On Stranger Tides

(Altruon Zardephax) wrote in message . com...
(James Nicoll) wrote in message ...


Questions:

What is the potential temperature differential between the poles of
Titan and the equator of Titan?

Is it feasible that Titan could have _Nitrogen_ oceans at the poles
and _Ethane_ or _Ethane_Methane_Propane_ oceans at the equator?

The density of a solid or liquid is of course much greater than the
density of a gas. So _probably_, floating _Methane_, floating
_Nitrogen_, floating _Argon_, or floating _Methane_Ethane_Propane_
mixtures or floating _Ethane_ would _probably_ condense and fall if
they formed solids or liquids.

Is Nitrogen, Argon, Methane, Ethane, and Propane, miscible, soluble,
or insoluble in relation to each other at the cryogenic temperatures
in the range that one might in theory find on Titan?

What will be the temperature of the descending Huygens craft?

Is it feasible that if it were to hit an 'ocean' of nitrogen, methane,
or ethane, that it would keep going and vaporise its way down until it
hit a 'bedrock' of Carbon Dioxide, Ammonia, and Water, and still keep
going until it cooled down enough to no longer melt its way through?


POD Time 4 Billion BP.

POD Place: The Seas of Titan

100 million to a billion years [1] is really not enough
time for what I want, esp given that the energy received out
by Saturn is just barely enough for conventional photosynthesis.
Nevertheless, at some point in Titan's development, not only is
there life-as-we-know it, it manages to evolve both photosynthesis
-and- the production of some powerful greenhouse agents as a side
effect. I suppose CFCs or HCFC are too much to ask for but whatever
it is, it keeps the surface warm enough to keep a eutectic mixture
of water and ammonia liquid (so at least 175 K, as I recall, which is
still around 80 K warmer than OTL Titan).

Hot Titan has a water-ammonia sea roughly 100 km deep, with
some water-ice on top (not a complete crust) and and ice VI/clathrate
sea bed. The atmosphere is a lot like OTL's Titan, 1.5 bar of nitrogen,
but photosynthesis has added some O2. With energy inputs about 1% of
Earth, life is not nearly as prolific as on Earth. Interestingly,
the seas of Titan appear to be as rich in various bottleneck elements
or even richer than Earth's oceans.

POD for Humans: When Titan's atmosphere is analysed by
Kuiper in '44, he is somewhat startled to see the fingerprint of
O2 in his results. Although Titan is not really considered a very
good potential abode for life the presence of O2 is certainly an
interesting development. Titan's atmosphere is as opaque as OTL's
Titan and so the details of the surface are hidden from us.

Would O2 necessesarily automatically indicate life on a colder world
like Titan?

Remember, the freezing point of CO2 means that much of the CO2 is
going to be locked up as ice. If CO2 is mostly gotten rid of from
condensation into 'ice' or the colder-world equivalent of 'rock', that
might mean that some competing chemical reaction during 'volcanism'
might be competatively binding with carbon, realeasing O2 gas. Then
the question would arise 'why isn't it reacting with free condensed
hydrocarbons'? Well, 1, because they are being protected from
reacting by admixture with ammonia or by physical barriers surrounding
'life', or 2. There aren't any free condensed hydrocarbons to begin
with.

Also, if you have ethane, propane, or other hydrocarbon oceans, and
you still have carbon based life, why would you need to condense it
from the atmosphere or take it from 'ice-rocks' when you can have it
available directly from the liquid solvent base that the 'life's'
molecules are built from?

I am not sure that O2 would necessesarily indicate life on a cold
world like Titan. As far as what chemical reactions might be involved
with life, that is another matter also. It is hard to say what type
of chemical reactions might be involved with the use of solar energy.
I would guess that if it were direct, than it (might) involve
frequencies that the atmosphere was not as opaque to, although that is
hard to say.

Anyway, the boiling point of Oxygen in an old 49th edition CRC I have
sitting around is listed as -183 degrees Celsius (m.p. -218) and the
boiling point of Nitrogen is listed as -195 degrees Celsius (m.p.
-210). I would imagine that this was at 1 atm. It also lists the
boiling point of Argon at -186 degrees Celsius and the freezing point
of Argon at -189 degrees Celsius.

