[X] My Assistant

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Hunter Waite et al. have a paper ("The Process of Tholin Formation in Titan's Upper Atmosphere") to be published in the May 11, 2007, issue of Science; there is also an accompanying Perspectives piece ("Titan's Organic Factory") by Sushil Atreya.

The embargo will be lifted in a hour or two, so if do not have embargo access, the direct links to the articles probably will not be accessible until then. However, you can click here for a brief description.

Also, Opher et al. have a paper ("The Orientation of the Local Interstellar Magnetic Field") with an accompanying Perspectives piece ("A Local Wiggle in the Turbulent Interstellar Magnetic Field") by Jokipii. Again, unless you have embargo access, click here for a brief description.

[marsbug]

Hmmm, to throw a thought out at random, perhaps there is another way of looking at the question of the tholins structure:
Since organic matter has such a wonderful affinity for long chains and ring structures it might make more sense to ask what structures, in a given area of titans atmosphere, are likely to survive the conditions in that region. Anything too heavy will be drawn down to the surface, anything vulnerable to UV wil get broken apart, and anything very eager to combine with other material will likely get pulled into another larger tholin structure.

There might be interesting exceptions, for example not all the ten thousand dalton ions in the upper atmosphere need be wide boys heading down.A few might have structures lending themselves to lower density, or other properties, that allows them to remain at that altitude.

To speculate wildly: If the tholin factory in the upper atmosphere has been running long enough it might even be dominated by a relative few structures that have the best survivability there, with others being pulled down to lower levels or smashed up by UV.
There might be the next few generations of lightweight plastic floating up there waiting to be found...