/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11842113

>>10415315
You just wanted to make that joke, didn't you?

>>10413379

>>9335027
>By all means, don't let me hold you from going to planets with oceans of methane. I hear pluto is nice this time of the year.
I think you might be thinking of Titan.

>>9335092
Yes.

>>8811819
Titan's the only other world in the Solar System with rivers and rain. It's a shame we know so little about it.

>This image, taken with the radar on the Cassini spacecraft, shows just how similar the features in Titan’s surface are to Earth’s landforms.
>Aside from Earth, Titan is the only other body where we have found evidence of active erosion on a large scale. There are seas, lakes and rivers filled with liquid hydrocarbons – mainly methane and some ethane – that etch the moon’s surface, in much the same way water erodes Earth’s.
>A striking example is Vid Flumina, the Nile-like, branching river system visible on the upper-left quadrant of the image. The river, in the moon’s north polar region, flows into Ligeia Mare, a methane-rich sea that appears as a dark patch on the right side of the image.
>Researchers in Italy and the US analysed Cassini radar observations from May 2013 and recently revealed that the narrow channels that branch off Vid Flumina are deep, steep-sided canyons filled with flowing hydrocarbons.
>The channels are a little less than a kilometre wide, up to 570 m deep and with slopes steeper than 40º. This suggests they have been sculpted by liquid methane, flowing into the main Vid Flumina river, that has persistently eroded the canyon walls – a geological process reminiscent of the carving of river gorges on our planet.
>The study is the first direct evidence of deeply entrenched, methane-flooded channels on Titan. Finding out how they formed provides insights into the moon’s origin and evolution and could help understand similar geological processes on Earth.
>The Cassini–Huygens radar team is hoping to observe the Ligeia Mare and Vid Flumina region again in April 2017, during Cassini’s final approach to Titan. The mission is a cooperation between NASA, ESA and Italy’s ASI space agency.