Chapter 1837: Liquid Methane Lake

Chapter 1837 Liquid Methane Lake

Now our scientists, although they don't know much about Titan. But this satellite has been placed high hopes by scientists. Scientists believe that there must be life on Titan.

Zhao Zhongyao drove the spacecraft, and now he has reached the surface of Titan. When they are on the spacecraft, they can see the surface of Titan, and there are many methane lakes.

Now Feifei looked at Zhao Zhongyao and said, 'Dad, where should we go to find the seventh amethyst gem! How do I feel, this side of Titan, it is impossible to have life! '

Feifei felt that it was unlikely that there would be life on Titan. After all, the entire surface of Titan is filled with methane lakes. How can there be life in such 'lake water'!

After hearing Feifei's words, Zhao Zhongnian said, 'Son, don't say that. Although there is no liquid water on Titan, life is very likely to exist. '

'Why? How can there be life without even water. ’ Feifei looked at his father in puzzlement and asked.

Zhao Zhongyao said, "Life does not necessarily have to be where there is water." Even if there is no water, as long as there are some environments where life exists, life is also possible. '

'Dad, you're saying there's life in these methane lakes. ’ Feifei said again.

'However, not all lakes will have life, only a few lakes will have life. Zhao Zhongyao said so.

‘Dad, can we go to find such a lake now? ’ Said Feifei.

‘Okay, then let’s look for a lake on Titan, which lake may have life. After Zhao Zhongyao finished speaking, he drove the spacecraft again and flew on the surface of Titan.

But while flying, Feifei looked at Zhao Zhongyao again and asked, "Dad, what does the methane lake on Titan look like? Can you tell me, I want to know knowledge in this area. '

After hearing Feifei's words, Zhao Zhongyao said, 'Okay, let me tell you some more about Titan! '

Next, Zhao Zhongyao told Feifei some knowledge about Titan Methane Lake.

In the human exploration of the solar system, the most interesting topic is the "livable" planet! The current aviation technology is still enough to fly beyond the solar system, so in the solar system, it is particularly important to have two celestial bodies that are most similar to the earth, one is the planet Mars, and the other is the moon Titan!

The topic of Mars has been going on for a long time. As mentioned in the previous article, the huge liquid water lake found on the ground of Mars has attracted the attention of the whole world. And the other Titan is not simple, the environment is very similar to the earth more than 4 billion years ago.

Titan, also known as "Titan", is special in its atmosphere. It is the only "nitrogen-rich star" in the solar system other than our earth. The nitrogen content of the atmosphere accounts for 98.4%, while the nitrogen content of our earth is 78.1%! On our earth more than 4 billion years ago, the nitrogen content was more than 95%. It was not until water vapor, methane and other substances were erupted from the center of the earth that the oxygen element gradually increased. In the observations of the Cassini probe, the surface of Titan is all liquid methane, ethane! Many lakes of different sizes are formed, some can even be compared to small oceans! These small lakes and oceans occasionally erupt with bubbles.

And this discovery was once considered by scientists to be a signal of life on Titan. Some scientists believe that microbes or other life forms have been born under Titan's methane ocean, and the bubbles are produced by the activities of life. foul air. In order to verify the accuracy of this conjecture.

Professor Lane of Harvard University in the United States led his team to conduct a simulation experiment. It is to imitate the environment of Titan. After careful observation, it is found that the atmosphere of Titan contains methane, which will slowly sink to the surface over time to form lakes, but it will contain nitrogen and other elements! The mixture that sinks into the methane lake undergoes a chemical reaction, and the nitrogen is released separately to form bubbles, not microbes.

However, there is another amazing discovery. In this case, the chemical reaction in the lake will release heat and change the temperature of Titan! The value is very small, and it may be hundreds of millions of years before Titan can change from minus 170 degrees to a suitable temperature.

However, if humans join in, this kind of temperature transformation will become very fast, and it is possible to accelerate the formation of life and even immigrate to Titan, which is even lower than the cost of transforming Mars! Because a large amount of methane contains three elements of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and the atmosphere has nitrogen, which are the basic elements for the existence of life. Carbon dioxide, water, oxygen, etc. are all made up of these elements!

Using radar data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, newly published research proposes a new scenario to explain why some methane-filled lakes on Saturn's moon Titan (Titan) are buried by hundreds of feet of water Surrounded by steep edges. These models suggest that explosions of warming nitrogen formed basins in Titan's crust. Titan is the only body in the solar system other than Earth known to have stable liquid on its surface. But on Titan, astronomers think it's the gaseous methane and ethane hydrocarbons that behave as liquids in Titan's cold climate, rather than pouring down from clouds and filling lakes and oceans as they do on Earth.

Most existing models shed light on the origin of Titan's lakes, showing that liquid methane dissolved the moon's ice-based and solid organic compounds to form liquid-filled reservoirs. This may be the origin of a lake with sharp boundaries on Titan. On Earth, similar bodies of water formed by dissolving surrounding limestone are called karst lakes.

Some smaller lakes (tens of miles wide

) turns this theory upside down: It proposes that pockets of liquid nitrogen in Titan's crust warm, transform into explosive gas that blows out of the crater, and then fill with liquid methane. The new theory explains why some of the smaller lakes near Titan's north pole, such as Winnipelacus, appear to have very steep edges in radar imaging, towering above sea level, edges that are difficult to explain with karst models.

The radar data was collected by the Cassini Saturn orbiter, a mission managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. That's data collected during the spacecraft's last close flyby of Titan, as the spacecraft prepared for its final entry into Saturn's atmosphere two years ago.