Tea at Trianon: Kraken Mare on Titan

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Kraken Mare on Titan

From Space:

Understanding the depth and composition of Kraken Mare will gradually reveal more about Titan's mysterious chemistry, dominated by ethane and methane that collects in pools, lakes and rivers on the surface, researchers said. The importance of the lake stems from Kraken Mare's immense size; if placed on Earth, it would cover all five of the Great Lakes of North America.
"Kraken Mare … not only has a great name, but also contains about 80% of the moon's surface liquids," study lead author Valerio Poggiali, a research associate at the Cornell University Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, said in a university statement.
While Titan's chemistry is alien compared to Earth's, the moon's geography is reminiscent of swampy or lake-rich regions on our planet. Titan is also the only known moon in our solar system to boast a thick atmosphere — a gaseous nitrogen shroud, compared to Earth's mostly nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere.
That sets Titan apart from the numerous moons in our solar system with tenuous exospheres or no atmosphere (like Earth's moon) and from the potentially life-friendly "icy moons" where water ice covers an internal ocean — such as on Jupiter's Europa or Saturn's Enceladus, which both spout water through the ice into space.
Data on Kraken Mare was collected during Cassini's 104th flyby of Titan on Aug. 21, 2014, about three years before engineers deliberately threw the aging spacecraft into Saturn to avoid the small chance of accidentally contaminating the moon's surface.
Kraken Mare was just one of the lakes on the mission's survey list for that flyby. Researchers also wanted to look at Ligeia Mare — the site of a mysterious "magic island" that regularly appears and disappears — and a smaller estuary called Moray Sinus, which the researchers estimated to be 280 feet (85 m) deep, about the equivalent of the Statue of Liberty's height. Cassini probed the moon's surface with its radar altimeter from about 600 miles (965 kilometers) away.
Scientists calculated sea depth by figuring out how long it took the radar signal to bounce back from the liquid surface and from the sea bottom, comparing the difference between these depths and taking into account the composition of the lakes' liquid, which absorbs some of the radar signal's energy.
The composition of Kraken Mare surprised scientists, along with its depth. It contains a mix of methane and ethane, which differed from previous models suggesting ethane would prevail due to the lake's size and geographical position farther from the moon's poles. The unexpected chemistry in the lake could help scientists better understand the precipitation cycle on Titan, according to the researchers.
Scientists also hope to figure out from where the liquid methane on Titan originates. Titan receives about 100 times less energy from the sun than Earth, given it is roughly 10 times farther away. (Read more.)