Science, Space and Technology News 2024
In the upper layer of Titan’s atmosphere, visible here in blue light, methane molecules are being dissociated by sunlight and recombining into ethane and acetylene molecules. Further down, the orange mists completely hide the surface. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Instituteuses Titan’s atmosphere as a natural laboratory to delve deeper into the chemistry of the methane molecule – a molecule that, on Earth, may be a byproduct of life.
The atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon hides its surface beneath a global layer of thick, opaque fogs. They are made up of organic molecules and hydrocarbons, “so large that they form particles, like the atmospheric pollution in some cities on Earth, and which are deposited on the surface,” says Rafael Silva, adding: “There could be even more interesting chemistry there.
This work brought new information about the chemistry of methane itself. The 97 new lines of its spectral absorption in wavelengths of visible light – in the orange, yellow, and green color regions – were identified in bands of lines previously associated with absorption by methane but never individualized. For the first time, the wavelength and intensity of each of these lines are known.
“Even in high-resolution spectra, methane absorption lines are not strong enough with the amount of gas we can have in a laboratory on Earth. But on Titan we have an entire atmosphere, and the path that light travels through the atmosphere can be hundreds of kilometers long. This makes the different bands and lines, which have a weak signal in laboratories on Earth, very evident on Titan,” says Rafael Silva.
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