Titan becomes even more enigmatic
Thick, rigid crust of ice encases Saturn's largest moon, perplexing scientists
By Andrew Grant
Fittingly, a world obscured by haze is very good at hiding secrets.
A new study suggests that Saturn’s moon Titan has a thick, rigid crust of ice, a finding that confounds scientists whose explanations for the moon’s dynamic surface and atmosphere rely on a flexible crust.
“Already things on Titan were hard to explain. This makes it even worse,” says study coauthor Doug Hemingway, a planetary geophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “It deepens the mystery of a very strange body.”