As I've mentioned in an earlier post, the methane concentrations in Titan's atmosphere are a major issue to people designing heatshields for future Titan landers. There are significant error bars on the methane concentration that also vary significantly depending on altitude. Methane is one of the simplist hydrocarbon molecules. Methane concentration in the atmosphere would scale with more complex volatile hydrocarbons on Titan's surface. If we don't know what the atmospheric methane concentration is then we really have no clue about what's happening on Titan's surface. This is genuine "leading edge science" where people simply don't know what they're seeing and can not anticipate what they'll discover. Exciting stuff.
Gary
Space/Science » in reply to More computer models down the drain
Any pre-Cassini model about Titan was almost worthless
The whole thread (23 posts)
- Titan appears to be remarkably flat.
- What gives? Impacts pound Titan's surface "flat".
- Is Titan's rotation synchronized with its orbit (like our Moon?) (n/t)
- More computer models down the drain