Based on their size, shape, and freakish features, scientists believe Titan's lakes may have been formed by underground explosions
, and cracking the case of the befuddling lakes may help scientists better understand how the moon crafted such intriguing ingredients., many of Titan’s lakes are irregularly shaped and don’t look like typical impact craters. Some scientists therefore suspected that ponderous chemical erosion chewed out basins.
The new study painstakingly compared Titan’s lake basins with terrestrial maars, and the researchers conclude that Titanic lakes with raised rims and jagged, rampart-like borders really do look like maars that have since filled up with liquid methane. During these extra-chilly times, the moon may have been cold enough to host rain made of liquid nitrogen, which in turn created underground reservoirs of the frigid stuff. It would have been coldest at the poles, so that’s where liquid nitrogen caches would have concentrated.
When Titan’s climate warmed and methane and ethane began to dominate the hydrological cycle, these liquid hydrocarbons would have flowed or rained into the resulting crater bowls, forming the lakes we see today.The potential for explosivity is controlled by how much methane is in the liquid nitrogen mix, says study leader, a geoscientist at Italy’s Università d’Annunzio.
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