Fizzy Island
To Fizzy IslandFitzy-titanium! Saturn-moons mysterious'magic islands' may be nitebubbles
Saturn lunar Titan has taken a fascinating turn in the case of the strange "magic islands". The oddly changing island-like characteristics discovered by NASA's Cassini in several titanium hydrocarbons oceans could actually be floats of hissing nitrous pockets, as a new research on the basis of lab tests shows. Scientists headed by Michael Malaska of JPL were simulating the superficial condition of the 5,150-kilometer-wide Titan, a cold lunar with a hydrocarbon-based meteorological system and a thick 98 per cent nitrous oxide atom.
Titan drains molten metane from the sky, flows over streams and collects in water (some of which contain mainly ethane). In fact, apart from the Earth, titanium is the only part of the sun system known to carry solid fluid particles on its orbit.
"We have shown that when methane-rich fluids are mixed with ethane-rich fluids - for example due to strong rains or when the outflow from a flow of metane is mixed into an ethane-rich sea - the ability of nitrate to remain in solutions is lower," Malaska said in the same message. The reciprocal motion of nitrous oxide - in and out of the oceans and lochs of Titan - is probably a frequent event on the huge lunar, he added.
"It' really like the Titan seas are breathing nitrogen," Malaska said. It seems that these insights support the assumption that the magical islets of Titan, which are changing their form, disappearing and reappearing in at least one case, are gaseous burst. NASA officers said the new survey, which was released last months in Icarus magazine, could also help in informing prospective titanium expedition missions.
"An effervescent fluid could also cause trouble, possibly for a robot spacecraft to hover on or through the oceans of Titan," they said in the same explanation. "Surplus warmth from a spacecraft can create blisters around its structure - for example a propeller used for powering it - making it hard to control or keep the spacecraft stable."