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What's the Story
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is very similar to Earth due to the presence of large liquid bodies on its surface.
However, unlike Earth's water-filled oceans and rivers, Titan's liquid bodies are composed of ethane, methane and other hydrocarbons.
A recent study by geologists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests that waves of these greenhouse gases could shape Titan's landscape by eroding its coastal regions.
MIT researchers simulate Titan's shoreline erosion
The MIT team used computer models to simulate different types of erosion that could have shaped Titan's coastlines.
These simulations were based on images taken by NASA's Cassini mission nearly two decades ago.
“If we could stand on the shore of one of Titan's seas, we could see waves of liquid methane and ethane crashing onto shores and washing up against the coast during storms,” said Taylor Perron, an MIT professor and co-author of the study.
Wave erosion may have shaped Titan's seas
The researchers simulated an ocean with flooded river valleys along its shores.
They ran this experiment under three different scenarios: no coastal erosion, wave-induced erosion, and uniform erosion in which fluid passively dissolves beach material over time as it slowly slides down under its own weight.
The same initial shoreline “can result in a really different final shape under the same erosion versus wave erosion,” Perron said.
Future research will focus on Titan's winds
The team mapped each of Titan's ocean shorelines using Cassini's radar images, and applied their modeling to each shoreline.
They found that the wave erosion model was best suited to explain the shapes of the four seas.
The researchers now plan to study Titan's winds, and investigate how strong they would have to be to produce waves strong enough to erode the moon's beaches.