Sentences with phrase «hydrocarbon seas»

Different markers might reveal life in hydrocarbon seas.

Lunine is also an expert on Saturn's moons and an interdisciplinary scientist on the Cassini - Huygens mission that discovered hydrocarbon seas on Titan.

Entering orbit around the ringed world, the spacecraft will drop a probe into the atmosphere of Titan, a Mercury - size moon cloaked in an opaque organic haze and possibly covered with hydrocarbon seas.

The probe is destined to splash down on one of the largest bodies of liquid so far identified on Titan, a 10,000 - square - kilometre hydrocarbon sea called Ligeia Mare.

These images from the Radar instrument aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft show the evolution of a transient feature in the large hydrocarbon sea named Ligeia Mare on Saturn's moon Titan.

This image from the radar instrument aboard the Cassini spacecraft shows the large hydrocarbon sea named Ligeia Mare on Saturn's moon, Titan.

Titan's north polar region, which is bejeweled with sprawling hydrocarbon seas and lakes, was dark when Cassini first arrived at the Saturn system in 2004.

The vast hydrocarbon seas and lakes (dark shapes) near the north pole of Saturn's moon Titan sprawl out beneath the watchful eye of NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Titan, at a temperature of nearly 300 degrees sub-Fahrenheit and freckled with hydrocarbon seas, is being considered the next frontier of human expansion.

Scientists with Cassini's radar investigation will be looking this week at their final set of new radar images of the hydrocarbon seas and lakes that spread across Titan's north polar region.

The radar instrument observed a glint, indicating an extremely smooth surface like that observed from Titan's hydrocarbon seas.

Cassini spacecraft images of the island, which sits in a hydrocarbon sea called Ligeia Mare, revealed the feature's fickle nature.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — It's springtime on Titan, Saturn's giant and frigid moon, and the action on its hydrocarbon seas seems to be heating up.

With hydrocarbon seas that may contain amino acids and other interesting molecules, Titan is thought to be a place for testing ideas for how life arose on Earth.

Scientists think that as the seasons change in Titan's northern hemisphere, waves could ripple across the moon's hydrocarbon seas, and hurricanes could begin to swirl over these areas, too.

Simulations suggest that bubbling nitrogen may be the source of a blinking bright spot, or «magic island,» that Cassini spotted in the hydrocarbon sea Ligeia Mare on the moon Titan (SN: 5/13/17, p. 17).

Beneath the hydrocarbon seas on the surface, under a shell of water ice, lies salty liquid water.

Scientists think Titan may also be able to support microbial life (though if that life teems in the hydrocarbon seas, it will be very different than organisms here on Earth).

Almost all of the hydrocarbon seas and lakes on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan cluster around the north pole, as can be seen in this mosaic from NASA's Cassini mission.