The sequestration of ethane on Titan in smog particles

D. M. Hunten ()
Additional contact information
D. M. Hunten: The University of Arizona

Nature, 2006, vol. 443, issue 7112, 669-670

Abstract: Need smust on Titan Prior to the visit of the Cassini-Huygens probe there, planetary scientists expected to find a giant ocean of liquid ethane on Saturn's moon Titan. Exposure to solar ultraviolet light over the life of the Solar System should have produced enough ethane, from methane dissociation, to form a satellite-wide ocean a kilometre deep. But no ocean was found, just a cloud of ethane above the southern pole and a few lakes. Donald Hunten explains the dearth of liquid ethane by its condensation on the abundant smog particles, rather than into liquid drops at low temperatures. This dusty combination of smog and ethane — or 'smust' — may form deposits several kilometres thick on Titan's surface.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05157 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:443:y:2006:i:7112:d:10.1038_nature05157

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature05157

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().