually determined that they had characteristics that prevented them from being ground phenomena. They have concentrated in the area directly above Titan's sand dune belt, implying that the new features are directly related to the dunes below.

NASA / ESA / IPGP / Labex UnivEarthS / Paris Diderot University

"We believe that the Huygens spacecraft, which landed on Titan's surface in January 2005, raised a small amount of organic dust on arrival because of its powerful aerodynamic wake," said Sebastien Rodriguez, an astronomer at the airport. Paris Diderot University. and the main author of the newspaper. "But what we have seen here with Cassini is on a much larger scale. The wind speed near the surface required to raise such a large amount of dust should be very strong – about five times higher than the average wind speed estimated by near surface Huygens measurements and climate models. . "

The search for dust storms on Titan implies that the surface is regularly remodeled by surface erosion. It was previously thought that liquid erosion was rather slow on Titan, but methane dust clouds blown around the surface should continue to influence the geography of the moon. We are still unraveling the different forces shaping the cold world. Titan's thick atmosphere is thought to halve the number of impact craters on the surface by slowing objects down as they enter the atmosphere, but it is still unclear how fast erosion or equatorial storms play.

Despite its phenomenal differences from the Earth, it can be said that Titan – with its atmosphere, surface liquid, and weather patterns – is the closest object to Earth in the entire solar system. Finding massive dust storms only underscores how similar our worlds are.