[X] My Assistant

[Palomar]

Best evidence yet

*...for a shoreline on Titan; they're calling it "dramatic." Area measures 1,060 by 106 miles. Is from Cassini radar, obtained during the latest flyby. Speculation continues regarding seepage of liquid from the ground/ground springs and/or rainfall.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

The solution to the apparent contradiction seems to be that -- in most locations on Titan where one would see seas or lakes on Earth -- we're looking instead at mudflats, like the one Huygens landed in. Rain is unquestionably MUCH rarer on Titan than on Earth -- and, on top of that, it seems to have very active cryovolcanic processes (driven by tidal heating from Jupiter, according to one startling theory) which are likely to keep pulling near-surface liquid methane and ethane further down into the subsurface and recycling it through Titan's upper crust. So we see very smooth mudflats (composed of both finely ground water ice and accumulated solid organic-smog sediment) -- but not much actual surface liquid.

Jonathan Lunine, in fact, predicted exactly this a decade ago: he said that the only model that could fit all the already-observed facts about Titan was that most of its liquid methane and ethane was in a subsurface aquifer in a highly porous surface layer, rather than in actual liquid bodies sitting directly on the surface. Bingo.