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Do Titan's Lakes Migrate South for the Winter?
from ScienceNOW Daily News
Imagine if all of the water in the Great Lakes evaporated, moved to the Southern Hemisphere, and rained down to form new lakes in Argentina. Then thousands of years later, the process repeated and the water returned north.
That's what researchers say could be happening on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Understanding the process could shed light on how long-term climate cycles operate on other worlds.
Titan's lakes aren't anything like those on Earth. Although some are as large and deep as our own Great Lakes--one, called Ontario Lacus, is about the size of Lake Ontario--they contain mostly methane, which becomes liquid at temperatures below -180°C. Even stranger, of the hundreds of lakes spotted so far, almost all are in Titan's far northern latitudes, and there seem to be no lakes at all near the moon's equator.
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