Titan's Hazy Atmosphere Recreated in a Glass Jar To Reveal Mineral Composition of Saturn's Largest Moon

Titan is Saturn's largest moon and the Solar System's second-largest moon, behind Jupiter's Ganymede. According to NASA, this icy natural satellite is larger than Earth's Moon and the planet Mercury.

It is the only moon in the Solar System with a dense atmosphere, primarily made up of nitrogen and a small amount of methane. However, like Earth, it also has bodies of liquid, like lakes, rivers, and seas, making it a perfect natural laboratory to study the origins of life.

Now, researchers recreated the hazy atmosphere of Titan in a tiny glass jar, revealing the fundamental properties of two organic molecules that exist as a mineral and are abundant on Saturn's moon.

Titan Moon in a Jar

SciTech Daily reported that researchers found that the organic molecules, namely acetonitrile (ACN) and propionitrile (PCN), are likely to be abundant on Titan. On Earth, these simple organic molecules are liquid, but they are predominantly in solid icy forms on Titan due to low temperatures.

"We found that two of the molecules likely to be abundant on Titan - acetonitrile (ACN) and propionitrile (PCN) - occur predominantly in one crystalline form that creates highly polar nano surfaces, which could serve as templates for the self-assembly of other molecules of prebiotic interest," the project's principal investigator Tomče Runčevski said as quoted by the news outlet.

The properties of these molecules on Titan were not well-studied not until now, so they simulated the moon's temperature. First, they introduced water, which freezes into ice as temperatures drop, then they added ethane, which turns into a liquid to mimic the hydrocarbon lakes on the moon. The team then raises and lowers temperatures to imitate the temperature swings on Titan.

They analyzed the crystals that formed using different techniques and found previously unknown structures of icy planetary worlds. Their findings revealed that one crystalline form of PCN does not expand uniformly along its three dimensions, probably due to the temperature swings on Titan.

These crystal variations in ACN and PCN are called polymorphs. Researchers noted that the two organic molecules adopt one polymorph at high temperatures and another polymorph at low temperatures.

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Why Recreate Titan's Atmosphere in a Glass Jar

According to Live Science, the team presented their experiment and findings last Thursday, August 26, during the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Researchers said that these observations will help them better understand what the surface of Saturn's largest moon would look like. The team will compare their findings to the spectral library collected by Cassini-Huygens and assign unidentified bands, Runčevski said.

Previous studies have only examined the two compounds separately in their pure forms, but this experiment showed that when mixed, the high and low temperature polymorphs can be switched. Runčevski added that this could change the understanding of chemical compounds found on Titan and what chemical reactions take place on the icy moon.

The team also pointed out that the experiment is limited because it does not account for all the chemicals present on Titan, which means it only captures a simplified picture of the moon. Nonetheless, its importance to future studies and space exploration could help humans understand Titan better.