Most of you might heard about Titan. Titan: Saturn's largest moon and second
largest in the solar system after Ganymede of Jupiter. In today's we are going to
see some facts about Titan which makes it different from any other world in the
solar system. It is the only moon in our solar system with clouds and a dense,
planet like earth.
Titan's Atmosphere
As we know that any moon in our solar system does not have atmosphere but its not the case for Titan.
Like Earth, Titan has its own atmosphere which mostly consists of nitrogen (95%) and methane (5%), and also Titan's atmosphere is 4 times denser than Earth's. Titan's air has no oxygen at all. Its far colder than anywhere on Earth.
Now its interesting that Titan is the only other world in our system where rain is. It has rivers, canals, coastlines, oceans, and mountains like or Earth. But here comes the big difference which might shock you is that these canals, rains and rivers does not have water at all, its methane. Here on Earth, methane is the source for natural gas.
Titan receives just 1% of the amount of sunlight earth does. Earth rain falls at about 20 miles per hour but methane rain on Titan falls at about 3.5 miles per hour or about 6 times more slowly than Earth's water rain but Titan's waterdrop can also be pretty large.
Why Titan isn't a planet
Since Titan has its own atmosphere which is 4 times denser than that of Earth's atmosphere. It rains like on our Earth, just its of methane so why don't scientists considered it as a planet. According to scientists, condition on Titan are similar to Earth's early years, the main difference is that Earth is closer to the sun, which makes Earth always warmer.
Now to be a planet, objects have to meet some criteria. Firstly it orbits Saturn only.
International Astronomical Union (IAU) defined in August 2006 that, in the solar system, a planet is a celestial body which :-
1. is in orbit around the Sun,
2. have sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shaped ), and
3. has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.
If a body does not match even with a single criteria then its not a planet.
Is there any possibility for life on Titan?
As we discussed that there are many aspects that Titan's world is more like Earth. In the far future nothing is going to be same as it is now. After 5-6 Billions from now, our Sun will run out its nuclear fuel and will become a red giant star which would be 100 times of its size. If you are interested to know about when and how our Sun will die, click on this link :- When and how our sun will die.
So while becoming the red giant, its diameter will starts expanding and one by one it will take down the planets may be till Earth. So Titan's temperature could increase enough to stabilize oceans to exist on the surface.
It all comes down to this, WHO WILL WE BECOME IN THE FAR FUTURE!
