Aug 04,
2006
Predictions Concerning Titan’s Methane
Winding channels and dark
patches on Saturn's moon Titan have inspired NASA scientists
to claim that torrential rains of methane sculpt an
"earth-like" landscape, with methane rivers and methane
lakes.
In
two earlier TPODs
we have discussed recent radar images of Titan, the
cloud-enshrouded moon of Saturn, now a principal target of
the Cassini mission. (See
August 2, 2006 TPOD
and
July 31, 2006 TPOD.)
Wallace
Thornhill has suggested that both the planet Venus and
Saturn’s moon Titan are newcomers to our solar system, and
that both appear to have been born electrically from the
planet Saturn, perhaps within a period that can be counted
in mere thousands of years (not the billions of years given
in the standard picture of solar system evolution).
Though the field of evidence is far greater than could be
adequately summarized here, a substantial portion of that
evidence relates to the planet Venus, a body with a long but
now-invisible, highly filamentary plasma or comet tail
reaching almost to Earth’s orbit. Converging historical and
scientific evidence gives a compelling portrait of Venus as
a comet in ancient times, displaying an awe-inspiring plasma
tail extolled by ancient star-worshippers around the world. (See Chapter
Three of
Thunderbolts of the Gods.)
If Venus is
a newcomer, then various features on the planet, including
its dense atmosphere, the continuing contribution of its
atmosphere to its remnant plasma tail, and its surface rille
networks, could be pointers to a more reliable
interpretation of what we now see on Titan.
It is known
that Titan’s existing atmospheric methane is rapidly
destroyed by sunlight, and one of the major goals of the
Cassini mission has been to account for the large volumes of
methane escaping from Titan’s atmosphere into space. At the
observed rate of methane loss, planetary scientists say, the
methane would be quickly depleted. So some extensive
reservoir must be replenishing it. Prior to Cassini NASA
scientists envisioned
oceans of methane,
covering perhaps three-quarters of Titan’s surface.
But with Cassini’s arrival
the picture changed. The oceans were not found. From this
NASA scientists concluded that the methane source lay in
vast underground reserves feeding fresh supplies into the
atmosphere. These “methanofers” were not found either.
Now, however, thanks to a
series of Cassini radar images, complemented by the Huygens
probe that descended to the surface, NASA scientists suggest
a partial, shall we say minimalist answer to the mystery: a
“cycle” of torrential rains of methane; visible channels on
the surface cut by the resulting methane “rivers;” and
“lakes” of methane fed by the rivers, now appearing as
smooth dark areas on the radar images. The most recent
announcement named dark patches in the north polar region as
the badly needed “lakes” of methane.
The claimed cycle would not
replenish available methane, or even come close to meeting
the original theoretical requirements. But the radar images
encouraged NASA scientists to issue something close to a
victory statement.
"This is a big deal," said
Steve Wall, deputy radar team leader at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've now seen a
place other than Earth where lakes are present."
"What we see is darker than
anything we've ever seen elsewhere on Titan. It was almost
as though someone laid a bull's-eye around the whole north
pole of Titan, and Cassini sees these regions of lakes just
like those we see on Earth," said Larry Soderblom, Cassini
interdisciplinary scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey,
Flagstaff, Ariz.
Such statements make the direction of NASA’s thinking clear.
It is therefore an ideal juncture for us to register
contrary predictions based on a much different vantage
point.
A
“replenished” atmosphere?
The methane found in
Titan's atmosphere is quickly destroyed by sunlight, so it
has to be replenished. That has led to the suggestion that
Titan must have a hydrocarbon ocean for the methane to have
lasted for the conventional age of the solar system.
However, radar, infrared and radio observations of Titan
have not found signs of a hydrocarbon ocean. In fact one
radar return was “of a type that we would expect to get back
from Venus.” (Remember Thornhill’s claim that ” Titan is
most likely a baby brother of Venus.")
We suggest there is no
replenishment of Titan’s methane. It is simply losing
methane from its young atmosphere at a declining rate that
can probably be measured over mere decades or centuries.
Thornhill writes: “That
Titan may be young is hinted at by its eccentric orbit,
which cannot have persisted for billions of years. So we
should be alert to similarities between Titan and Venus. It
is already known that Titan has the densest atmosphere of
any terrestrial planet, after Venus.” But unlike Venus,
Titan is too small to hold a thick atmosphere, and that’s
the heart of the mystery. Two of Jupiter's moons, Ganymede
and Callisto have no atmosphere yet they are of similar
size.
