Titan - the natural satellite of Saturn - has been considered to be Earth-like as it is the only other destination in the solar system, apart from Earth, where liquid sits on the surface. Researchers have revealed evidence of seas of liquid methane flowing on the surface, suggesting that the possibility of an existence of some kind of alien life on Saturn's moon.
To add to the surety of this hypothesis, researchers have discovered another Earth-like feature on Titan, reports National Post. Geophysical Research Letters released a study claiming the formation of an "impossible" cloud on the natural satellite of Saturn, which could have been created by climatic transformations very similar to that on Earth.
This type of icy clouds on Titan was first spotted by the Voyager 1 spacecraft sent by NASA. The cloud material composed of dicyanoacetylene, a compound composed of carbon and nitrogen. However, this compound was found to be rare in the stratosphere where the cloud was staged. Only 1% of the compound (C4N2) required to form the cloud was found in the stratospheric atmosphere.
In an attempt to investigate further on this, the Cassini mission conducted by NASA aimed to zero on the composition of the icy cloud using Cassini's instruments. The experiment revealed that the cloud was formed of the same carbon and nitrogen compound, but it was scarce in the stratosphere.
The appearance of clouds on Titan is not a breakthrough phenomenon - it is based on the same logic as the water clouds form on Earth. However, the formation of these dicyanoacetylene clouds has no formal explanation as the amount of the compound present in the stratosphere is too less to bind the ice to the cloud. In fact, this is a transformational revelation - something which goes completely against all historic findings on the natural satellite.
However, Carrie Anderson, lead study author of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and her team seems to have a valid explanation for this. The phenomenon of the production of C4N2 clouds on Titan could be related to the formation of chlorine clouds on Earth (chlorine generated from pollution mixed with the icy particles from stratosphere) instrumental for creating ozone holes. This, in turn, signifies that the cloud composition of Titan would not much differ from that of Earth, leading to analogous chemical processes.
With the Cassini mission coming to close in September 2017, it is far from being done. The orbiter would dive between Saturn and its rings, an unventured territory - taking down critical data on the planet's composition.
