You know the feeling when you receive your monthly electricity bill, or when you discover a speeding fine you didn’t know about? When reading this blog, you will experience the opposite of those feelings, because it’s back again! Some Geek Told Me’s Tour of the Solar System returns for another month, and a collective sigh of relief can be heard across neighbourhoods around the world!
There are 13 previous stops on our magical Tour of the Solar System, which are:
1.) Meet the Family
2.) The Sun
4.) Mercury
5.) Venus
7.) The Moon
8.) Mars
10.) Ceres
11.) Jupiter
12.) The Galilean moons
13.) Saturn
As much as possible, I try to fact-check all the information I write here, as well as on X and Mastodon; especially about pizzas and ice cream. The problem is that there’s a community that doesn’t believe me; or dare I say, even like me for some strange reason.
The Hastings chapter of The New Zealand Sour Cream and Chives Preservation Society was recently quoted in The New Zealand Herald about New Zealand’s 5th least favourite website by saying:
“Do you see last month’s blog from that Geek Told Me Twit’s Solar System Tour? That man is making stuff up, he’s a fraud! He claims that Saturn has 146 moons and as any reality-based person would know, that’s a lie. Saturn can’t have 146 moons, because Saturn isn’t real! That guy is a disgrace to this beautiful country, and we fully recommend the Serious Fraud Office investigate him.”
I have three official responses for them:
1.) Firstly, I make no money from my accounts. It costs me to run them, so the Serious Fraud Office would be wasting their time, like Sun Tzu writing a book on marriage counselling.
2.) I’m not sure if this is a general trend with The New Zealand Sour Cream and Chives Preservation Society, but I feel some Flat Earthers, or at least Space Deniers are filling their ranks.
3.) Just because The New Zealand Sour Cream and Chives Preservation Society mentioned Saturn’s moons, I’m going to talk about them. In all honestly, I was going to mention a few of them, but since they have annoyed me, I’m just going to discuss one of them; arguably the most famous of them, Titan.
So, why have I selected Titan to discuss? Apart from being the homeworld of Thanos, Spock would agree that Titan is a fascinating place. To start our tour off, you’re probably thinking, “Damn, Salt and Vinegar chips are the best!” And you would be correct!
You’re also thinking, “But Scott, there are no planets in our Solar System named Titan.” And once again, I have to agree with you. Yes, it’s the name of Matt Damon’s spaceship, but it’s also not a planet, because Titan is a moon.
Titan is the second moon to feature on our Tour of the Solar System, after, you know, the Moon. Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and was discovered by Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch astronomer on 25th March 1655.
Because Titan is one of Saturn’s moons, it won’t come as a surprise to you that it orbits Saturn. Imagine that. Titan is 5,149.46 km in diameter, which makes it larger than Mercury, and the Moon; but also the ninth-largest object in the solar system, after the Sun of course.
Titan is about 1.2 million km from Saturn, which if you remember from last month, is about 1.4 billion km from the Sun. Because of this distance, it takes 80 minutes for light from the Sun to reach Titan. By comparison, it only takes eight minutes for the Sun’s light to reach Earth. Sunlight is about 100 times fainter on Titan than on Earth.
Two more awkward points about Titan’s rotation and orbit, are that Titan’s seasons last more than seven Earth years and a Titan year lasts 29 Earth years.
Titan orbits Saturn around every 15 days and 22 hours. And similar to how Titan has a kick-arse name, just like the Moon, Titan is also tidally locked. This means that its rotational period (the time it takes to turn on its axis) is the same as its orbital period (the time it takes to orbit Saturn), so one side of Titan is permanently facing Saturn since it is in a synchronous rotation with Saturn.
These facts about Titan are cool, don’t get me wrong, but the real things to talk about Titan are its atmosphere and surface. There are only two known places in the Solar System where liquid forms on the surface. One is Earth, the birthplace of rugby and dogs, with the other being Titan.
On Earth, the liquid on the surface is David Dunn’s and Elphaba Thropp’s weakness; water. While on Titan, the liquid is not water because of Titan’s vast distance from the Sun, which creates temperatures around −179 °C. It’s not a retreat for a Summer holiday.
The liquid on the surface is methane and ethane, which have carved out river channels and filled lakes. Because of the low temperatures, which create the process of condensation, these natural gases have changed their state of matter from gas to liquids.
Titan’s atmosphere consists of about 95% nitrogen and 5% methane, which makes it quite thick. Titan’s atmospheric pressure is about 60% greater than Earth’s, which is like the equivalent of swimming below the surface of a lake or ocean at a depth of 15 m.
Since Titan is smaller and less massive than Earth, its atmosphere extends to an altitude 10 times higher than Earth’s, nearly 600 km because of the weaker gravity. This is why Titan looks like it’s covered in smog or haze. Cool.
Another rad thing about Titan is the possibility of life. On 15th October 1997, a space probe was launched by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. Its mission was to study Saturn, its rings and moons. The space probe was called Cassini–Huygens, named after Giovanni Domenico Cassini, an Italian astronomer who made some discoveries about Saturn’s rings and moons; as well as our old friend, Christiaan Huygens.
The probe reached the Saturn System in 2004, with Cassini being part of the probe that did mapping and research. Cassini spent 13 years working and orbiting Saturn and was decommissioned in 2017, where it was de-orbited so it could burn up in Saturn’s upper atmosphere.
Huygens on the other hand had a different mission, because it was designed to detach from Cassini, and land on Titan to conduct measurements. On 14th January 2005, Huygens landed on Titan and recorded measurements of the wind and temperature, but also took images of the landscape. 90 minutes after Huygens landed, the probe stopped transmitting.
Data from Cassini and Huygens revealed that Titan has an underground ocean of liquid water, which could harbour life. Years later, researchers conducted many experiments to test the viability of life on Titan, because of complex molecules being found. Whether life exists on Titan or not, let’s hope it’s not in the form of Thanos.
And with that, another chapter of the worst Tour in the Solar System is brought to a close. What is your favourite fact about Titan? As always, please let me know. Thanks for supporting this tour, even though the tour guide is a bit dodgy.
Thanks once again for reading, following, and subscribing to Some Geek Told Me. I’m also on Twitter/X and Mastodon, where I usually fail at sounding humorous.
Please don’t forget to walk your dog, read a banned book, keep pushing for a ceasefire in Palestine, and watch the Mighty Wellington Phoenix in the second leg of the A-League semi-final. Look after yourself and I’ll see you next week.
SOME GEEK TOLD ME 
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