Young-Looking Methane Lakes on Saturn's Moon | The Institute for Creation Research

Young-Looking Methane Lakes on Saturn's Moon

The Cassini spacecraft detected what appear to be lakes and ponds near Titan's equator. If so, one lake is almost forty miles long, 25 miles wide, and at least three feet deep. Natural processes on the moon's surface rain down methane mixed with hydrocarbons, but only near the poles. Near the moon's equator, natural processes evaporate the methane. So, after many millennia, any ancient equatorial methane lakes on Titan should have completely dried. The methane lakes' continued presence baffles astronomers, leaving them to face the difficult task of explaining it.

Caitlin Griffith, planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, is lead author of the study results published in Nature.1 She told Nature News, "Lakes at the poles are easy to explain, but lakes in the tropics are not."2

These observations are easy to explain if evaporation has only been occurring for thousands, not billions of years. How could methane lakes still exist on Titan's equator after billions of years of evaporation?

"Because tropical lakes on Titan should evaporate over a period of just a few thousand years, the researchers argue that these ponds and lakes are being replenished by subsurface oases of liquid methane," according to Nature News.2 That kind of argument is very familiar.

For example, in 2008 Cassini discovered frozen carbon dioxide on Iapetus, another of Saturn's moons, even though sixty-trillion tons of the carbon dioxide are lost to space during each orbit. To explain this, researchers proposed that it is replenished from below the surface or from impacts, but neither explanation has supporting evidence.3

Another case in point involves comets. Researchers continue to imagine an invisible cloud or belt of comet sources lying near the solar system to explain how comets with short life spans still swing through the Solar System, even though they are supposed to be billions of years old.4

Likewise, to explain the moon recession problem—it would have been touching the earth and making life impossible at only a fraction of the earth's supposed billions of years—many suggest with no evidence to back the claim that the moon's current drift rate away from earth is abnormally fast these days.

Rescuing devices are a central feature of long-age astronomy. Thus, it is no surprise to read of another one. The claim that an unseen subsurface methane reservoir exists is an attempt to rescue Titan's supposed old age from scientific evidence of its youth.

References

  1. Griffith, C.A. et al. 2012. Possible tropical lakes on Titan from observations of dark terrain. Nature. 486 (7402): 237-239.
  2. McKee, M. Tropical lakes on Saturn moon could expand options for life. Nature News. Posted on nature.com June 13, 2012, accessed June 18, 2012.
  3. Coppedge, D. 2008. Iapetus: Youth in Black and White. Acts & Facts. 37 (6): 15.
  4. Humphreys, D.R. 2006. Evidence for a Young World. Acts & Facts. 34 (6).

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on July 16, 2012.

The Latest
NEWS
June 2025 ICR Wallpaper
"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from...

CREATION.LIVE PODCAST
Getting the Gospel into People's Hands | Creation.Live Podcast:...
Can God use an atheist airline pilot to reach other nations with the truth of the Gospel? The answer, obviously, is yes.   Host...

NEWS
Chimp Genome Only 75% Similar to Human?
An oft-repeated claim of evolutionary propaganda is that chimpanzee and human DNA are 98.5% identical. This high level of DNA similarity, which has...

NEWS
''73-Million-Year-Old'' Alaskan Salmon
Fish evolution remains an enigma. Evolutionists can only say fish first “appeared” over a half-billion years ago.1 Creationists...

NEWS
God's Memorial Day
“And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of...

NEWS
The Origin of Eukaryotes
Eukaryotes are multicellular organisms that contain diverse differentiated cell types. Within almost every cell there are subcellular compartments called...

CREATION PODCAST
Water vs. Wind: The Controversial Coconino | The Creation Podcast:...
Welcome to the sixth episode in a series called “The Failures of Old Earth Creationism.” Many Christians attempt to fit old...

NEWS
Fossil Fish Finally Filmed
The bizarre lobe-finned coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) “that flourished some 350 million years ago”1 continues to be a thorn...

NEWS
The Mosasaur: A Giant Sea Dragon
Mosasaurs (order Squamata) were massive marine lizards that were common in the pre-Flood oceans. Therefore, it is not surprising that their fossils...

DAYS OF PRAISE DEVOTIONALS
Summer 2025
...