AS THE Huygens probe slips beneath the clouds covering Saturn’s giant moon Titan in January 2005, it should see a sweeping panorama of mountains and giant craters filled with lakes of dark liquid methane and ethane. That’s the prediction of astronomer Ralph Lorenz, based on the moon’s bizarre geology.
Titan is larger than the planet Mercury, and the only moon in the Solar System with an obvious atmosphere. The opaque, smoggy blend of nitrogen, hydrogen, and methane is 50 per cent thicker than the Earth’s atmosphere and blocks our view of the moon’s surface, which astronomers believe is made of…
