Sentences with word «tholins»

The near - infrared mapping spectrometer on NASA's Galileo spacecraft found evidence of the presence of molecules made of oxygen, carbon, sulfur, hydrogen, and nitrogen on Europa, and a hint of the presence of a class of complex organic compounds called tholins which may be driven by pre-biotic processes (more).

Methane gas wafting from Pluto's surface sticks to the frigid pole during the moon's decades - long winter; ultraviolet light from the sun then transforms the methane into reddish organic goop known as tholins.

Based on early measurements taken by the New Horizons spacecraft, Grundy and many othersimmediately speculated that the red spot was made of tholins created by the transfer of Pluto's atmosphere to Charon.

Those conditions are prime for creating tholins.

Its H2O ice — rich surface is unlike other outer solar system icy satellites in exhibiting distinctly reddish tholin coloration around its northern pole as well as a few highly localized patches rich in NH3 ice.

On the dwarf planet, the reddish color is likely caused by tholins, which are formed when cosmic rays and solar ultraviolet light interact with methane in Pluto's atmosphere and on its surface.

On Titan, the grains are composed of tholins from the hazy atmosphere, which according to models and observations of the dunes» shape, are blown by strong winds when the sun is over the equator.

Tholins aggregate into aerosols that settle slowly into the lower atmosphere, forming a thick layer that blocks solar ultraviolet and affects air circulation and the weather.

Assuming tholins really account for Titan's haze, the atmosphere should grow fairly clear less than 20 miles above the surface, and Huygens's cameras will be able to grab some great panoramas.

«On Titan, we'd also need to think about tholin sediments settling out of the atmosphere onto the panels and having to wipe them off every so often,» Hendrix says.

Materials known to exist at Pluto's surface from ground - based spectroscopic observations include highly volatile cryogenic ices of N2 and CO, along with somewhat less volatile CH4 ice, as well as H2O and C2H6 ices and more complex tholins that are inert at Pluto surface temperatures.

On Pluto, the color images show nonvolatile tholins coating an ancient, heavily cratered equatorial belt.

Yet its absorptive tholin stratosphere interrupts so much solar energy that Titan's final surface temperature suffers from what is called an «anti-greenhouse effect» — ironically brought about by «greenhouse gases».

Organic compounds called tholins, re-created in a John's Hopkins lab, may be all over the solar system.

Their coloration may come from frozen methane irradiated by the sun and converted into tarlike compounds known as tholins, notes Will Grundy of Lowell Observatory.

At lower right, ancient, heavily cratered terrain is coated with dark, reddish tholins.

That red surface comes from carbon - based materials Carl Sagan called tholins, which absorb blue light.

Grab a handful of Pluto's tholins, and you'd likely find they're a kind of sticky powder, she says.

He estimates that a 2 millimeter thick layer of these tar constituents, polymers called tholins, would absorb more than 99 % of the UV energy at the most - damaging wavelengths.

Tholins may have rained down on the early Earth as well, but they haven't been stable here since oxygen became common more than 2 billion years ago and destroyed them.

That produces hydrocarbons and cyanide compounds, which drift downwards and react further to produce a poorly understood group of complex compounds called tholins.

Cold, sluggish Titan has evolved much more slowly, so the dirty orange organic chemicals that tint its surface — most likely dominated by tarry compounds called tholins — could be a deep - freeze model of early Earth.

Grundy et al. analyzed the colors and chemical compositions of their surfaces, with ices of H2O, CH4, CO, N2, and NH3 and a reddish material which may be tholins.

The observed scattering properties of the haze are consistent with a tholin - like composition.

They theorized that some of the material could freeze and that, later, radiation could convert it to tholins.

«As more and more fragments join up, they build progressively bigger and more carbon - rich, complicated molecules until they are so complex that we don't even try to give them chemical names, just describe them with generic terms like «organic molecules» or «tholins,»» Grundy said.

They are generally known as «tholins» — a generic term to describe this reddish material.

Further investigation showed that Titan's atmosphere has organic aerosols, called tholins, that likely formed from molecules such as methane and nitrogen.

This strange atmosphere gives rise to compounds known as tholins, which are thought to cover the surface of Titan.

There's also probably «tholins», a term coined by Carl Sagan in 1979 to describe the complex organic molecules at the heart of prebiotic chemistry.