Scientists say Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is the only body in the solar system besides Earth with liquid on its surface. However, chemical elements behave very differently there in the extremely cold and dense atmosphere, with a temperature of minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit. For example, water forms Titan’s bedrock while methane acts much like water does on Earth—it flows, evaporates and rains down on Titan to form rivers, lakes and seas.
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Co-principal investigator on the project, Gerrick Lindberg, is an associate professor in NAU’s Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science. He is leading the effort to understand Titan’s lakes from the molecular scale, which will directly inform that of principal investigator Jennifer Hanley, a planetary scientist at Lowell. Hanley is conducting an examination of the environmental conditions on Titan in the Astrophysical Ice Laboratory on the NAU campus, a facility that represents a collaboration between the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, which hosts the lab, the Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science, the Department of Chemistry and Lowell Observatory.
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