There are lakes that are not water
Saturn’s moon Titan has stable lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane, mapped by Cassini and landed on by Huygens.
Established2 min read
Titan is colder than −170 °C and wrapped in a thick nitrogen atmosphere. At that temperature methane plays the role water plays here: it evaporates, forms clouds, rains, and pools. Radar pierced the haze and found smooth, dark basins — Ligeia, Kraken, Punga — with shorelines and channels.
Huygens touched down in 2005 on a damp plain of water ice pebbles and methane moisture. The hydrologic cycle is real. The liquid is not the one you drink.
Caveats
- The lakes are concentrated near the poles, not planetwide.
- Water ice is the ‘rock’ of Titan’s crust. The liquid on top is hydrocarbons.
Sources
- 1Stofan E. R. et al.. The Lakes of Titan. Nature 445, 2007.