DISCOVERIES
Falling on the Moon
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is known for its tangerine-colored skies and nearly six million square miles of large, dark dunes that cover its surface.
Some of them are as big as the massive dunes found on Earth, but how they formed has been a topic of debate among astronomers.
Now, a new study is suggesting that Titan’s dark sand mounds are the product of comets and other space objects that fell on the moon millions of years ago, Science News reported.
A research team based their findings on a popular theory on how our solar system evolved some four billion years ago: Before they took their current positions, giant planets migrated from where they formed.
During this migration, the planets and their moons passed through the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system packed with comets, rocks and dwarf planets. Crossing this area would have bombarded them with comets, space dust and other space debris, according to the researchers.
They ran a series of computer simulations on how Saturn, Jupiter and their moons evolved during this period to estimate the scale of the impacts they received.
Their findings showed that dust and the impactors could have delivered enough material to form Titan’s dark dunes. Researchers also noticed that this material also struck Jupiter’s moon Calisto and another Saturnine moon Iapetus – both of which have large patches of dark material.
Still, astronomers have suggested that Iapetus’ dark patches emerged from somewhere else, further complicating the origin of Titan’s sands.
The authors and others hope that NASA’s upcoming Dragonfly mission to Titan – scheduled to launch in 2028 – will provide some answers about the lunar dunes.
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