Big impacts on Titan and their atmospheric effects

[vogon13]

Recall Teller remarking that it was unnecessary to build H-bomb bigger than 100 megatons as anything bigger would just propel plume that much faster into space. So now let's think about cratering events on Titan and what a large energy release would do to the Titanian atmosphere. Parcel of gas goes up from impact site, what doesn't come back down is still in orbit around Titan and/or Saturn. Recall hearing about Titan gas torus. Atmosphere probably leaks anyhow, but it seems big impact would dwarf that effect. Titan's presumably active surface is concealing cratering record, maybe escaped amosphere tells a tale for us if we are smart enough to devine the mystery. <br /><br /><br /><br />Who ya' gonna call? SDC! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[vogon13]

And now we have Cassini radar image of a really big crater on Titan. Very interesting to me how impact explosion would interact with thick atmosphere. We don't have much of recent cratering events on earth to look at, Venusian atmosphere much thicker and seems to 'mute' cratering events. Martian atmosphere seems to do little to modify big events. Of course, we've seen what Shoemaker Levi did to Jupiter. But a 300km diameter crate on Titan! Wow! It's an interesting probe of Titans surface layers mechanical properties. Can reveal the chocolaty creamy filling inside, sorry, haven't had lunch yet, can reveal interesting mineralogical mysterys from deep inside Titan (can we refer to ices as minerals in this context?). We can see how global processes have modified crater since formation. We can see if 'channels' drain into new low spot. And we can speculate on how a blast of this size on a low grav. object (compared to earth) interacted with an interesting atmosphere of 22 PSI (comparable to earth's pressure of 15PSI). <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>