Saturn’s largest moon could have gotten its sands from an ancient reshuffling of the solar system. If true, that would solve a long-standing mystery.
, planetary scientist William Bottke reported March 12 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Computer simulations suggest that the enigmatic drifts formed from objects hailing from the primordial Kuiper Belt, a modern source of comets beyond the orbit of Neptune. The proposed scenario could also explain the presence of similar material observed on other worlds, said Bottke, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.).
We know a surprising amount about these particles, Bottke said, because many have struck spacecraft and Earth. They’re resilient enough to survive passing through our atmosphere. And they’re dark and often around 200 microns wide, just the right size to build dark dunes on Titan.
What’s more, the simulations showed that much of the material also struck Jupiter’s moons Callisto and Ganymede and the Saturnian moon Iapetus, all of which are known to have large patches of dark material., notes Radebaugh, who was not involved in the research. So it’s plausible that Titan’s sands could have otherworldly origins too, she says.
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