Wednesday, August 3, 2022

We're driving over around Mars, and we're looking at all these sort of inorganic rock minerals,searching for any organic molecules that may be trapped inside them. Whereas on Titan, organics are everywhere -Melissa Trainer 


This LPI is more science and less engineering than the last one I put up. Which because the Cassini mission was so crazy good, and a little time has past, means this LPI is packed with good slides. 

Complex chemistry. If I tried to rank the complexity of atmospheres, Titan, Earth, and Venus, I couldn't because Venus hasn't been studied enough, but Titan has, and is more complex than Earth. This is a big part of why Titan is irresistible. It's un-Earth-like traits and Earthlike traits combine to make it attractive and scientifically usable. 

  • Slides kick off early at 9:00. Pretty must every slide is lovely and informative.
  • At 18:00 there is a simple slide, but it makes me think. Titan is the only world that rains to a surface aside Earth. It has winds comparable to Earth. Yet some worlds like Triton and Europa are cratered about as much.  
  • Slide at 25:40 she repeats the bit about wanting to see what happens when an impact packs hot organics into Titans surface. I'm hearing that bit repeated a lot from the Dragonfly science team so we can take a flagrant-hint about where Dragonfly will be looking to go. At 33:20, the name of the crater is 'Selk'. 
  • At 35:10 and after, Dragonfly's planned route is made explicit. 
In general, the extraterrestrial search for life does not inspire me much. I find it overplayed, but then when it comes to Europa and Titan, I can't help myself. Europa is almost more likely than Earth if you didn't know better. And Titan, far less likely, but there is so much possibility. 

One thing that sits in the back of my mind regarding Titan is the idea of a benthic environment. No doubt silt of Titan is different and follows different rules than Earth. With life, water sorts polar molecules and separates polar from non-polar, so you already have a basic organizing to start with. On Titan the seas are non-polar, not at all like water. But the dirt is polar. So the benthic layer, where nonpolar liquid emulsifies polar particles, is a place where some sort of basic sorting can occur.

I've never heard a proper planetary scientist talk about benthic Titan. Not the seas nor the soggy flood-plains. I hope to one day, but if it's going to happen in my lifetime, it will probably be the Dragonfly mission.     

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