Titan: Climate and Atmosphere
Titan, otherwise known as Saturn VI, is a very unique moon. 50% larger and 80% more massive than earth’s lone moon and larger even (but 40% less massive) than the planet Mercury, Titan is the second largest moon in our solar system after Jupiter’s Ganymede. Titan has 1/7th the gravity of earth and is tidally locked to Saturn, with identical orbital and rotational periods of approximately 16 earth days.
Apart from its size, Titan’s uniqueness is twofold – it is the only known natural satellite in our solar system with both a non-negligible atmosphere and stable liquid on its surface. Not only is Titan distinct from other moons, it also appears quite different from Earth – the liquid on its surface is not water, but a mixture of various hydrocarbons.
Titan’s opaque atmosphere prevented in-depth understanding of its surface until NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission in 2004, which used radar and special filters to penetrate the haze and first detect the liquid hydrocarbon lakes in Titan’s polar regions.
As a result of Titan’s weak gravity, its atmosphere extends almost ten times further from its surface than earth’s own atmosphere, and is over seven times more massive on a surface area basis. The dissimilarities continue: Nitrogen constitutes a much greater portion of the atmosphere at 98.4%, and methane is the second most prevalent gas at 1.4%. Hydrogen gas constitutes most of the remaining 0.1-0.2%, but there are also traces of other more complex hydrocarbons and gases (such as acetylene, ethane, propane, hydrogen cyanide and cyanogen). Neither water nor oxygen are found in Titan’s atmosphere in significant quantities.
The opacity and orange hue of Titan’s atmosphere are likely the results of Tholin pollu...
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... lead many to consider life on Titan an impossibility. However, there are multiple points in favor of Titan’s ability to support life. The presence of a “methanological” cycle provides a medium for theorized non-water-based life, where living things comparable to the methanogens found on earth could take in hydrogen in place of oxygen, metabolize it with acetylene in place of glucose, and produce methane in place of carbon dioxide. It is also predicted (via interpretation of rotational data) that Titan might contain a global sub-surface ocean (of water), providing basis for more “conventional” forms of life. The composition of the atmosphere provides one of the more compelling arguments for life on Titan – many of the “primitive atmosphere” gases and their experimental outputs discovered in the Miller experiment discussed in lecture last week are present on Titan.
The Sirens of Titan Marek Vit "It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved." (Vonnegut:220) The Sirens of Titan is Kurt Vonnegut's second novel. He has written it in 1959, seven years after his previous Player Piano. It has been described as a pure science fiction novel and, after only one reading, it really can be considered to be one. The intricate plot and fascinating detail may obscure the serious intent of the novel.
The film Remember the Titans, directed by Boaz Yakin, set in 1971, is about a high school football team who are forced to integrate and overcome their racial prejudice. An important character is Gary Bertier as throughout the film he changes and strays away from his prejudice manner and becomes a fair and promising leader that overcomes conflict that lies beneath the segregated community.
The movie Remember the Titans is about a high school football team who overcomes many obstacles on their way to win a state championship. It takes place in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1971. The main conflict in the story is racism. The school board forced a white school and a black school to integrate. The school is known as T.C. Williams. Alexandria was a very racist city. A white store owner killed a black teenager and the city was on the verge of exploding. Now that T.C. Williams is integrated, the football team has to deal with integrating their football team and coaching staff. Coach Boone moved to Alexandria in hopes to become the new head football coach. He cares a lot about the boys on the team. At a meeting, when Coach Yoast tells the
The atmosphere of Uranus is thick with a lot of hydrogen, helium, and methane. It has a very low density, the mean density is 1271 kg/m³. Uranus lacks any really significant internal heat source and it mean surface temperature is 58° K.
The movie Remember the Titans by Boaz Yakin is an interesting and thought-provoking movie that shows the transformation of people of different races through hardships and pain. One of the people that change entirely through this film is Gerry Bertier, a white American football captain, who starts off with a prejudiced, skeptical mindset taught with propaganda but at the end, leaves with an unbiased, friendly mindset after a series of significant events throughout the movie.
Right alongside the fifth and largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter, orbits a moon only about the same size as Earth’s moon. On this moon, is an icy surface that scientists are trying to uncover. Due to the presence of what they believe to be water, there is the possibility of life on this moon named Europa.