It is the youth of Titan
that accounts for the difference (Titan’s dense atmosphere),
not hidden reservoirs of methane. On a geological timeline
Titan's atmosphere is extraordinary recent and could not be
retained for millions of years, much less the
multiple-billion-year history the NASA folks require. Both
Venus' and Titan's atmospheres, being very young, will not
yet be in equilibrium. So calculations about atmospheric
constituents that assume equilibrium as a starting point
will be wrong.
A colder
north pole on Titan?
NASA
scientists suggest that the envisioned methane lakes at the
north polar region of Titan are there because of the pole’s
colder temperatures. But is the pole really colder, or is
this just another assumption based on an electrically
sterile model? With Titan’s “big
sister” as a
reference, Thornhill writes, “it would not be surprising if
Titan had warm spots over the poles, like Venus.” Of course,
if this turns out to be true, NASA’s reasoning about polar
methane lakes is significantly weakened.
Torrential methane rains?
We predict
that NASA will never find the elusive methane rains on
Titan, because the weather cycle that planetary scientists
conjured is not occurring. (Thornhill offers another
testable claim about “rain” and “storms” in his treatment of
“Electric
Weather”)
Thornhill
emphasizes that the water molecule, unlike the methane
molecule, is
electrically polarized.
“The oxygen (blue) side of
the water molecule is more negative than the hydrogen side
(red), forming an electric dipole. In an electric field, the
water molecule will rotate to line up with the field. When
it condenses in a cloud the average electric dipole moment
of a water molecule in a raindrop is 40 percent greater than
that of a single water vapor molecule. This enhancement
results from the large polarization caused by the electric
field induced by surrounding water molecules.”
Thornhill relates the
polarization of water molecules to the seemingly
inexplicable “anti-gravity” effect of water droplets in
clouds, where “millions of tons of water can be suspended
kilometers above the ground, when cloud droplets are about
1,000 times denser than the surrounding air."
Based on this perspective,
he now writes to us, “It's my view that methane could not
form large drops. It will always form a haze in Titan's
atmosphere.” There could be no torrential rains, and none
will be found. “…Methane will not rain out of the sky and
form rivers. It will condense out like fog on a windscreen.
Also you will not get charge separation and storms in
methane clouds like you do in water clouds on Earth.
However, you might get superbolts of lightning from the
ionosphere to the surface, like you do on Venus.” And they
could be responsible for lofting water and other molecules,
from the surface and lower atmosphere, high into the
stratosphere where they would form the few bright clouds,
seen now from Earth.”
Methane
Rivers
We claim
that there are no rains. The sinuous channels were not cut
by fluid under the influence of gravity. Therefore NASA will
never find a methane river, and the rilles must have another
explanation. They were cut electrically in a highly active
phase of Titan’s history. The rilles are dark in the radar
images, not because they are a flat liquid surface, but
because they have flat melted floors formed by a moving arc.
We are
confident enough in this reasoning that we will offer an
additional prediction. NASA need only subject its
interpretation to a critical test. Do the channels follow
the geologic relief in the way required by flowing liquid?
With tools already available to them, NASA investigators
should be able to confirm that the channels run both uphill
and downhill as do rilles on other rocky bodies in the solar
system.
Lakes
As
previously noted, the dark areas in the radar images show
the usual circular scalloped edges, typical of cathode arc
machining of a surface. These can be compared directly to
the scalloped scarring on Jupiter’s moon Io, which also
produced flat, melted floor depressions. Thornhill writes:
“Such floors would be expected to give a dark radar return.
The fact that the ‘lakes’ have only been discovered in the
polar region and are associated with electrical ‘rilles’ and
fulguritic ‘dunes’ also suggests an electrical origin
through powerful auroral currents in the past.” Some of the
“Lakes” reveal rilles on their floors, which suggests that
they are, in fact, dry.
Predictions
and Theoretical Context
The last
word comes from Thornhill in
'Titan - A
Rosetta Stone for early Earth?'
"Titan is a Rosetta Stone for
planetary history – once the context is understood. The
hieroglyphs on the original could be deciphered when it was
realized they repeated what was written there in Greek.
Titan's surface – and the other bodies in the solar system –
can be deciphered when it's realized they have been
'written' by plasma discharges. Titan is not a body
inscribed by gravity attesting to an ancient nebula but a
body etched by electricity proclaiming a recent birth."
__________________________
Most of the
predictions offered here need not wait years for
confirmation. Another flyby of Titan will occur on September
7. Then, in October, Cassini will be taking an even closer
look at the moon’s north pole, “searching for more lakes and
mapping more of the polar region covered by these features.”
In this search, we can only urge NASA scientists to also
look for things that might raise their entire theoretical
framework to doubt—such as narrow channels on the
flat floors of the “lakes!”
Our
prediction in a nutshell: on close inspection the imagined
methane rivers and lakes of Titan will evaporate before the
eyes of NASA scientists.
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