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Hints of Earth Splash a Saturnian Moon Landscape
from the New York Times (Registration Required)
The lakes of southern Titan are shrinking. The level of Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in the southern hemisphere of this Saturnian moon, has fallen by some 15 feet over the last four years, causing its shore to recede by as much as 6 miles in some places. Other lakes nearby have similarly receded, according to radar measurements made by the Cassini spacecraft.
However, if prolonged spells of 90-degree temperatures have you yearning for a refreshing icy dip, there are still plenty of bathing opportunities on Titan. Of course the lakes there are made of liquid methane--and the 90 degrees of temperature are on the Kelvin scale, near enough to absolute zero to challenge even the most cosmically adept polar bear. The atmosphere is nitrogen and methane.
Titan is the only body in the solar system other than Earth that has been found to harbor liquid on its surface, leading many planetary scientists and aspiring astrobiologists to speculate that the same organic chemical processes that led to life on Earth are occurring in a frozen slush of hydrocarbons on Titan.
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