Titan migrated to Titan.

About 65.438 billion miles from where you are sitting, there is a satellite hovering near Saturn's rock ring, where there are rich lakes and rivers. In its sky, there are clouds, and in its land, there are organic molecules. The sphere is surrounded by a dense atmosphere.

It is one of the most earth-like worlds discovered so far, so it has become the first choice for finding extraterrestrial life. It's Titan.

Titan is said to be "terrestrial" because it imitates the characteristics of our earth, but it is more like another real earth. For example, the liquid flowing on Saturn's icy moon is full of methane instead of water. If we soak in the methane lake, we will be burned to death. If we drink the liquid inside, we will suffocate. But that's because our bodies have geochemistry. Other types of life, no matter how strange, may live in such conditions-alien creatures don't have to be like us, or they may not. Even life on the early earth was very different from what we see today.

In order to find this strange Titan-like life, a group of scientists modeled the strange environment of this satellite to better understand how it works. They believe that it is necessary to know the landscape history of Titan before selecting the places where aliens may live. To this end, they published a paper on their research in this month's Geophysical Research Express. More specifically, they found that sedimentary processes-the various ways in which land changes over time-may have led to the formation of Titan caves, canyons and sand dunes.

Sand satellite paradox

On earth, the deposition process can easily explain how our landforms came from. The rocks are eroded into small grains of sand, which are carried to some areas by the wind, and then all the grains of sand are piled up, and soon there will be sediments, which will eventually become some landforms. All this is very simple and intuitive.

But on Titan, the largest of Saturn's 82 moons, the situation is more complicated. Its geomorphological origin is a bit like a mystery, because Titan's particles are not like those of the earth. In a sense, they are weaker and expected to be shorter.

Circle? Trey said: "When the wind carries sand grains, the sand grains will collide with each other and with the surface. Over time, these collisions tend to reduce the particle size. What we lack is a growth mechanism that can offset this situation and maintain the stability of sand transit time. "

That is to say, if Titan's sand grains begin to disappear with the wind, how do they combine into the landscape we see on this satellite?

In short, after modeling the landforms of Titan, the researchers found that the planet showed a special deposition process-sintering, which means that adjacent particles collided and merged into a larger, stronger and less vulnerable to wind damage.

Circle? Trey said: "We can solve such a paradox: although the material is very fragile, the sand dunes on Titan can exist for so long."

Besides, circle? Tre and other scientists also used their models to discover many other details about the geological distribution of Titan. Here is some information:

Titan's winds seem to be stronger near the equator, which shows that there are more sand dunes there. These same gusts fluctuate around the mid-latitude, which indicates that the land around the dunes is relatively flat. In these low-lying areas, researchers also predict that sintering will produce ultra-coarse particles, which can be used to explain the phenomenon that constitutes the bedrock of Titan Plain.

Circle? Trey said: "Our (research) shows that on Titan-just like on Earth and Mars-we have an active deposition cycle, which can explain the latitude distribution of landforms through the occasional wear and sintering of Titan's seasonal drive. It is quite attractive to think that there is an alternative world in such a distant place, where things are so different but so similar. "