Jan. 4, 2007
 
Wheeling Scientist Helps Explain Titan Lakes
 
By HNN Staff
 
Wheeling, WV (HNN) – A new report coauthored by the executive director of the Center for Educational Technologies at Wheeling Jesuit University confirms a long-held belief that there are lakes on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. But these aren't your typical lakes.
 
Dr. Chuck Wood, executive director of the center, is a member of the radar team on the Cassini-Huygens mission, a NASA endeavor to explore Saturn and its moons. As a planetary geologist and volcanologist, Wood and his team analyze the data sent back from Saturn and its moons.
 
In a cover story published Thursday in this week's issue of Nature magazine (www.nature.com), Wood joins lead researcher Ellen Stofan and several other authors from the radar team to disclose that lakes of methane and probably ethane have been discovered in the northern hemisphere of Titan.
 
Titan is the only moon in the solar system to have a dense atmosphere-similar to that of the primordial Earth-with thin layers of methane and nitrogen clouds. It has long been believed that lakes or even seas of methane might exist on the surface, but until now definitive evidence has been lacking.
 
On July 22, 2006, the Cassini spacecraft's radar imaged the northern latitudes of Titan during the moon's long winter and revealed a number of large, dark patches around the surface of the pole, ranging in diameter from 3 to 70 km. The low radar reflectivity of these patches indicate a smooth surface that contrasts with the surrounding terrain, suggesting they are made up of liquid, rock or ice. Several of the patches have radar-dark sinuous features leading into them that resemble river channels, and other patches seem to be contained in rimmed circular depressions, similar to crater lakes or volcanic calderas found on Earth.
 
The combined radiometric evidence and morphological features of the patches and their location in these topographic depressions led Wood's team to conclude that they are bodies of liquid hydrocarbons-methane lakes-existing on the surface of Titan today.
 
"This is critical evidence that Titan has a hydrological cycle, with methane rather than water being transported through clouds, rainstorms, rivers and finally lakes," Wood said Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2007.
 
The researchers propose that Titan is the only other body besides Earth in the solar system where evidence of an active, condensable hydrologic cycle has been found. That means that as the seasons progress, the lakes in the winter hemisphere should expand by methane precipitation, while the summer hemisphere lakes shrink or dry up entirely.
 
The Erma Ora Byrd Center for Educational Technologies (www.cet.edu) houses cutting-edge educational technology in its 48,000-square foot facility on the campus of Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, WV. The center is also home to the NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future, the space agency's principal research and development center for educational technologies, and the Challenger Learning Center(r), one of 51 worldwide established by the Challenger Center for Space Science in memory of the space shuttle Challenger. It provides students, teachers and adult learners with simulations that emphasize teamwork, problem-solving, decision-making and communication skills.