Does Titan have a global liquid ocean or a slushy interior? · revision history
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Accepted · first revision · record
- Title
- Does Titan have a global liquid ocean or a slushy interior?
- Plain
- Cassini measured how much Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is squeezed by Saturn's tides, and the large response was first read as a sign of a hidden global ocean. A 2025 reanalysis argues instead for a slushy layer of ice with pockets of water.
- Precise
- Determine from Titan's tidal Love number $k2$, the tidal phase lag and the rotation state whether its interior contains a global liquid water ocean decoupled from the ice shell or a high-pressure-ice layer containing partial melt, and constrain the hydrosphere structure. An answer is an interior model that matches $k2$, dissipation and obliquity data and excludes the alternative.
- Settled by
- Independent measurements of Titan's tidal response and dissipation, for example from Dragonfly geophysics, together with consistent rheological models.
- Kind
- well-posed
- Answer type
- classification
- References
- (empty)
- Literature status
- contested
- Status note
- Petricca et al. 2025 (Nature) argued that strong tidal dissipation in Cassini data precludes a global subsurface ocean.
- Posed since
- (empty)