Lake on Titan as big as Lake Ontario

[Martin]

not water (that would be frozen solid) but a large body of hydrocarbon liquid, like liquid ethane and other stuff desolved in it

 

7800 squre miles, like one of the north american Great Lakes

 

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/uoa-cic072908.php

 

Cassini spacecraft flies by Titan from time to time taking pictures. The pictures of the lake were taken on the 38th flyby.

[Pangloss]

Woot, our energy problems are solved!

[insane_alien]

quite cool that the titanic lake is infact, titanic in size.

[Phi for All]

It's amazing to me that ultraviolet light from the sun so far away is breaking up methane to make a huge lake of ethane. I wonder if there really were oceans of it and this is what's left after 4.5 billion years.

 

Woot, our energy problems are solved!

And no more unemployment, what with the need to build a 1.2 billion kilometer pipeline....

[iNow]

http://richarddawkins.net/article,3310,n,n

 

This is an excellent short video about Cassini, the most ambitious inter-planetary space mission ever launched. It was created using clips from Carolyn Porco's speech at the Pop!Tech innovation conference.

 

I think it's a great video to forward on to friends and family, especially young minds who could be infected with the astronomy and/or science bug.

 

 

At the link above is an amazing and short 4 minute video about the Cassini craft shown in QuickTime (additional links at the link above for Flash version if needed). Well worth the watch.

 

Really stunning, and one of those things that brought a smile to my face.

 

 

Enjoy.

[Moontanman]

Imagine the lake is full of dissolved silanes and silanes with hydrocarbons bonded to the silicon chains, at out temperatures such molecules would break up immediately but at the temps of titan they would be just stable enough to exist and build up over time, could life be in this lake?