[BRIEF NOTE] But how loud is the Titanian rain?

[rfmcdonald]

From The Guardian:

It rained yesterday on Titan. It could rain again tomorrow. But instead of water, it rained liquid methane.

The chemical torrents fell on a high ridge of frozen methane and flowed - in a system of tributaries - down to a river delta and into a dark inland sea of hydrocarbons, which then began to dry again.

European scientists combing through more than four hours of data, sights, sounds and smells relayed back to Earth from the Huygens probe, which made a death dive into the orange-coloured clouds of Saturn's mysterious moon on January 14, yesterday began to deliver a clearer picture of weird weather patterns on a piece of alien real estate 750m miles from Earth.

A probe designed by a team led by John Zarnecki of the Open University hit the surface of Titan at almost five metres a second and penetrated through a thin crust into softer material with a texture described variously as soft clay, wet mud or even crème brûlée, composed of organic chemicals and pebbles and gravel of permanently frozen water ice.

Heat from the probe's batteries warmed the soil beneath it, liquid frozen at -180C began to evaporate, and researchers got their first "whiff" of the methane that provides the clouds, rain and rivers of Titan.

"The methane was just right there underneath the surface, just like the desert after it has rained. Just like the sand on the beach, the top layer may be dry but underneath it is liquid," said David Southwood, head of science at the European Space Agency.

"That tells you that here there is regular rainfall of liquid methane. You have clouds, you have storms, you have convection systems that take the methane out of the surface and lift it up.

"There is processing going on, really like the weather we have at home, which is a very important part of the whole ecology of our planet."

Might I just say that the joint NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens probe was a brilliant idea, and that I'd like another probe to be sent out-system ASAP?