It has been known by scientists for some time that the largest moon in Saturn, Titan, has rivers and liquid methane seas on its surface.
However, a new study suggests that it is strangely lacking in deltas, reported Live science.
Large rivers create deltas with wetlands filled with sediments on earth. The deltas are formed when the mouth of a river arises in another body of water.
Titan is the only planetary body of our solar system with liquid flowing on the surface in addition to the earth.
Researchers recently looked for deltas on the Big Saturn satellite but came empty.
“We have for granted that if you have rivers and sediments, you get deltas,” said study manager Sam Birch in a press release.
“But Titan is weird. It’s a playground to study the processes we thought we understood,” he added.
As deltas are reliefs with many sediments, researchers hoped to locate them on Titan. The deltas collect sediment in one place, and it generally comes from a large area. The survey of such a silt can provide information on the tectonic past of Titan and temperature, as well as even evidence of extraterrestrial life.
“It’s a little disappointing as a geomorphologist, because Deltas should preserve so much from the history of Titan,” said Birch.
We know that the surface of Titan has a liquid methane flowing, because the Cassini spacecraft of NASA has identified evidence of the substance on several flies.
During these narrow approaches, Cassini used a synthetic opening radar (SAR) to see through the dense atmosphere of Titan, finding large patches and flat channels compatible with massive liquid masses.
However, Cassini’s SAR data show that shallow liquid methane is mainly clear. Because it is difficult to distinguish between the seabed and the coast, scientists have found it difficult to examine the characteristics of the Titan coast.
In order to reproduce what the Cassini SAR would see when observing the earth, the Birch team has developed a computer model. However, the liquid methane of Titan was used in the model instead of the water found in the rivers and the oceans of the earth.
“We have mainly made synthetic SAR images of the earth which assume the properties of Titan’s liquid instead of those of the earth,” said Birch. “Once we see SAR images of a landscape that we know very well, we can return to Titan and understand a little better what we are looking at.”
