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Saturn ’s moonTitanmay be have it away for its methane lake , but it also has " wizardly " island — mysterious bright spots atop the lakes that come and go , with no love explanation . However , a new study , write Jan. 4 in the journalGeophysical Research Letters , proposes a amazingly simple account for the magic island : They ’re float chunks of frozen constituent material .
" I wanted to look into whether the magic island could really be organic fertilizer drift on the surface , like pumice that can float on pee here on Earth before finally settle , " study lead authorXinting Yu , a global scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio , allege in a statement .
An artist’s rendition of Titan’s landscape features a hazy atmosphere, dark dunes, and mirror-smooth lakes and seas that resemble Earth’s. On these bodies of liquid hydrocarbons, new research suggests that the appearance of “magic islands” may be caused by floating organic solids.
Titan is a especially strange place in thesolar system , with a " methane cycle " somewhat analogous to the water round on Earth . alternatively of liquid water sea , it has even-tempered liquid methane lakes , whose wave mensurate only a few millimetre . Instead of having an oxygen atmosphere , Titan is filled with hazy cloud of constitutive corpuscle .
Yu wondered what would bechance if clumps of that atmospherical haze fell into the lakes . Would they float or sink — or perhaps even swim for a while before eventually knuckle under to the liquidity , just like the magic islands ?
" For us to see the sorcerous islands , they ca n’t just be adrift for a second and then sink , " Yu said . " They have to blow for some metre , but not for always , either . "
The researchers used natural philosophy and interpersonal chemistry calculations to determine what happens to particles when they hit the lake , and , if they did n’t sink , how long they ’d stick around afloat . They find that the thumping of solids would n’t break up in the lakes . But they would also be too heavy to float — that is , unless they were extremely porous , full of holes just like the pumice stone Stone Yu envisage .
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The researcher found that if the clumps were swelled enough and had enough holes , they would float until the methane slowly seeped in and dragged them down . These conditions retroflex the behavior of the charming islands . To reach the vital mass needed to remain adrift , clunk might first form on the shoreline , with pieces breaking off and drift to " ocean " like glaciers on Earth , the team suggest .
It seems like the islands are n’t so magical after all — just an unfamiliar version of the same planetary phenomenon we know on our home universe .
