Saturn's largest and most fashionable moon, Titan, is an astronomical-body-of-interest for several reasons: It has surface liquid, a thick atmosphere, Earth-like surface features (dunes, rivers, coasts), and has chemical precursors that potentially implicate the existence of life.Oh yea, and according to some new research published in Science, Titan also has rain storms.The recently observed rain storm on Titan, discovered by Elizabeth Turtle and her team, wasn't your normal Earth-like water gale – there's not much, if any, liquid water on Titan's surface, where temperatures tend to stay around -290 degrees F (-180 degrees C). It was a methane storm.Titan has vast lakes of liquid methane, and recent clues gleaned from NASA's Cassini Mission show cloud formations, chemical signatures, and geographic surface changes on the moon, implying that large quantities of evaporated methane rained down on Titan's surface a couple weeks ago.A quick methane review: Methane is the main component of natural gas (imagine headstrong mustachioed fuel-mongers-of-the-future catching Titan's methane rain in big tubs), it's a hydrocarbon, that, like other hydrocarbons on Titan, may be produced by something alive, and it's in cow farts.Take–home message? There could be a horde of flatulent cows and greedy fuel prospectors living on Saturn's biggest moon.Make sure to check out NASAs website dedicated to The Cassini mission here.Image/NationalGeographic
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