Titan's oddly thick atmosphere may come from cooked organic compounds
Saturn’s moon is one of the best places to look for life in the solar system
BY LISA GROSSMAN 7:00AM, FEBRUARY 1, 2019
HAZY HAVEN
Titan may get its hazy atmosphere (shown in natural color in this image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft) from organic molecules warmed by the decay of radioactive elements in the moon’s core.
JPL-CALTECH/NASA, SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
Titan may have a home-baked atmosphere.
Saturn’s largest moon gets some of its thick atmosphere by cooking organic molecules in a warm core, a new study suggests.
The decay of radioactive elements may warm Titan’s core from within, splitting nitrogen and carbon off from complex organic molecules. Once free, those elements can recombine into nitrogen and methane molecules and escape into the atmosphere. That process may account for about half the nitrogen and all the methane observed in Titan’s atmosphere, cosmochemist Kelly Miller and her colleagues report January 22 in the Astrophysical Journal.
Where Titan’s thick, nitrogen-rich haze comes from has long puzzled planetary scientists. Other moons are too small and cold to shroud themselves in gas. “Titan’s the only moon that has an atmosphere,” says Miller, of the Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio.
More:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/titan-oddly-thick-atmosphere-may-come-cooked-organic-compounds?tgt=nr