NASA Reveals Gigantic Killer Cyanide Cloud on Saturn’s Titan

Written by Daily Mail on . Posted in Current News

Cassini has revealed a killer cloud high in the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan. Although the craft plunged to its death several weeks ago, NASA teams are still analysing its data. The latest discovery reveals a toxic hybrid ice in a wispy cloud high above the south pole of Saturn’s largest moon.

The finding is the latest to show the the complex chemistry occurring in Titan’s atmosphere, in this case, cloud formation in the giant moon’s stratosphere, which is part of a collection of processes that ultimately helps deliver a huge number of organic molecules to Titan’s surface.

Invisible to the human eye, the cloud was detected at infrared wavelengths by the Composite Infrared Spectrometer, or CIRS, on the Cassini spacecraft.

Located at an altitude of about 100 to 130 miles (160 to 210 kilometers), the cloud is far above the methane rain clouds of Titan’s troposphere, or lowest region of the atmosphere.

The new cloud covers a large area near the south pole, from about 75 to 85 degrees south latitude. Laboratory experiments were used to find a chemical mixture that matched the cloud’s spectral signature – the chemical fingerprint measured by the CIRS instrument.

The experiments determined that the exotic ice in the cloud is a combination of the simple organic molecule hydrogen cyanide together with the large ring-shaped chemical benzene.

The two chemicals appear to have condensed at the same time to form ice particles, rather than one being layered on top of the other.

‘This cloud represents a new chemical formula of ice in Titan’s atmosphere,’ said Carrie Anderson of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, a CIRS co-investigator.

‘What’s interesting is that this noxious ice is made of two molecules that condensed together out of a rich mixture of gases at the south pole.’

Previously, CIRS data helped identify hydrogen cyanide ice in clouds over Titan’s south pole, as well as other toxic chemicals in the moon’s stratosphere. In Titan’s stratosphere, a global circulation pattern sends a current of warm gases from the hemisphere where it’s summer to the winter pole.

This circulation reverses direction when the seasons change, leading to a buildup of clouds at whichever pole is experiencing winter.

TITAN: EARTH’S TOXIC TWIN?

Aside from Earth, Titan is the only place in the solar system known to have rivers, rainfall and seas – and possibly even waterfalls.

Of course, in the case of Titan these are liquid methane rather than water on Earth. Regular Earth-water, H2O, would be frozen solid on Titan where the surface temperature is -180°C (-292°F). With its thick atmosphere and organic-rich chemistry, Titan resembles a frozen version of Earth several billion years ago, before life began pumping oxygen into our atmosphere.

 The paper found that if future civilisations could get wind turbines in the upper atmosphere of Titan (pictured), they could create power ten times more effective than wind turbines on Earth

Because Titan is smaller than Earth, its gravity does not hold onto its gaseous envelope as tightly, so the atmosphere extends 370 miles (595km) into space. As on Earth, the climate is driven mostly by changes in the amount of sunlight that comes with the seasons, although the seasons on Titan are about seven Earth years long.

With Titan’s low gravity and dense atmosphere, methane raindrops could grow twice as large as Earth’s raindrops. As well as this, they would fall more slowly, drifting down like snowflakes. Saturn’s moon has also been found to be have a ‘polar wind’ in its atmosphere mimicking a process on our planet.

Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk

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