Saturn

Saturn

Through a break in the clouds of Titan, you might glimpse Saturn and its rings, their Pale yellow color diffused by the intervening atmosphere. Because the Saturn system is ten times father from the Sun than is the Earth, the sunshine on Titan is only 1 percent as intense as we are accustomed to, and the temperatures should be far below the freezing point of water even with a sizable atmospheric greenhouse effect. But with abundant organic matter, sunlight and perhaps volcanic hot spots, the possibility of life on Titan cannot be readily dismissed.

By the way, the view of Huygens, who discovered Titan in 1655, was: “How can any one look upon, and compare these Systems of Jupiter and Saturn together, without being amazed at the vast Magnitude and noble Attendants of these tow Planets, in respect of this little pitiful Earth of ours? Or can they force themselves to think, that the wise Creator has disposed of all his Animals and Plants here, has furnished and adorn’d this Spot only, and has left all those Worlds bare and destitute of Inhabitants, who might adore and worship Him; or that all those prodigious Bodies were made only to twinkle to, and be studied by some few perhaps of us poor Fellows?”

Saturn. Image in public domain

Since Saturn moves around the Sun once every thirty years, the length of the seasons on Saturn and its moons is much longer than on Earth. Of the presumed inhabitants of the moons of Saturn, Huygens therefore wrote: “It is impossible but that their way of living must be very different from ours, having such tedious Winters”.

In that very different environment, life would, of course, have to be very different from life on Earth. There is no strong evidence either for or against life on Titan. It is merely possible. We are unlikely to determine the answer to this question without landing instrumented space vehicules on the Titanian surface.

To examine the individual particles composing the rings of Saturn we must approach them closely, for the particles are small – snowballs and ice chips and tiny tumbling bonsai glaciers, a meter or so across. We know they are composed of water ice, because the spectral properties of sunlight reflected off the rings match those of ice in the laboratory measurements. To approach the particles in a space vehicle, we must slow down, so that we move along with them as they circle Saturn at some 45,000 miles per hour; that is, we must be in orbit around Saturn ourselves, moving at the same speed as the particles. Only then will be able to see them individually and not as smears of streaks.

It is difficult to catch particles from a space vehicle. Image: © Elena