It is without a doubt that the most fascinating thing about space is the possibility of life elsewhere beside Earth. It is estimated that the Milky Way Galaxy itself contains about 300 billion stars. Each star contains planets and some planets might even have moons. With these findings, the question is no longer whether life exists elsewhere. The probability that Earth is the only place where life exists in the universe is far too slim. NASA has identified many planets that have similar conditions to Earth but most of these planets are hundreds of light years away so traveling there to find out if there’s any living organism is not easy. Luckily, scientific evidences have pointed out that one of the moons of Jupiter, Europa, could be one of the places where life can exist. If the theories proposed by astronomers about Europa are true, life on Europa might not even be entirely different than life near the bottom of Earth’s oceans.
In the second installment of The Heroes of Olympus, The Son of Neptune is a thrilling adventure written by Rick Riordan. The book begins where The Lost Hero left off. Percy, also in Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, is wandering Southern California with no memory of where he came from or who he is except one name, Annabeth. Being chased by three gorgons, Percy stumbles upon, with the help of Hera/Juno, Camp Jupiter. In the Roman camp, Percy joins the 5th cohort, which are the misfits of the camp, and befriends Hazel the daughter of Pluto and Frank the son of Mars, who are the biggest misfits of all. Percy and his newfound friends are soon called on a quest. Their mission is to recover the missing standard of the entire legion. They board the Pax, a small rowboat which makes up the entire Roman navy, and embark on their journey.
Research News Planetary Scientists are Seeing the Unseeable Richard A. Kerr Science, New Series, Vol. 235, No. 2 -. 4784. The. Jan. 2, 1987, pp. 113-117. 29-31. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Stable URL:
The moon is probably the most noticeable object outside of earth atmosphere besides the sun. There are a great number of facts about the moon. Most of these facts include size and distance of the moon compared to the Earth. Our moon's proper name is "Luna". Luna is 238,900 miles away from earth, and 27% smaller than earth. The moon is the most studied object outside of earths atmosphere. Luna is the only naturally made object that humans have set foot on besides earth.
Perhaps one of the most interesting features of our fathomless universe are the planets that are classified as gas giants. Huge, turbulent, and distant, the gas giants are some of the most enigmatic features in our Solar System. I have a personal interest to the gas giants and celestial bodies in general. When I was a child, I was fascinated by our Solar System. I read innumerable books about space, and my interests of outer space had been piqued further by other forms of media. Although I held this interest of space, growing up left me with little time to learn about space, and I lost interest for a while. Taking Earth Science in Milpitas High re-invigorated my interests in the celestial bodies. Using this class, I’m now able to focus on learning more about our colossal universe, in particular, the outer planets.
Uranus is so far away that scientists knew comparatively little about it before NASA's Voyager 2 undertook its historic first encounter with the planet. The spacecraft flew closely past distant Uranus, and came within 81,500 kilometers (50,600 miles) of Uranus's cloudtops on Jan. 24, 1986. Voyager 2 radioed thousands of images and mass amounts of other scientific data about Uranus, its moons, rings, atmosphere, interior and magnetic environment. However, while Voyager has revealed much about the gas giant, many questions remain to be answered.
Our knowledge gained of Titan has drastically improved since the early 1980s when Voyager flew past it. Titan is Saturn’s largest moon and the second largest moon of our solar system. It has a diameter estimated roughly 40% of Earth’s moon (Titan’s Radius: 2576, Moon’s Radius: 1737) and is 80% more massive (Titan’s Mass: 1.35 x 10^23 kg, Moon’s Mass: 7.35 x 10^22 kg. Titan has a atmospheric surface pressure 50% more than of Earth’s. In addition to that, Titan is the only moon to have a dense atmosphere. Titan’s atmosphere has been calculated to be 4.5 times more dense than of Earth’s atmosphere, which can been clearly noted by the layers of haze seen. The atmosphere in Titan is approximately 1.5km and is mainly composed of nitrogen. Titan has a very similar vertical atmospheric structure to earth, Titan has a troposphere temperature of ~94-~70K, a tropopause temperature of 70.4K and a stratosphere temperature of ~70-175K.
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun. It includes 4 rings. It has 67 moons too. The surface temperature is -108 degrees celsius. Jupiter is the fourth shiniest object in the the sky. Jupiter has the shortest amount of days, hence 9 hours and 55 minutes. Jupiter will orbit the sun every 118 Earth years. The red spot on Jupiter is an enormous storm on the planet. The storm has occurred for 350 years. 3 Earths can fit in the red
In the movie, Perseus, the mortal son of Zeus, fights the monsters of the underworld to stop them from taking over the heavens and earth. The story according to the Greeks, Perseus, the mortal son of Zeus, goes on an adventure to recieve the head of Medusa to save his mom from marrying King Polydectes and along the way falls in love Princess Andromeda. Between the two stories there are similarities and differences in each version.