Many of the weather processes found on Earth

Sunday, April 2, 2023

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Many of the weather processes found on Earth - rain falling on hills and flowing down channels into riverbeds and around islands - also are happening on Saturn's icy moon Titan, but with different materials, scientists said yesterday. A week after a European space probe penetrated Titan's haze and landed on its surface, scientists say data show that the moon has a dynamic, eroding surface transformed by liquid methane playing the role that water serves on the Earth. The methane - natural gas held in liquid form by the intense pressure and minus-290-degree temperatures of Titan's surface - rains from the sky and courses down highlands through channels into lakebeds and broad deltas, they said, similar to processes that take place on Earth, informs the New York Times. Rains of liquid methane appear to regularly lash Saturn's largest moon, forming pools, cutting river beds and rounding rocks ? processes of erosion remarkably similar to those which also shape our planet, scientists said. The discoveries came from a European probe that landed on Titan a week ago, finding a freezing, primitive but active world and putting Europe's stamp on the distant reaches of the Solar System. "Hello America, we're in the exploration business, too," David Southwood, the European Space Agency's director of science programs, said on Friday at a news conference in Paris to announce their findings. Black-and-white photos from the Huygens probe show a rugged terrain of ridges, peaks, dark vein-like channels and apparently dry lakebeds on the moon 1.2 billion kilometers (744 million miles) away, tells the Hindustan News.

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