What happens if you swim in methane?

The density of liquid methane is much, much lower than water, so you wouldn’t be as buoyant. Swimming on Earth is easy because humans aren’t as dense as water. In Titan’s lakes, your body would be much more dense than the liquid methane you’d be attempting to swim in. It would feel as if you were made of stone.

What happened to the methane lake on Titan?

The lake disappeared during Titan’s summer, when the amount of energy being transferred into the lake was higher than at other times, so the lake must have evaporated, not frozen. During this time, the kinetic energy of the methane molecules in the lake was increasing, but the lake was still liquid.

Can Titan be set on fire?

Titan is another matter. There’s not much of any oxygen gas there, so there isn’t a way for fire as we know it to burn. Having an atmosphere of methane isn’t dangerous. It’s Earth that has the dangerous air!

Is liquid methane dangerous?

Safety. Methane is nontoxic, yet it is extremely flammable and may form explosive mixtures with air. Methane is also an asphyxiant if the oxygen concentration is reduced to below about 16\% by displacement, as most people can tolerate a reduction from 21\% to 16\% without ill effects.

Does methane freeze on Titan?

“We now know it’s possible to get methane-and-ethane-rich ice freezing over on Titan in thin blocks that congeal together as it gets colder — similar to what we see with Arctic sea ice at the onset of winter,” said Jason Hofgartner, first author on the paper and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of …

Why can methane evaporate on Titan?

Because of the shallower temperature gradient in Titan’s troposphere, cloud formation causes the methane concentration to drop from the surface to the tropopause by only a factor of three, some two orders of magnitude less than the drop in water concentration from Earth’s surface to tropopause.

Would Titan explode if you lit a match?

You’re quite correct that Titan wouldn’t blow up if you struck a match because there is no free oxygen present. In fact the match wouldn’t even light.

Is the moon Titan flammable?

On Titan, the clouds and rain are formed of liquid methane. On Earth, methane is a flammable gas, but Titan has no oxygen in its atmosphere that could support combustion. Also, the temperatures on Titan are so cold — minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 149 degrees Celsius) — that the methane can form liquid.

Why does it rain methane on Titan?

Lakes on Titan’s surface are made of methane too. Scientists believe that cryovolcanoes (ice volcanoes) erupt and spew methane into Titan’s atmosphere, which then rains down onto the surface, forming lakes. Liquid methane is the dominant force behind Titan’s weather and surface erosion.

Does Titan have liquid methane?

Titan’s surface is sculpted by flowing methane and ethane, which carves river channels and fills great lakes with liquid natural gas. No other world in the solar system, aside from Earth, has that kind of liquid activity on its surface.

Is white-methane rafting possible?

But white-water rafting through these canyons might be a bit difficult…because the lakes are “methane” and not “water” (obviously). But white-methane rafting will be difficult as well, because the density of liquid methane is only about half the density of water.

What are Titan’s lakes?

Artist rendering of Titan’s lakes. (Credit: Karl Kofoed) Radar images from the Cassini spacecraft revealed a land of lakes in Titan’s northern hemisphere; these lakes are about the size of North America’s Great Lakes.

What would it be like to walk on Titan?

( Several others have very thin atmospheres) And I mean “thick.” Titan’s atmospheric pressure is about 60 percent greater than the Earth’s, so walking on Titan will be roughly the same as walking on the bottom of a swimming pool. Except that you won’t get a ton of water up your nose.

Can you go swimming on Titan?

As a result, paddlers will have a hard time churning the methane enough to propel the craft when needed. Similarly, if you want to go swimming on Titan, you may have a bit of a problem; you’ll probably need to have a special apparatus in order to fling enough of the thin fluid to move yourself.