Broca's Brain (31 page)

In the following decades it is likely that there will be buoyant probes into the atmospheres of Venus, Jupiter and Saturn, and landers on Titan, as well as more detailed studies of the surface of Mars. A new age of planetary exploration and exobiology dawned in the seventh decade of the twentieth century. We live in a time of adventure and high intellectual excitement; but also—as the step from Leeuwenhoek to Pasteur shows—in the midst of an endeavor which promises great practical benefits.

TITAN IS NOT
a household word, or world. We do not usually think of it when we run through a list of familiar objects in the solar system. But in the last few years this satellite of Saturn has emerged as a place of extraordinary interest and prime significance for
future exploration. Our most recent studies of Titan have revealed that it has an atmosphere more like the Earth’s—at least in terms of density—than any other object in the solar system. This fact alone gives it new significance as the exploration of other worlds begins in earnest.

Besides being the largest satellite of Saturn, Titan is also, according to recent work by Joseph Veverka, James Elliot and others at Cornell University, the largest satellite in the solar system—about 5,800 kilometers (3,600 miles) in diameter. Titan is larger than Mercury and nearly as large as Mars. And yet there it is in orbit around Saturn.

We might obtain some clues about the nature of Titan by examining the two major worlds in the outer solar system—Jupiter and Saturn. Both have a general reddish or brownish coloration. That is, the upper layer of clouds that we see from the Earth has this hue primarily. Something in the atmosphere and clouds of these planets is strongly absorbing blue and ultraviolet light, so that the light that is reflected back to us is primarily red. The outer solar system, in fact, has a number of objects that are remarkably red. Although we have no color photographs of Titan because it is 800 million miles away and has an angular size smaller than the Galilean satellites of Jupiter, photoelectric studies reveal that it is, in fact, very red. Astronomers who thought about the problem once believed that Titan was red for the same reason that Mars is red: a rusty surface. But then the reason for Titan’s red color would be different from the reason for Jupiter’s and Saturn’s, because we do not see to a solid surface on those planets.

In 1944 Gerard Kuiper detected spectroscopically an atmosphere of methane around Titan—the first satellite found to have an atmosphere. Since then, the methane observations have been confirmed, and at least moderately suggestive evidence for the presence of molecular hydrogen has been provided by Lawrence Trafton of the University of Texas.

Since we know the amount of gas necessary to produce
the observed spectral absorption features, and we know from its mass and radius the surface gravity of Titan, we can deduce the minimum atmospheric pressure. We find it is something like 10 millibars, about one percent of the Earth’s atmospheric pressure—a pressure that exceeds that of Mars. Titan has the most Earth-like atmospheric pressure in the solar system.

Not only the best, but the only visual telescopic observations of Titan have been made by Audouin Dollfus at the Meudon Observatory in France. These are hand drawings done at the telescope during moments of atmospheric steadiness. From the variable patches that he observed, Dollfus concluded that things are happening on Titan that do not correlate with the satellite’s rotation period. (Titan is thought always to face Saturn, as our Moon does the Earth.) Dollfus guessed that there might be clouds, at least of a patchy sort, on Titan.

Our knowledge of Titan has made a number of substantial quantum jumps forward in recent years. Astronomers have successfully obtained the polarization curve of small objects. The idea is that initially unpolarized sunlight falls on Titan, say, and is polarized on reflection. The polarization is detected by a device similar in principle to, but more sophisticated and sensitive than, “polaroid” sunglasses. The amount of polarization is measured as Titan goes through a small range of phases—between “full” Titan and slightly “gibbous” Titan. The resulting polarization curve, when compared to laboratory polarization curves, gives information on the size and composition of the material responsible for the polarization.

The first polarization observations of Titan, made by Joseph Veverka, indicated that the sunlight reflected back from Titan is most likely reflected off clouds and not off a solid surface. Apparently there is on Titan a surface and a lower atmosphere that we do not see; an opaque cloud deck and an overlying atmosphere, both of which we do see; and an occasional patchy cloud above that. Since Titan appears red, and we view it
at the cloud deck, there must, according to this argument, be red clouds on Titan.

Additional support for this concept comes from the extremely low amount of ultraviolet light reflected from Titan, as measured by the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory. The only way to keep Titan’s ultraviolet brightness small is to have the ultraviolet absorbing stuff high up in the atmosphere. Otherwise Rayleigh scattering by the atmospheric molecules themselves would make Titan bright in the ultraviolet. (Rayleigh scattering is the preferential scattering of blue rather than red light, which is responsible for blue skies on Earth.)

But material that absorbs in the ultraviolet and violet appears red in reflected light. So there are two separate lines of evidence (or three, if we believe the hand drawings) for an extensive cloud cover on Titan. What do we mean by extensive? More than 90 percent of Titan must be cloaked in clouds to match the polarization data. Titan seems to be covered by dense red clouds.

A second astonishing development was inaugurated in 1971 when D. A. Allen of Cambridge University and T. L. Murdock of the University of Minnesota found that the observed infrared emission from Titan at a wavelength of 10 to 14 microns is more than twice what is expected from solar heating. Titan is too small to have a significant internal energy source like Jupiter or Saturn. The only explanation seemed to be the greenhouse effect in which the surface temperature rises until the infrared radiation trickling out just balances the absorbed visible radiation coming in. It is the greenhouse effect that keeps the surface temperature of the Earth above freezing and the temperature of Venus at 480°C.

