Saturn's moon Titan has dunes (Reuters/CNN)

Friday, May 5, 2006; Posted: 12:11 p.m. EDT (16:11 GMT)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Saturn's moon Titan has huge regions covered with dunes, possibly made out of ice crystals, sand or some other unknown material, international space scientists reported on Thursday.

Images of Titan beamed back to Earth from the joint U.S.-European Cassini mission look very much like sand dunes in the Sahara desert, Namibia, Saudi Arabia and Australia, the researchers said.



"These images from a moon of Saturn look just like radar images of Namibia or Arabia. Titan's atmosphere is thicker than Earth's, its gravity is lower, its sand is certainly different -- everything is different except for the physical process that forms the dunes and resulting landscape."
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The existence of pristine dunes, piled over other geological features, shows that wind recently blew fine grains of some material around, the researchers wrote in their report, published in the journal Science. It could be sand, ice or something else, they added.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/05/05/titan.dunes.reut/index.html

Full press release at http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/16/wa/MainStoryDetails?ArticleID=12614



Cassini radar sees sand dunes on Saturn's giant moon Titan (upper photo) that are sculpted like Namibian sand dunes on Earth (lower photo). The bright features in the upper radar photo are not clouds but topographic features among the dunes. (Photo: NASA/JPL - upper photo; NASA - lower photo)
Titan's Seas Are Sand

By Lori Stiles
May 04, 2006

Until a couple of years ago, scientists thought the dark equatorial regions of Titan might be liquid oceans.

New radar evidence shows they are seas -- but seas of sand dunes like those in the Arabian or Namibian Deserts, a University of Arizona member of the Cassini radar team and colleagues report in Science (May 5).

Radar images taken when the Cassini spacecraft flew by Titan last October show dunes 330 feet (100 meters) high that run parallel to each other for hundreds of miles at Titan's equator. One dune field runs more than 930 miles (1500 km) long, said Ralph Lorenz of UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.


Detail from a Cassini radar image of sand dunes on Titan. (Photo: NASA/JPL)

Ten years ago, scientists believed that Saturn's moon Titan is too far from the sun to have solar-driven surface winds powerful enough to sculpt sand dunes. They also theorized that the dark regions at Titan's equator might be liquid ethane oceans that would trap sand.

But researchers have since learned that Saturn's powerful gravity creates significant tides in Titan's atmosphere. Saturn's tidal effect on Titan is roughly 400 times greater than our moon's tidal pull on Earth.
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more: http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/16/wa/MainStoryDetails?ArticleID=12614

I say it looks like a Zen pebble garden.

atmosphere, that what's planet Earth is going to look like, in the not too distant future--like North Africa, Arabia and Titan.

Incredible pictures, from our incredible scientific community! Now let's get ourselves a government and a president to match! We can do it! We are a better, stronger, more resilient and more progressive people than anybody gives us credit for. Get up off the ground, get organized, get involved--and VOTE! We've got the numbers to beat their goddamned rigged voting machines! Let's do it!