PARIS - Saturn's planet-size moon Titan has dramatic weather, with turbulent high-altitude winds, periodic floods of liquid methane and possibly lightning, scientists said Wednesday in describing a world that may look like Earth before life developed.
The European Space Agency's Huygens probe landed on Titan in January, uncovering some mysteries of the methane-rich globe - the only moon in the solar system known to have a thick atmosphere. Scientists presented detailed results of months of study in the online edition of the journal Nature.
"It's a very strange fantasy world made of ice, with things like gasoline and tar that make up the rivers and the lake beds," said scientist Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona.
"If you try to walk around on it, your feet might get stuck in some places, you'd slide down into methane rivers in other places, and you'd better watch out for the ammonia volcanoes. And absolutely bring a big heavy coat, because it's really cold - and bring a tank of oxygen because there's no oxygen to breathe, but don't light a match."
Titan, 740 million miles from Earth, has long intrigued researchers because of the thick blanket of nitrogen and methane surrounds it. Until recently, scientists believed the most likely explanation for the methane was the presence of a methane-rich sea of hydrocarbons.
The Huygens probe and its mother ship, Cassini, have offered evidence against that theory. The $3.3 billion Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its moons was launched in 1997 from Cape Canaveral, a joint effort involving NASA, ESA and the Italian space agency.
Titan's clouds are made from molecules that include carbon and nitrogen - compounds generated in photochemical smog and circulated by rain and the atmosphere, the researchers reported. in Nature. They said there was no reason to believe Titan's methane is a product of biological activity.
Titan's smoggy atmosphere may be similar to that of the primordial Earth, and scientists believe that studying it could provide clues to how life began.
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