But what could cause a Titanian greenhouse effect? It is unlikely to be carbon dioxide and water vapor as on Earth and Venus, because these gases should be largely frozen out on Titan. I have calculated that a few hundred millibars of hydrogen (1,000 millibars is the total sea-level atmospheric pressure on Earth)
would provide an adequate greenhouse effect. Since this is more than the amount of hydrogen observed, the clouds would have to be opaque at certain short wavelengths and more nearly transparent at certain longer wavelengths. James Pollack, at NASA’s Ames Research Center, has calculated that a few hundred millibars of methane might also be adequate and, moreover, might explain some of the details of the infrared emission spectrum of Titan. This large amount of methane would also have to hide under the clouds. Both greenhouse models have the virtue of invoking only gases thought to exist on Titan; of course, both gases might play a role.

An alternative model of the Titan atmosphere was proposed by the late Robert Danielson and his colleagues at Princeton University. They suggest that small quantities of simple hydrocarbons—such as ethane, ethylene and acetylene—which have been observed in the upper atmosphere of Titan absorb ultraviolet light from the Sun and heat the upper atmosphere. It is then the hot upper atmosphere and not the surface that we see in the infrared. On this model there need be no enigmatically warm surface, no greenhouse effect, and no atmospheric pressure of hundreds of millibars.

Which view is correct? At the present time no one knows. The situation is reminiscent of studies of Venus in the early 1960s when the planet’s radio-brightness temperature was known to be high, but whether the emission was from a hot surface or a hot region of the atmosphere was (appropriately) hotly debated. Since radio waves pass through all but the densest atmospheres and clouds, the Titan problem might be resolved if we had a reliable measure of the radio-brightness temperature of the satellite. The first such measurement was performed by Frank Briggs of Cornell with the giant interferometer of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. Briggs finds a surface temperature of Titan of −140°C with an uncertainty of 45°. The temperature in the absence of a greenhouse effect is expected to be about −185°C. Briggs’s observations therefore seem to suggest a fairly
sizable greenhouse effect and a dense atmosphere, but the probable error of the measurements is still so large as to permit the zero greenhouse case.

Subsequent observations by two other radio astronomical groups give values both higher and lower than Briggs’s results. The higher range of temperatures, astonishingly, even approaches temperatures in cold regions of the Earth. The observational situation, like the atmosphere of Titan, seems very murky. The problem could be resolved if we could measure the size of the solid surface of Titan by radar (optical measurements give us the distance from cloudtop to cloudtop). The problem may have to await studies by the Voyager mission, which is scheduled to send two sophisticated spacecraft by Titan—one very close to it—in 1981.

Whichever model we select is consistent with the red clouds. But what are they made of? If we take an atmosphere of methane and hydrogen and supply energy to it, we will make a range of organic compounds, both simple hydrocarbons (like the sort that are needed to make Danielson’s inversion layer in the upper atmosphere) and complex ones. In our laboratory at Cornell, Bishun Khare and I have simulated the kinds of atmospheres that exist in the outer solar system. The complex organic molecules we synthesize in them have optical properties similar to those of the Titanian clouds. We think there is strong evidence for abundant organic compounds on Titan, both simple gases in the atmosphere and more complex organics in the clouds and on the surface.

One problem with an extensive Titanian atmosphere is that the light gas hydrogen should be gushing away because of the low gravity. The only way that I can explain this situation is that the hydrogen is in a “steady state.” That is, it escapes but is replenished from some internal source—volcanoes, most likely. The density of Titan is so low that its interior must be almost entirely composed of ices. We can think of it as a giant comet made of methane, ammonia and water ices. There must also be a small admixture of radioactive elements which, while decaying, will heat their surroundings. The heat
conduction problem has been worked out by John Lewis, of MIT, and it is clear that the near-surface interior of Titan will be slushy. Methane, ammonia and water vapor should be outgassed from the interior and broken down by ultraviolet sunlight, producing atmospheric hydrogen and cloud organic compounds at the same time. There may be surface volcanoes made of ice instead of rock, spewing out in occasional eruptions not liquid rock but liquid ice—a lava of running methane, ammonia and perhaps water.

There is another consequence of the escape of all this hydrogen. An atmospheric molecule that achieves escape velocity from Titan generally does not have escape velocity from Saturn. Thus, as Thomas McDonough and the late Neil Brice of Cornell have pointed out, the hydrogen that is being lost from Titan will form a diffuse toroid, or doughnut, of hydrogen gas around Saturn. This is a very interesting prediction, first made for Titan but possibly relevant for other satellites as well. Pioneer 10 has detected such a hydrogen toroid around Jupiter in the vicinity of Io. As Pioneer 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 fly near Titan, they may be able to detect the Titan toroid.

Titan will be the easiest object to explore in the outer solar system. Nearly atmosphereless worlds such as Io or the asteroids present a landing problem because we cannot use atmospheric braking. Giant worlds such as Jupiter and Saturn have the opposite problem: the acceleration due to gravity is so large and the increase in atmospheric density is so rapid that it is difficult to devise an atmospheric probe that will not burn up on entry. Titan, however, has a dense enough atmosphere and a low enough gravity. If it were a little closer, we probably would be launching entry probes there today.