Geologic Puzzle: What Explains Titan's Low Crater Count?
Friday, July 20, 2012 - 11:02
in Astronomy & Space
Compared to most moons in our solar system, Titan is relatively smooth. It has few craters but Titan is around four billion years old, about the same age as the rest of the solar system - so it isn't an age issue. Yet if you went by the number of craters, its surface looks much younger, between 100 million and one billion years old.In 2004, radar images from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft penetrated the atmosphere of Titan and revealed an icy terrain carved out over millions of years by rivers of liquid methane, similar to how rivers of water have etched into Earth's rocky continents but that opened up the mystery about its geologic past. read more