Cassini: Mission to Saturn
Up there in our big vast universe exists planets with
astonishing properties, much different from our own planet’s abilities. These special kinds of abilities cause
scientists to invest time and effort in reaching them. And recently a moon was
discovered, one of Saturn’s many moons. Saturn has all in total five moons
orbiting around it. In 1997 the Italian space organisation launched a mission
named Cassini. Cassini’s mission was to document and take pictures of Saturn
and its moons. And actually, as I’m writing this, history is being made by the
Cassini satellite. For the first time a satellite will pass between Saturn
itself and the rings of the planet. Capturing clearer and more detailed
pictures of Saturn’s core.
The intent of the program was no more than to monitor
Saturn and study space. But they made a huge discovery. One of Saturn’s moons
contains a massive amount of oil and nature gas. The moon’s name is Titan. Here on earth we
have lakes made out of water. On titan, the lakes are made out of oil. The air
on titan is different components in nature gas. It rains oil and hydrocarbons
from the sky. NASA expects it to be 300 times more oil on titan than all of
earth reserves. The planet is red and it’s basically a planet-size factory for
organic chemicals. Titan is covered in carbon bearing material. So hydrocarbons
rain from the sky creating vast seas and lakes with oil. The air is pure methane
and ethane, some lakes are pure ethane in liquid form.
But how is this possible? Carbons are made of living
organisms. That must mean that Titan has had life, maybe even held some kind of
developed life in the past? Because on earth we extract oil from long dead
organisms that has been under pressure and under lack of oxygen. So Titan must
be similar? No, there has never been life on Titan. And there will never be life.
Because the methane that keeps the planet relative hot slowly escapes out in
the atmosphere, and in some millions years it will be gone. Titan’s heat will
be gone far before life starts to develop. And when the heat is gone the
possibility of life will be gone. But how is the carbons created then? I looked
it up. Actually the organic components in Titan’s oil are created through a
very complicated chain of chemical reactions. The methane reacts to methyl and
becomes ethane, the ethane reacts to the clouds and carbons are created, this
is possible due to methane being very sensitive to UV light, and when the UV
light shines on Titan these methane molecules splits and reacts to methyl (that
starts the process). It’s more complicated than this but I can’t begin to
comprehend anything of it.
But there are some theories that the vast oil seas of
titan just might contain life. Methane cannot support life because it’s so
fragile and as soon the sun shows up the methane will break. So there must be
something replacing the methane, something else to give these potential
creatures energy. And what could that be? It must be something we can’t see.
And where can we not see? Deep under water. And there is more to this theory.
The sunlight can’t reach the depths of the seas, but there must be a geothermal
source of energy somewhere that is creating the methane! Because otherwise
Titan would run out of Methane. There must be something continuesly creating
more Methane since so much of it disappears. And every time the satellite
Cassini dives through Titan. Its thermal camera indicates the same level of
Methane all the time. So what is creating the methane that starts the creation
of hydrocarbons? The source must be located in the seas because the scientist
can’t locate it on land. And if there is a huge source of energy in the ocean, maybe
that could potentially support life.
Now back to us on Earth. We love oil and nature gas.
It’s one of the most valuable raw materials there is. The countries capable of
mining oil have a huge sum of money. This is a fact; Norway has made $1000
billion from selling oil. And that is one country! Imagine how much Titan is
worth! You can fit 215 Norway on Titans
surface. So let’s say that one Norway is worth $1000 billion. Then 215 Norway
is $1000 billion * 215. That is $250000 billion. That is quite a lot of money.
And even if you’d sell all that. Titan is continuously creating more due to the
chemical reactions. So there is no doubt that if you’d colonize Titan and sell
the oil you’d be a very rich person indeed. Could this potentially motivate
rich oil entrepreneurs to invest in space travel and support the space agencies
around the earth? Well I hope not. Because if they would to succeed in bringing
more oil to the earth that would totally ruin every life there is. The global
warming would spike to a whole new level. The problem with fossil fuel is that
you are adding new carbons to earths. Because our planet has a system of
dealing with carbons. But the system can only handle so much. When we are
adding carbons by burning fossils the system can’t handle it all. So we should
not add any more than the system is budgeting. So can you even imagine what
would happen if you added all the carbons of another planet to our own! It
would be a horrendous devastation to our climate! So conceivably leaving Titan
alone might be the best solution. But what if we don’t add carbons to our
planet? Perhaps all the fuel can be used to space travel. Space rockets will
surely consume a horrendous amount of fuel so having a whole planet as an oil reserve
would perhaps come in handy. But that’s if space travel ever would see the
light of day, which you could only speculate about today.
