Lecture 29: The Children of Saturn

Among the 61 known moons of Saturn, two stand out: Enceladus and Titan. Giant Titan is the only moon in our Solar System with a substantial atmosphere, composed of nitrogen and methane, dense enough to maintain a weather cycle with methane analogous to the water cycle on Earth, even including great lakes of liquid methane and ethane at the poles. Enceladus has fountains of water vapor and ice particles that coat its surface in fresh ices, and indicates the presence of liquid water beneath its icy surface. Is this just pockets of tidal-heated water, or hints of a deep global liquid water ocean. I will describe new results on these two children of Saturn, and the possibilities they have for finding life, or life-like conditions, elsewhere in our Solar System. Recorded live on 2009 Nov 4 in Room 1005 Smith Laboratory on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University.