Electric Titan

Historic planetary instability and catastrophe. Evidence for electrical scarring on planets and moons. Electrical events in today's solar system. Electric Earth.

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Mr_Majestic
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Re: 'Mysterious' Features on Titan

Unread post by Mr_Majestic » Tue Oct 23, 2012 5:34 am

viscount aero wrote:Titan's primary feature is its thick atmosphere. As a scientist I would look to that structure foremost as a causal agent behind surface morphology. This includes precipitation, wind, and electrical storms.
Ah, but then you have to ask yourself how the same geological feature has appeared on two different bodies in our Solar System when:
  • 1) They have atmospheres with different chemical compositions and levels of pressure;
    2) There is a difference of temperature between Venus and Titan of 642°C;
    3) The weather of both bodies contrast with each other (correct me if I'm wrong but as I understand it, Titan has much calmer weather than Venus);
    4) They are vast distances away from each other, as well as one being much further from the Sun than the other.
Titan's surface is virtually unknown despite penetrating radar imagery.
You won't hear any arguments from me on that point.

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nick c
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Re: 'Mysterious' Features on Titan

Unread post by nick c » Tue Oct 23, 2012 10:40 am

The similarities between Titan and Venus are not coincidence, at least in the Electric Universe there is no surprise. Thornhill has theorized that both were recently born as a result of the Sun's capture of a brown dwarf star, the remnant of which is the planet Saturn.
Titan – A Rosetta Stone for early Earth? Jan. 2005
http://www.holoscience.com/wp/titan-a-r ... e=n2z18sez
Venus’ extreme heat and heavy atmosphere is due in large part to that electrical discharge and recent birth.

Huygens’ descent to Titan’s surface was an acid test of this reconstruction of events. In particular, the expectation of channels carved by cosmic lightning, similar to Venus, was confirmed. The channels on Titan bear the hallmarks of cosmic lightning imprinted on the surface. Also, the lack of a methane ocean was predicted because Titan’s atmosphere is very young and a vast reservoir of the gas is not needed to make good the losses expected over the 4.7 billion years required by the solar nebula model. 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 said in Greek. Titan’s surface – and the other bodies in the solar system – can be deciphered when it’s realized they repeat what is “said” in plasma discharges. Titan is not a document scribed by gravity attesting to an ancient nebula but a document etched by electricity proclaiming a recent birth.

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viscount aero
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Re: 'Mysterious' Features on Titan

Unread post by viscount aero » Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:26 am

This is an old article but gives insight into Titan's atmosphere:
http://www.space.com/1825-view-titan-st ... tning.html

excerpts:
"While the uppermost clouds – about 75 miles above the surface – spin around the moon at about 270 miles per hour, wind speeds gradually decline as the near the surface. Here generally weak winds, gusting no more than a few feet per second, were observed in the lowest 3 miles of the probe's descent.

The probe passed through one other region of near zero wind speeds, from altitudes 62 to 37 miles. Scientists cannot explain this yet.

The HASI instrument also detected electric activity that is similar to lightning's signature. This was spotted around 37 miles above the moon's surface, which is also the region where the wind speed dropped to near zero."

Why is the atmo layer-region of virtually zero wind speed the region where lightning was detected?

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Re: 'Mysterious' Features on Titan

Unread post by promethean » Thu Nov 01, 2012 1:34 pm

From the JPL website :

A literal shot in the dark by imaging cameras on NASA's Cassini spacecraft has yielded an image of a visible glow from Titan, emanating not just from the top of Titan's atmosphere, but also - surprisingly - from deep in the atmosphere through the moon's haze. A person in a balloon in Titan's haze layer wouldn't see the glow because it's too faint - something like a millionth of a watt. Scientists were able to detect it with Cassini because the spacecraft's cameras are able to take long-exposure images.

