Check out these images:
If you click through and look at the full-sized image -- paying particular attention to the one in the upper-right -- you'll see long, narrow, sinuous features which nevertheless manage to look exactly unlike rivers. They start and end in the middle of the "land"; they connect "seas" together; they have branching patterns exactly like you would expect a river not to. So what are they? (One thought which crossed my mind: how would hydrological surface features look in a high-wind, low-gravity environment where the working "fluid" was more like tar? I have no idea...)
I used to think that Titan was enigmatic when it was nothing more than a fuzzy orange sphere. Now I think it's really weird. It is definitely unlike anything else in the solar system. E.P. may go on about how Mars isn't Earth-like, but at least it has things that I can legitimately call hills, valleys, plains, rocks, et cetera. With Titan, everything is unrecognizable. I can't wait to see the radar data, because right now I'm boggled beyond belief.
Enjoying every minute of it,
Nathan.
Space/Science » in reply to Titan encounter thread
re: Titan is so amazingly weird
The whole thread (19 posts)
- Titan encounter thread
- re: Titan encounter thread
- re: Okay planetologist peoples -- your speculations, please!
- re: Titan is so amazingly weird
- Wait for the Synthetic Aperture Radar images
- re: Titan, craters, impactor flux, and "geological" activity
- That dark area sure looks like it could be liquid.
- re: I'll give it a WAG
- SpaceDaily.com has a timer. ~45 min to go.
- USA today article
