Fake lake hints at Dead Sea on Saturn's moon Titan
Baku, August 7 (AZERTAC). TITAN, Saturn's largest moon, may have its own Dead Sea. A fake lake simulating conditions there hints that the moon may host ethane pools saturated with benzene, just as the Dead Sea is packed with salt.
Titan is arguably the most Earth-like body in the solar system, boasting lakes, rivers, clouds and rainfall. But the moon's frigid temperatures mean its liquids are hydrocarbons like ethane or methane, not water. The atmosphere also churns out fresh hydrocarbons like benzene, a chemical found in gasoline, and these fall like snow.
Michael Malaska at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and his colleagues wondered how much of this snow could dissolve in the lakes. They filled a small tube with liquid ethane, chilled it to a Titan-like -179 °C and added benzene.
To their surprise, the benzene dissolved quickly. This suggests that over geological timescales, so much hydrocarbon snow would have dissolved in Titan's lakes that they would have become saturated with the stuff (Icarus, doi.org/tzb).
Excess benzene could build up in a mud-like sludge on the shores and on the lake floors. Some of these deposits could be eroded by ethane rain, forming a complex, cave-riddled landscape.
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