Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2017 May 18
Study finds history of Titan’s landscape resembles that of Mars, not Earth
[img3="Left to right: River networks on Mars, Earth, and Titan. Researchers report that Titan, like Mars but unlike Earth, has not undergone any active plate tectonics in its recent past. Credit: Benjamin Black/NASA/Visible Earth/JPL/Cassini RADAR team. Adapted from images from NASA Viking, NASA/Visible Earth, and NASA/JPL/Cassini RADAR team"]http://news.mit.edu/sites/mit.edu.newso ... vers_0.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]The environment on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, may seem surprisingly familiar: Clouds condense and rain down on the surface, feeding rivers that flow into oceans and lakes. Outside of Earth, Titan is the only other planetary body in the solar system with actively flowing rivers, though they’re fed by liquid methane instead of water. Long ago, Mars also hosted rivers, which scoured valleys across its now-arid surface.
Now MIT scientists have found that despite these similarities, the origins of topography, or surface elevations, on Mars and Titan are very different from that on Earth.
In a paper published today in Science, the researchers report that Titan, like Mars but unlike Earth, has not undergone any active plate tectonics in its recent past. The upheaval of mountains by plate tectonics deflects the paths that rivers take. The team found that this telltale signature was missing from river networks on Mars and Titan. ...
The study also sheds some light on the evolution of the landscape on Mars, which once harbored a huge ocean and rivers of water. The MIT team provides evidence that the major features of Martian topography formed very early in the history of the planet, influencing the paths of younger river systems, even as volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts scarred the planet’s surface. ...
Global drainage patterns and the origins of topographic relief on Earth, Mars, and Titan - Benjamin A. Black et al
- Science 356(6339):727 (19 May 2017) DOI: 10.1126/science.aag0171