NASA has created a recipe for the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and found that it has an 'aromatic character'.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSIA new recipe created in a NASA laboratory has recreated the composition of the atmosphere on Titan -- the largest moon orbiting the planet Saturn -- and in the process managed to classify a previously unidentified material in the moon's atmosphere spotted by Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer.
In order to recreate the atmosphere, NASA scientists combined a number of different gases in a chamber and let them react with each other. With the correct gases and the correct conditions, the idea is that those reactions should produce the same materials found in Titan's atmosphere.
But, although the scientists knew something about Titan's atmosphere -- for example, that the two most plentiful gases are nitrogen and methane -- the exact proportions and other materials are unknown. Previous experiments yielded nothing that matched the spectral signature seen by Cassini.
It was when the scientists added a third gas -- benzene, another identified component of Titan's atmosphere -- that the mixture started to take shape. They then extrapolated what other gases are likely to be present based on the presence of benzene -- closely related hydrocarbons known as aromatics.
When an aromatic containing nitrogen was added to the recipe, the spectral features matched up well with the distinctive spectral signature captured by Cassini -- the closest anyone has come to date to recreating the moon's atmosphere.
'Now we can say that this material has a strong aromatic character, which helps us understand more about the complex mixture of molecules that makes up Titan's haze,' said planetary scientist Melissa Trainer.
The recipe isn't perfect yet, and NASA's next step is to continue to tweak it until it's as close as it can possibly get to Cassini's spectrometer data. Alas, no one from NASA has actually described the smell -- but it's probably not a healthy idea for a human to take a big whiff of that particular chemical cocktail.
Entities 0 Name: NASA Count: 5 1 Name: Cassini Count: 4 2 Name: Saturn Count: 2 3 Name: moon Count: 2 4 Name: Melissa Trainer Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1vuIfYn Title: NASA Sniffs Out An Aromatic Molecule In Titan's Atmosphere Description: You may wonder what an alien world looks like, what its atmosphere might hold, whether its terrain is similar to Earth's or even if it holds extra-terrestrial life, but have you ever wondered what it might smell like? That's just what NASA scientists have done by coming up with a recipe to figure out the aromatics of Saturn's largest moon, Titan...
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