{"id":89596,"date":"2019-04-17T00:22:28","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T07:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/cassini-reveals-surprises-with-titans-lakes"},"modified":"2019-04-17T00:22:28","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T07:22:28","slug":"cassini-reveals-surprises-with-titans-lakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/cassini-reveals-surprises-with-titans-lakes","title":{"rendered":"Cassini reveals surprises with Titan\u2019s lakes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/cassini-reveals-surprises-with-titans-lakes2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On its final flyby of Saturn\u2019s largest moon in 2017, NASA\u2019s Cassini spacecraft gathered radar data revealing that the small liquid lakes in Titan\u2019s northern hemisphere are surprisingly deep, perched atop hills and filled with methane.<\/p>\n<p>The new findings, published April 15 in <i>Nature Astronomy<\/i>, are the first confirmation of just how deep some of Titan\u2019s lakes are (more than 300 feet, or 100 meters) and of their composition. They provide new information about the way liquid methane rains on, evaporates from and seeps into Titan\u2014the only planetary body in our solar system other than Earth known to have stable liquid on its surface.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have known that Titan\u2019s hydrologic cycle works similarly to Earth\u2019s\u2014with one major difference. Instead of water evaporating from seas, forming clouds and rain, Titan does it all with methane and ethane. We tend to think of these hydrocarbons as a gas on Earth, unless they\u2019re pressurized in a tank. But Titan is so cold that they behave as liquids, like gasoline at room temperature on our planet.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-04-cassini-reveals-titan-lakes.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\">Read more<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On its final flyby of Saturn\u2019s largest moon in 2017, NASA\u2019s Cassini spacecraft gathered radar data revealing that the small liquid lakes in Titan\u2019s northern hemisphere are surprisingly deep, perched atop hills and filled with methane. The new findings, published April 15 in Nature Astronomy, are the first confirmation of just how deep some of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}