[X] My Assistant

[ngunn]

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rlorenz/radiocarbon.pdf

This is an interesting speculative article by Lorentz et. al. from 2002 about what might be found. They suggest that radiocarbon on Titan could significantly influence both atmospreric processes and surface contitions in a number of complex ways. Can anyone here tell me if we know anything more definite about this now, from Huygens data or otherwise?

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Do you mean the instrument which made the mass spectrum of atmosphere? I remember a spectrum. Unfortunately the methane ray was too large to guess a C14/C12 ratio. Anyway native C14 would appear under the form of larger soot particules, not in methane.

A lander on Titan would have advantage to detect C14 in the ground, it would give a good estimate on soot accumulation, rain frequency over time, etc. If rain is really one time over thousand years in a place, we could for instance easily date the last rain in a place, and perhaps date several alluvion layers, but this may be more difficult.