"It turns out that Titan glows in the dark - though very dimly," said Robert West, the lead author of a recent study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and a Cassini imaging team scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's a little like a neon sign, where electrons generated by electrical power bang into neon atoms and cause them to glow. Here we're looking at light emitted when charged particles bang into nitrogen molecules in Titan's atmosphere."

hmmm....did he say "electrical"?
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seasmith
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Re: Electric Titan

Unread post by seasmith » Thu Jan 17, 2013 8:07 pm

Titan Gets a Dune "Makeover"
Dunes of exotic, hydrocarbon sand are slowly but steadily filling in its craters, according to new research using observations from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere, and the only world besides Earth known to have lakes and seas on its surface. However, with a frigid surface temperature of around minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (94 kelvins), the rain that falls from Titan's skies is not water but instead liquid methane and ethane, compounds that are normally gases on Earth.

Neish and her team made the discovery by comparing craters on Titan to craters on Jupiter's moon Ganymede...
The source of Titan's methane remains a mystery because...
says Neish. "In the case of Titan, liquids consist of hydrocarbons, either as wet sediments (such as those observed at the Huygens landing site) or shallow marine environments (such as the lakes observed at the north and south poles).
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassi ... eover.html

4realScience
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Mystery of the missing waves on Titan

Unread post by 4realScience » Tue Jul 23, 2013 4:56 pm

http://phys.org/news/2013-07-mystery-titan.html


' If Titan is really so wet, he wonders, "Where are all the waves?" '

Cassini should be able to see them but cannot. Since everyone knows Titan has liquid oceans and high winds this is becoming a problem, for mainstreamers.

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nick c
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Re: Mystery of the missing waves on Titan

Unread post by nick c » Mon Aug 05, 2013 6:21 pm

August 2, 2006 TPOD
Methane Lakes on Titan?
Since posting our Picture of the Day on July 30, more than one reader has wondered if we’ve seen recent announcements by NASA of “methane lakes” on Titan. We certainly have, and it is a good opportunity to test the predictive ability of two starkly contrasting interpretations.

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D_Archer
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Re: Mystery of the missing waves on Titan

Unread post by D_Archer » Tue Aug 06, 2013 5:38 am

It is already on the prediction page that it is confirmed there are no hydrocarbon oceans, lakes.

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Daniel
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viscount aero
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Re: Mystery of the missing waves on Titan

Unread post by viscount aero » Wed Aug 07, 2013 10:50 pm

4realScience wrote:http://phys.org/news/2013-07-mystery-titan.html


' If Titan is really so wet, he wonders, "Where are all the waves?" '

Cassini should be able to see them but cannot. Since everyone knows Titan has liquid oceans and high winds this is becoming a problem, for mainstreamers.
It won't let me copy any of the article here. But it says that winds of only 1 to 2 knots should create some wave activity--a nearly negligible velocity insofar as wind speed is concerned. You can blow harder than that when you exhale. And so far, Cassini's radar telemetry has resolved Titan's "lakes" down to a 1mm (!) "wave detection" tolerance level. And there is zero evidence for wave activity.

It then states that it may be due to a winter "deadness" in activity and that in the coming springtime there will be great opportunity for possible wave activity.

My opinion is this: they will not find any such wave activity there--not ever. Whatever the radar is pinging off of is not liquid. Moreover, I find it very hard to believe that Titan's atmosphere lacks any winds, unless it is just a massively thick structure that is immobilized for some reason (which it isn't as the Huygens probe on descent encountered winds of over 200mph). Even if the wind at the surface is only a moderate breeze, at a 1mm radar resolution wave activity would be detectable. But it has not been.

Therefore what does that evidence reveal upon first examination? -------> the lakes are not lakes. At very least they are frozen even if the researchers insist that they cannot be.

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Re: Mystery of the missing waves on Titan

Unread post by jjohnson » Fri Aug 16, 2013 1:31 pm

The PhysOrg paywall prevents getting any further, and Alex Hayes and the info about missing waves are not to be found on any searches I conducted on arXiv. Interestingly enough, the entire story seems to be based on a doctoral thesis paper by a Stanford student back in 2011, the only source I can find indicating a 3mm wave height limit based on analysis synthetic aperture radar (SAR) radar reflections by Cassini's observation passes over Titan.

That paper can be downloaded as a PDF here.

