Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Surf's Up on Titan

Titan continues to yield suprises. Saturn's largest moon has a crushing, thick mostly nitrogen and hydrocarbon atmosphere, which until the Cassini-Huygens mission hid the surface of the moon from observation.

The Cassini team has announced the discovery of at least two large seas near the North pole of Saturn's moon Titan. The swimming there wouldn't likely be very good however, as it appears that the seas are super-cold and contain either liquid ethane or methane.

The larger of the two seas is bigger than any lake on the Earth, and nearly as large as the Caspian Sea.

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