News on Saturn
- The small Saturn-moon Phoebe looks more like a failed planet than a moon
- The origin and age of Titans atmosphere
- Saturns constantly changing F-ring
- Lakes on Titan is like a Namibia mudflat
- Historic clase-encounter with Saturn-moon Tethys
- Measurments of Saturns Aurora and magnetic field
- Saturn streches teh surface on its moon Enceladus
- New amazing images of ice-moon Rhea
- Discovery of thin oxygen atmosphere around Dione
- Titans changing wheather
- Cassini's closest Dione flyby
- The vast sand-dune plains on Titan
- The making of Saturns rings
- The shepparding moons
- Is Titans climate stable?
- Now model explains Titans lakes and storms
- Bad wheather on saturn-moon Titan
- Saturn moon may affect planet's magnetosphere
- Alignment of Saturnian moons
- Cassini only 99km over Saturn-moon Dione
- Cassiini to make 2 close moon-flybys in 1 day
- New higher resolution images of Saturn-moon Enceladus
- Saturns interplanetary dust-storm
- Satirns giant storm has lasted 200 days
- Comets gave Titan atmosphere
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Titan may hold a liqiud subsurface ocean?
Wednesday, 20 April 2011 14:36
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| Solar system - Saturn |
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New Titan data suggest that Titan may hold a subsurface liqiud ocean
On the basis of gravity and radar observations with the Cassini spacecraft, the moment of inertia of Titan and the orientation of Titan's rotation axis have been estimated in recent studies. However, the observed obliquity is inconsistent with the estimate of the moment of inertia for an entirely solid planetary body suggesting that Titan is probably not an enturely solid body Therefore a group of scientist has proposed a new model for the interior of Titan, in which they assume the presence of a liquid water ocean beneath an ice shell and consider the gravitational and pressure torques arising between the different layers of the satellite. The new model, have a closer agreement between the moment of inertia and the rotation state than for the solid case, strengthening the possibility that Titan has a subsurface ocean. Source: arXiv |




