Saturn's moon Titan has dunes, page 1

Unexpected by most, according to the latest observations, the Saturn's moon Titan has dunes remarkably similar to what we have on Earth. This is thought to help further analysis of this celestial body.

www.cnn.com
Saturn's moon Titan has huge regions covered with dunes, possibly made out of ice crystals, sand or some other unknown material, international space scientists reported on Thursday.

Images of Titan beamed back to Earth from the joint U.S.-European Cassini mission look very much like sand dunes in the Sahara desert, Namibia, Saudi Arabia and Australia, the researchers said.

"It's bizarre," said Ralph Lorenz of the University of Arizona, who worked on the study.

"These images from a moon of Saturn look just like radar images of Namibia or Arabia. Titan's atmosphere is thicker than Earth's, its gravity is lower, its sand is certainly different -- everything is different except for the physical process that forms the dunes and resulting landscape."

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It's nice to find a world that in some regard is similar to ours, despite a wide difference in temperature and other conditions. In a way, it points to the possibility that conditions conducive to producing life may exist elsewhere.

[edit on 11-5-2006 by DontTreadOnMe]