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Titan: > According to Cassini data, scientists announced on February 13, 2008, that Titan hosts within its polar lakes "hundreds of times more natural gas and

by jemmyw 6mo ago

Titan: > According to Cassini data, scientists announced on February 13, 2008, that Titan hosts within its polar lakes "hundreds of times more natural gas and other liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth." The desert sand dunes along the equator, while devoid of open liquid, nonetheless hold more organics than all of Earth's coal reserves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakes_and_rivers_of_Titan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakes_and_rivers_of_Titan

zhivota 6mo ago
The next obvious question is where do they come from since presumably there weren't dinosaurs and plants dying there 300 million years ago. Went on a bit of a rabbit hole and it appears that there is a lot of methane in the atmosphere and that gets broken down via photolysis into hydrocarbons somehow, and the methane likely is there from the formation of the moon originally via methane ice.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
  > gets broken down via photolysis into hydrocarbons somehow See Figure 2 [1]. Protons, electrons and water ions from space dissociate, in the presence of sunlight, nitrogen and methane. Those combine into intermediate-mass hydrocarbons that produce complex organics. The part we don't understand is how those complex organics, e.g. benzene and naphthalene, turn into large organic particles. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10961852/#fig2 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10961852/#fig2
- kbelder 6mo ago
  "abiogenic oil" is a fringe belief that I just can't stop myself from giving some credence to. I know all the experts say it's not true, and I'm not crazy enough to deny the evidence, but there's still the niggling doubt in the back of my mind. There's so many hydrocarbons out in space.
CGMthrowaway 6mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
nayuki 6mo ago
Does Titan have enough oxygen to allow the combustion of hydrocarbons?
- bitmasher9 6mo ago
  This would make a great plot point in a space opera.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
  > Does Titan have enough oxygen to allow the combustion of hydrocarbons? Titan's atmosphere "is a largely anoxic environment, with little oxygen to cause the termination of complex organic reactions" [1]. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10961852/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10961852/
- pjc50 6mo ago
  No, otherwise the first meteorite to hit would have caused the whole thing to go up in a massive conflagration.

by jemmyw 6mo ago

zhivota 6mo ago

The next obvious question is where do they come from since presumably there weren't dinosaurs and plants dying there 300 million years ago. Went on a bit of a rabbit hole and it appears that there is a lot of methane in the atmosphere and that gets broken down via photolysis into hydrocarbons somehow, and the methane likely is there from the formation of the moon originally via methane ice.

JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
> gets broken down via photolysis into hydrocarbons somehow See Figure 2 [1]. Protons, electrons and water ions from space dissociate, in the presence of sunlight, nitrogen and methane. Those combine into intermediate-mass hydrocarbons that produce complex organics. The part we don't understand is how those complex organics, e.g. benzene and naphthalene, turn into large organic particles. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10961852/#fig2 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10961852/#fig2
kbelder 6mo ago
"abiogenic oil" is a fringe belief that I just can't stop myself from giving some credence to. I know all the experts say it's not true, and I'm not crazy enough to deny the evidence, but there's still the niggling doubt in the back of my mind. There's so many hydrocarbons out in space.

CGMthrowaway 6mo ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

nayuki 6mo ago

Does Titan have enough oxygen to allow the combustion of hydrocarbons?

bitmasher9 6mo ago
This would make a great plot point in a space opera.
JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
> Does Titan have enough oxygen to allow the combustion of hydrocarbons? Titan's atmosphere "is a largely anoxic environment, with little oxygen to cause the termination of complex organic reactions" [1]. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10961852/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10961852/
pjc50 6mo ago
No, otherwise the first meteorite to hit would have caused the whole thing to go up in a massive conflagration.