Doing just a minor search on Titan's atmospheric components comes up
with the following bits of data:

http://www.nineplanets.org/titan.html

Surface pressu (1.5 atm)

Atmosphe Mostly N2 (like Earth)
Argon: 6%
Methane: a few percent

Trace amounts of at least a dozen other compounds including ethane,
hydrogen cyanide, carbon dioxide, and water.

Surface temperatu 94K or -179 degrees Celsuis.

Also consider the following properties of methane, ethane, and
propane, and others:

methane: melting point: -182.5 degrees Celsius - boiling point: -161
degCel
ethane: melting point: -182.8 degrees Celsius - bp: -89 degCel
propane: melting point: -189.9 degrees Celsius - bp: -44.5 degCel
butane: melting point: -138.3 degrees Celsius - bp: -.5 degCel
hydrogen cyanide: mp: -14 degrees Celsius - bp: 26 degCel
carbon dioxide: sublimates at -78.5 degCel
ammonia: melting point: -78 degrees Celsius - bp: -33 degCel
water: melting point: 0 degrees Celsius- bp: 100 degCel

Now if you have a higher surface pressure on Titan, what this might
mean is that the surface temperatures for condensation might be higher
and it might have unknown effects on solidification.

Also, if the CRC is right on this one, propane has a lower melting
point than methane does, even though the boiling point of propane is
much, much higher.

You add this together and:

1: Major components of Titan's atmosphere are at least moderately
close to the temperature of condensation for those gases. Argon does
something close to sublimation (solid to gas) at near surface
temperatures and pressures, Nitrogen, however, becomes a liquid
(liquid to gas) at only somewhat lower temperatures. This is
unprecedented in relation to earth conditions. People on earth are
not used to seeing rocks become liquids or gases or vica versa without
major heating to at least this extent.

2: Major components of Titan's atmosphere are liquids at surface
temperatures and pressures, and freese at only slightly lower
temperatures, but remain liquids at much higher temperatures. It is
uncertain how this would relate to the near-condensing gases.

3. The molecular weight of some near solids or liquids, is lower than
that of molecular Nitrogen. N2 is 28, Argon is 18, Methane is 16,
Ethane is 30. Does that mean that liquid Methane or Ethane or solid
Argon could literally float on the air? Could you have an ocean _on
top_ of an atmosphere? Cryogenic 'fish' swimming through mud puddles
in the clouds? It is difficult to say what could be made of it. But
floating gas bags as have been envisioned for the Jovian planets might
be more feasible. Also add to this the fact that greater and greater
crosslinking between carbon atoms can produce hydrocarbon chains that
at those lower temperatures will produce more unequivocal solids.

However, Titan is a far away place of which we know very
little and it has no significant effect on human life until *Voyager.
The Grand Tour opportunity seems likely to draw something like Voyager,
and so in this TL a space probe zips through the Saturnian system.
Surprise! There are are seas! Surprise! THere seems to be life. Sadly,
not intelligent life [2] but still, life, which makes up some for
the disappointments of Mars.

What are 'seas'? Can 'seas' be a continuum with 'clouds' or even
'solids' or 'snow' for that matter?


It's unlikely we see a Discovery sent out to take a closer
look because public interest in space is not that great. We might
see interest in private uncrewed missions, to have a look at patentable
adaptations not present on Earth.

One knock on effect is that this is the third world in our
system that has a significant greenhouse (after Venus and Earth itself).
Does this make greenhouse effects more of a subject of debate in the
1980s and 1990s?

1 Note: -No- source I have gives as long as a billion years for
the open ocean phase of Titan's development. I am takign liberties
based on the idea that astronomers often see a factor of ten as
being spang on.

2: Darn that Fermi Paradox.

Altruon Zardephax wrote:

(Altruon Zardephax) wrote in message . com...
(James Nicoll) wrote in message ...

Questions:

What is the potential temperature differential between the poles of
Titan and the equator of Titan?

Is it feasible that Titan could have _Nitrogen_ oceans at the poles
and _Ethane_ or _Ethane_Methane_Propane_ oceans at the equator?

The density of a solid or liquid is of course much greater than the
density of a gas. So _probably_, floating _Methane_, floating
_Nitrogen_, floating _Argon_, or floating _Methane_Ethane_Propane_
mixtures or floating _Ethane_ would _probably_ condense and fall if
they formed solids or liquids.
[snip]

Got a real problem fetish with that underscore, doncha?

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf