For many years, planetary scientists have been trying to understand why there are so few impact craters on Titan and why they are so small. It looks like scientists have found the answer to this question. If they’re right, it reveals a lot about what’s going on in the depths of this strange, sea-covered world.

Titan’s atmosphere is so “thick” and dense that future astronauts will theoretically be able to fly there with wings like birds. Saturn’s largest moon and the second largest satellite of the Solar System, it is the only celestial body other than Earth covered with seas and oceans. They consist of liquid methane and exist because Titan is in a “cryogenic” environment so far from the Sun: it is about minus 180 degrees Celsius on its surface. In this context, a very interesting question came to the minds of scientists: How can traces of methane gas be observed in the atmosphere in such a severe cold?

There is another mystery: Titan’s craters. There are very few. The Cassini probe recently counted only about 90 fragments, and most aren’t even sure they’re traces of falling asteroids. At best, these nine-tens are surprisingly shallow for some unknown reason. This is surprising because the water ice crust is hidden under methane seas with a maximum depth of 300 meters. This crust in Titan’s “cryogenic” environment cannot be too hard and thus retain all traces of falling asteroids. More precisely, it was thought so until now, but now scientists have come up with an interesting idea.

In a new article in the publication Planetary Science Journal Planetary scientists from the University of Hawaii at Manoa (USA) have expressed the opinion that this ice shell may not be entirely ice. Maybe methane molecules are embedded in the crystal structure of the ice. Such “hybrid” chemical structures are called clathrates.

If Titan’s solid surface is covered with a multi-kilometer layer of methane clathrate, then they are a very good “blanket”: they retain Titan’s internal heat. This could then mean that the ice underneath is not a frozen solid at all, but rather represents a type of “porridge”.

It is even possible to gradually mix there: convection occurs. With such a program, it is quite logical that after a while the impact craters will be “erased” from the face of Titan.

Finally, and more interestingly, it is suspected that there is a global ocean of water beneath all that ice deep inside Titan; just as it is under the ice of Saturn’s other moon Enceladus, Jupiter’s moon Europa, and possibly some other celestial bodies in the Solar System. . The assumption is that most gasless worlds in the universe were initially provided with a water supply, and the whole question is in the future fate of this water, and this depends primarily on the distance to the star.

In the case of Titan, the so-called slow “ice flow” over the interior ocean gives rise to even bolder hopes: If there are any living organisms living in this ocean, the convection of the ice will lift them up, or signs of their presence.