Wed June 13, 2012 An Unexpected Discovery: A Tropical Methane
Lake On Saturn's Titan Scientists said it was an "unexpected"
discovery: There's a liquid methane filled lake near the equator
of Saturn's moon Titan. Scientists had seen lakes on Titan
before, but they didn't expect them near the equator because
they believed the intensity of the sun at those latitudes would
evaporate the liquid. "This discovery was completely unexpected
because lakes are not stable at tropical latitudes," planetary
scientist Caitlin Griffith of the University of Arizona, who led
the discovery team, told the AP. "By measuring reflected
sunlight from Titan's surface and atmosphere, the international
Cassini spacecraft detected a dark region near the landing site
of Huygens, a companion probe that parachuted to Titan's equator
in 2005. "Scientists said further analysis of the dark feature
suggests the presence of a 927-square-mile hydrocarbon lake —
twice as big as Lake Champlain, a freshwater lake that borders
upstate New York and