Using data from the Cassini
spacecraft, a team led by Joshua
Sebree, assistant professor at the
University of Northern Iowa, in the
US, has developed a new recipe
that captured the key ‘flavours’ of
Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.
The researchers mixed the two most
common gases in Titan—nitrogen
and methane—and then added
benzene and other chemicals. After
many attempts they managed to
develop a mixture that matched the
spectral signature registered by
Cassini.
“This is the closest anyone has
come, to our knowledge, to
recreating with lab experiments this
particular feature seen in the Cassini
data,” told Sebree to Gizmodo ’s
Jesus Diaz.
Titan sort of reeks of farts mixed
with methane. Melissa Trainer, who
works at NASA’ Goddard Centre,
explained that this moon smells of
aromatics, a subfamily of
hydrocarbons. Benzene belongs to
this family, and Trainer thinks it has
a “sweet, aromatic, gasoline-odour.”
The technique used is somewhat
similar to the process candy
manufacturers go through to create
flavours, explained Graham
Templeton at Geek , and can be
used to smell other planets.
Scientists will keep on using this
recipe to compile a list of planetary
smells and come up with what
Templeton described as an extra-
terrestrial smell profile.
0 comments:
Post a Comment