[X] My Assistant

[Webscientist]

An interesting news release on the website of the Cassini Equinox Mission:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/cassinifea...feature20090904

I had noted that propane (C3H8) could also be present as a liquid on Titan. So, we have, at least, three potential candidates for pools of liquids on Titan: methane, ethane and propane.

If the data of wikipedia are correct, propane has a boiling point ( in normal, terrestrial conditons) of -42.09°C and a melting point of -187.6°C.

With environmental conditions similar to those in the landing site of the Huygens probe ( 1467hPA, -179°C), I suppose that propane can form liquid pools, as well.

[Hungry4info]

Juramike, thanks for that. That puts it into something I can grasp

About the public, though I agree that one should put it in a way that the average Joe will understand, the 150 billion BBQ cook-outs is a bit hard to grasp mentally, compared to, say, "enough to fill lake [name] [number] times." Sort of like saying that my house weighs as much as a trillion paper-clips would be less preferable to saying how much more it weighs than my car or something.

The discovery of propane is neat (even at 58 ppb), though I thought propane was already detected at Titan?

[Ron Hobbs]

The discovery of propane is neat (even at 58 ppb), though I thought propane was already detected at Titan?

Interesting. I did a quick Google search, expecting to find just information on the Cassini finding. The 4th item was this:

Propane on Titan, Astrophysical Juournal, 2003, Nov. 1

Roe et al. claim "the first observations of propane on Titan that unambiguously resolve propane features ..."

Is propane on Titan going to be like water on Mars; discovered every time a new instrument finds it?