Lecture 29: The Children of Saturn
Among the 61 known moons of Saturn, two stand out: Enceladus and Titan.\nGiant Titan is the only moon in our Solar System with a substantial\natmosphere, composed of nitrogen and methane, dense enough to maintain a\nweather cycle with methane analogous to the water cycle on Earth, even\nincluding great lakes of liquid methane and ethane at the poles.\nEnceladus has fountains of water vapor and ice particles that coat its\nsurface in fresh ices, and indicates the presence of liquid water\nbeneath its icy surface. Is this just pockets of tidal-heated water, or\nhints of a deep global liquid water ocean. I will describe new results\non these two children of Saturn, and the possibilities they have for\nfinding life, or life-like conditions, elsewhere in our Solar System.\nRecorded live on 2009 Nov 4 in Room 1005 Smith Laboratory on the\nColumbus campus of The Ohio State University.