The techniques involved in deconvolving radar backscatter are complex and intriguing, but have become a standard part of radar reconnaissance both on Earth and in some planetary investigations.

This paper notes that measurements of the dielectric qualities of the supposedly liquid lakes are "consistent with" hydrocarbons. No mention is made whether those of hydrocarbons are consistent with water ice, or other materials that would be solid at Titan's surface ambient temperatures or not. Given the observable information that liquid hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane are low density and readily excited by very low wind velocities leads me to think that the mystery here is not that there is a mystery, but that the question is, why haven't they concluded that "there's no liquid in these purported lakes" - they must be solids.

But what solid surface is so devoid of deviations larger than a few mm at the scale of a landscape on a solid body the size of Titan? Why do measurements of these lakes show indications that their depth is dropping as the shoreline seems to be encroaching annually, farther into the smooth areas? If solid, why are there no fractures revealed or boulders sitting about on the surface for hundred of km? There are more questions here than they are thinking to ask.

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Re: Mystery of the missing waves on Titan

Unread post by viscount aero » Fri Sep 06, 2013 12:39 pm

jjohnson wrote:The PhysOrg paywall prevents getting any further, and Alex Hayes and the info about missing waves are not to be found on any searches I conducted on arXiv. Interestingly enough, the entire story seems to be based on a doctoral thesis paper by a Stanford student back in 2011, the only source I can find indicating a 3mm wave height limit based on analysis synthetic aperture radar (SAR) radar reflections by Cassini's observation passes over Titan.

That paper can be downloaded as a PDF here.

The techniques involved in deconvolving radar backscatter are complex and intriguing, but have become a standard part of radar reconnaissance both on Earth and in some planetary investigations.

This paper notes that measurements of the dielectric qualities of the supposedly liquid lakes are "consistent with" hydrocarbons. No mention is made whether those of hydrocarbons are consistent with water ice, or other materials that would be solid at Titan's surface ambient temperatures or not. Given the observable information that liquid hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane are low density and readily excited by very low wind velocities leads me to think that the mystery here is not that there is a mystery, but that the question is, why haven't they concluded that "there's no liquid in these purported lakes" - they must be solids.

But what solid surface is so devoid of deviations larger than a few mm at the scale of a landscape on a solid body the size of Titan? Why do measurements of these lakes show indications that their depth is dropping as the shoreline seems to be encroaching annually, farther into the smooth areas? If solid, why are there no fractures revealed or boulders sitting about on the surface for hundred of km? There are more questions here than they are thinking to ask.
You have great points :geek:

What if the regions are of such high viscosity, like molasses, that they are impervious to wave formation? Science doesn't go there because it is too out of their thinking bell curve and strange. The habit of science is to think in terms of absolute liquid, absolute gas, or an absolute solid--but nothing in between. Titan is already a bizarre world. Why would it be so surprising, then, to find that vast lakes are super-frozen areas of rubbery elastic solid? The closest thing on Earth to this idea would be glass or plastics:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 130014.htm

excerpt:

Aug. 13, 2007 — "When most people look at a window, they see solid panes of glass. But for decades, physicists, who view window glass at the molecular level, have pondered the question of whether or not glass is a solid or merely an extremely slow-moving liquid. An Emory University research team led by physicist Eric Weeks has yielded another clue in the glass puzzle, demonstrating that, unlike liquids, glasses aren’t comfortable in confined spaces.

The Emory team's findings are reported in the paper "Colloidal glass transition observed in confinement," published in the Physical Review Letters July 13. The Emory research adds to the evidence that some kind of underlying structure is involved in glass transition, Weeks says. "This provides a simple framework for looking at other questions about what is really changing during the transition."

Weeks has devoted his career to probing the mysteries of "squishy" substances that cannot be pinned down as a solid or liquid. Referred to as "soft condensed materials," they include everyday substances such as toothpaste, peanut butter, shaving cream, plastic and glass.

