Titan's discovery

Natural gas is an important material for the development of countries today, and its most direct and common use is as a fuel. In addition, propane and butane, which are produced from natural gas, are also important industrial materials.

As an indispensable resource for modern society, natural gas is not only found in all countries but is also thought to be abundant under the Antarctic ice cap. In addition to the Earth, there is no shortage of natural gas in space, and Titan is considered by scientists to be a gas-rich moon.

Titan's discovery

Titan is one of the twenty-three moons orbiting Saturn and is the second largest moon in the solar system.

The existence of this moon was discovered in March 1655 by Dutch physicist Christian Huygens. Although Titan seems to have been discovered later compared to, for example, Titan, it is the second satellite discovered in our solar system.

Titan was discovered in the mid-17th century, but its appearance was known only in the last century when it was inadvertently photographed by a spacecraft.

In 1973, the Pioneer 11 probe, dedicated to the study of Jupiter and the outer solar system, was launched in Florida. Once it had completed its taken target on Jupiter, it took off towards Saturn, following Jupiter's gravitational pull.

In September 1979, Pioneer 11 was only 20,000 kilometers away from Saturn, and as it passed by, it took a "handy" picture of Titan.

After that, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, which wanted to explore the existence of civilizations outside the solar system, skipped past Saturn and explored Titan.

The results of Titan's exploration, obtained in the first and last three years, gave an initial insight into Titan: it is a nitrogen-dominated moon with not only a surface pressure greater than that of Earth, but also an extremely low surface temperature.

The real exploration of Titan has been carried out mainly by the Cassini Saturn probe, which landed on its surface in 2005 and sent back fairly detailed pictures for the human study of Titan.

Titan, rich in natural gas reserves

As the study of Titan deepened, scientists discovered that Titan's surface has huge lakes of what are described as honey-like dense deposits of methane and ethane.

Generally speaking, methane is the main component of natural gas, and it exists as a gas in our perception of life. The reason why it is distributed as lakes on Titan is that the temperature of Titan is around -180°C and methane appears as a liquid at -162°C.

Liquid methane is not an exception on Titan but is present everywhere. According to spectroscopic data, the lakes visible on Titan's surface are composed of methane and ethane, and their liquid image makes it look like a lake when it is observed.

According to scientists, there is hundreds of times more methane (i.e. natural gas) on Titan than on Earth. With so much methane, we can't help but have a bold thought: what would Titan look like if it were accidentally set on fire?

Impossible hypothesis

Today's theories about the birth of the solar system and the universe as a whole originate from the Big Bang. It was created by a big bang at a singularity, and when Titan appeared in our perception with methane, it was hard not to imagine whether a big bang would also occur if it were ignited.

But in fact, this hypothesis is completely unlikely to hold.

First, to ignite Titan's methane, three conditions must be met: combustible material, oxidizer, and temperature. However, Titan can only meet the first condition with the abundance of methane.

On Titan, in addition to lakes formed by methane and ethane, there are also valleys formed by liquid hydrocarbons and nitrogen at a 95 percent content.

In a word, although there are combustible materials, the lack of oxygen. And space is supposed to be close to the existence of a vacuum, and there can be no rendition of oxygen, so Titan lacks combustibles. Not only that, but the extremely low temperature also makes Titan's surface unable to reach a burning state at all.

So Titan's methane could not be ignited at all, and then even if it had hundreds of times more natural gas than Earth, there would be no combustion that would explode.

The real meaning of the presence of methane

Since methane cannot be ignited and cannot be used on Earth, what can the presence of methane on Titan bring to humans?

Humans are so concerned about Titan not only because of its large size but also because it has some things that are very similar to Earth.

First of all, Titan is the only known body in the entire solar system other than Earth that has an atmosphere, and its weathering process is very similar to that of Earth.

Such "natural" conditions have led people to study the existence of life on Titan as well.

In addition, Titan has a very high concentration of nitrogen and an abundance of organic compounds, which is very similar to the environment of early Earth. Therefore, scientists speculate that amino acids could have formed in such an environment, and thus life could have been born.

In addition, methane is also a major basis for scientists to speculate that there may have been the birth of life. Researchers at Cornell University have simulated the birth of life in Titan's oceans, which are powered by methane. American scientists have also based their speculation of life on Mars on the presence of methane.

Perhaps the presence of so much methane is not a conceivable burning presence, but rather a cradle for the birth of life.

After comparing Titan today with the Earth billions of years ago, scientists have found that the environment of Titan today is very similar to the Earth billions of years ago. This comparison overturns conventional perceptions.

In the common perception, planets are the main battleground for the birth of life, but now Titan has an atmosphere, organic molecules, and atmospheric pressure, so people began to expect that perhaps in 1.5-2 billion years, Titan will have existence of Earth-like life.

The life of a human being is only a hundred years, and the birth of mankind is only three million years, which is too short compared to the long years of the Earth. However, if there is a life like ours that can be discovered while the Earth still exists, how is this not a spiritual satisfaction for human beings? The Earth is not alone in the vastness of the universe.