And these complex organic carbons rain down to the surface
of Titan and form these landscapes of complex carbon compounds.
And that is what you're looking at here, in this image taken
by Huygens, looking out across the
surface of Titan, across these hydrocarbon landscapes.
Why is this so interesting to astrobiologists?
Well these complex organic reactions,
reactions of carbon compounds with ultraviolet radiation,
might be the sort of reactions that occurred
on early earth that ultimately led to
the evolution, the origin and evolution of life.
Could we learn something about how life comes
to be, how the building blocks for life formed
by looking at these complex organic carbon reactions that
occur in the atmosphere on the surface of Titan.
So we can think of Titan as a
laboratory for understanding complex, organic carbon chemistry that might
tell us something about how life originates, and how
the building blocks for life originate, in planetary environments.
So it's a very, very fascinating environment, for astrobiologists.
And quite apart from that, we can also learn something
about the incredible geology of a moon, where mountains are carved
by liquid methane, not liquid water, but liquid methane.
What do rivers of liquid methane do to landscapes, and how do they form
this unusual network of mountains and valleys
that we observe on the surface of Titan.
One day we might even send probes to land in these lakes and rivers, and follow the
flow of these rivers and, and map out the movement of methane across these moons.
And take photographs
of these incredible liquid methane environments.