Scientists fully understand the process of water turning to ice. As the temperature cools, the movement of the water molecules slows. At 32 F, the molecules form crystal lattices, solidifying into ice. In contrast, the molecules of glasses do not crystallize. The movement of the glass molecules slows as temperature cools, but they never lock into crystal patterns. Instead, they jumble up and gradually become glassier, or more viscous. No one understands exactly why.

"One idea for why glass gets so viscous is that there might be some hidden structure," says Weeks, associate professor of physics. "If so, one question is what size is that structure?"

The Emory Physics lab began zeroing in on this question two years ago when Hetal Patel, an undergraduate who was majoring in chemistry and history, designed a wedge-shaped chamber, using glue and glass microscope slides that allowed observation of single samples of glassy materials confined at decreasing diameters."


Consider, too, that conditions on Titan may be similar to Mars in that due to the extremes of temperatures (more extreme on the cryogenic Titan than Mars) these lakes may recede due to sublimation and advance due to condensation, like dewdrops on a lawn in the morning. The question would be how sticky these squishy lake areas are.

Below are the cryogenic boiling points of common gases:

Boiling Point
Cryogen °F, °C, K
Oxygen −297, −183, 90
Nitrogen −320, −196, 77
Hydrogen −423, −253, 20
Helium −452, −269, 4.2
Neon −411, −246, 27
Argon −302, −186, 87
Krypton −242, −153, 120
Xenon −161, −107, 166

Perhaps Titan's ecology is able to suspend or trap a gas in an in-between cryo-state resembling rubbery glass or rubbery plastic.

Read more: http://www.scienceclarified.com/Co-Di/C ... z2e8wLjHjm

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StefanR
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Surface of Titan Sea is mirror smooth

Unread post by StefanR » Sat Mar 22, 2014 8:23 am

New radar measurements of an enormous sea on Titan offer insights into the weather patterns and landscape composition of the Saturnian moon. The measurements, made in 2013 by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, reveal that the surface of Ligeia Mare, Titan’s second largest sea, possesses a mirror-like smoothness, possibly due to a lack of winds.

“If you could look out on this sea, it would be really still. It would just be a totally glassy surface,” said Howard Zebker, professor of geophysics and of electrical engineering at Stanford who is the lead author of a new study detailing the research.

Image

To paint a radar picture of Ligeia Mare, Cassini bounced radio waves off the sea’s surface and then analyzed the echo. The strength of the reflected signal indicated how much wave action was happening on the sea. To understand why, Zebker said, imagine sunlight reflecting off of a lake on Earth. “If the lake were really flat, it would act as a perfect mirror and you would have an extremely bright image of the sun,” he said. “But if you ruffle up the surface of the sea, the light gets scattered in a lot of directions, and the reflection would be much dimmer. We did the same thing with radar on Titan.”

The radar measurements suggest the surface of Ligeia Mare is eerily still. “Cassini’s radar sensitivity in this experiment is one millimeter, so that means if there are waves on Ligeia Mare, they’re smaller than one millimeter. That’s really, really smooth,” Zebker said.

One possible explanation for the sea’s calmness is that no winds happened to be blowing across that region of the moon when Cassini made its flyby. Another possibility is that a thin layer of some material is suppressing wave action. “For example, on Earth, if you put oil on top of a sea, you suppress a lot of small waves,” Zebker said.

Cassini also measured microwave radiation emitted by the materials that make up Titan’s surface. By analyzing those measurements, and accounting for factors such as temperature and pressure, Zebker’s team confirmed previous findings that the terrain around Ligeia Mare is composed of solid organic material, likely the same methane and ethane that make up the sea. “Like water on Earth, methane on Titan can exists as a solid, a liquid, and a gas all at once,” Zebker said.
https://pangea.stanford.edu/news/surfac ... ror-smooth
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 7/abstract
The illusion from which we are seeking to extricate ourselves is not that constituted by the realm of space and time, but that which comes from failing to know that realm from the standpoint of a higher vision. -L.H.

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StefanR
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Re: Electric Titan

Unread post by StefanR » Sun Mar 23, 2014 8:07 am

And then there waves ...again?
As noted in an earlier AmericaSpace article, past observations of Titan’s seas made with NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which started orbiting Saturn in 2004, have shown them to be dead calm and mirror-like. Since their discovery in 2005, Cassini hadn’t detected even the slightest stir on their surfaces. The most probable causes for the apparent stillness of these alien waters, according to planetary scientists, had been either the change of the seasons or a very high viscosity of the liquids in Titan’s seas that would make them appear similar to the asphalt pits seen on Earth.

Since Titan shares Saturn’s axial tilt of 27 degrees and the same 29.5-year orbit around the Sun, each season lasts for approximately 7.5 Earth years. When Cassini arrived at the Saturnian system, the northern hemisphere, where 97 percent of the seas and lakes lie, was enveloped in winter darkness. Only after 2009, with the approach of the vernal equinox, did Cassini start making its first detailed observations of the moon’s northern latitudes, which received the warmth of the Sun again after almost 15 years of cold darkness. These observations indicate that something interesting might be happening: The waters might be stirring.

During the 45th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, held this week in The Woodlands, Texas, scientists presented evidence showing that waves might have appeared on the previously flat Titanian seas while the summer approaches. A new study presented at the Conference, led by Jason W. Barnes, an assistant professor at the University of Idaho’s Department of Physics in Moscow, details the results of observations made by the Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, or VIMS, onboard the Cassini spacecraft, of Punga Mare, the third largest sea on Titan, located adjacent to the moon’s north pole. During three Cassini flybys of Titan, made between July 2012 and September 2013, VIMS imaged Punga Mare on near and mid-infrared wavelengths of 2, 2.8, and 5 μm, spotting specular reflections of sunlight from the sea’s surface. These appeared as four very bright pixels in the VIMS images, indicating the presence of ripples, leading Barnes’ team to calculate that they shouldn’t extend more than 2-3 cm from the sea’s surface. “We developed a model to interpret these four points as wavy seas reflecting the Sun away from the specular point due to their slopes,” writes the team in their study. “Although we cannot rule out mudflats covered in a liquid layer as the source of these slopes, our best-fit value indicates slope waves of [approximately] 6 degrees. If the roughness is indeed due to waves, then the implied winds are [approximately] 0.76 m/s and the waves themselves should be 2 cm in height. If correct this discovery represents the first sea-surface waves known outside of Earth. That they have previously been undetected and are now evident is consistent with [a previous] hypothesis that winds had previously been low due to seasonal cycles but are picking up as northern spring develops.”
http://www.americaspace.com/?p=55923
http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2014/pdf/1947.pdf
The illusion from which we are seeking to extricate ourselves is not that constituted by the realm of space and time, but that which comes from failing to know that realm from the standpoint of a higher vision. -L.H.

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Weird 'Island' on Saturn Moon Titan Puzzles Scientists

Unread post by gocrew » Sun Oct 05, 2014 8:10 am

http://www.space.com/27293-saturn-moon- ... stery.html

This is begging for en EU interpretation!

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Re: Weird 'Island' on Saturn Moon Titan Puzzles Scientists

Unread post by viscount aero » Mon Oct 06, 2014 12:23 am

gocrew wrote:http://www.space.com/27293-saturn-moon- ... stery.html

This is begging for en EU interpretation!
space.com is a tabloid magazine.

I am skeptical of "hyrdrocarbon seas" on Titan. I think I do not really believe in that. That the alleged island "grew" among the "hydrocarbon sea" is highly unbelievable. Although there is no steadfast freezing point for gasoline--which is what scientists refer to as being in an approximate oceanic form on Titan--such a cryogenic temperature would render gasoline with a viscosity like rubber or even steel.

There probably wouldn't be any fluvial behavior to a cryogenic "hydrocarbon sea." Waves, even in the smallest form, have not been observed in these hydrocarbon seas. If they really wanted to know for sure they would already have sent another lander to Titan. But they haven't.

What is actually there is anyone's guess. But NASA has thought a great deal about it: http://ssed.gsfc.nasa.gov/IPM/IPM2012/P ... r-1033.pdf

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