Titan scientist: 'We've got a flammable world'

CNET News.com: "Saturn's moon Titan is covered by 'dirty' ice ridges and seas of liquid natural gas, a team of scientists have said after a week of research into data from the space probe Huygens. After a seven-year piggyback trip from Earth on board the Saturn probe Cassini, the European-designed Huygens separated in December and fell toward Titan, entering the moon's atmosphere last Friday.

The probe, part of a $3 billion (1.6 billion pound) joint mission involving NASA and the European and Italian space agencies, sent back readings on the moon's atmosphere, composition and landscape. Slowed by parachutes, Huygens took more than two hours to float to the icy surface, where it defied expectations of a quick death and continued to transmit for hours.

That surface, which scientists have said was the consistency of wet sand or even creme brulee, features ice rocks, channels and abundant indications of liquid from rain. The methane can exist in liquid form on Titan's surface because it is so cold, -290 degrees Fahrenheit (-179 degrees Celsius). Methane is also a key component in Titan's atmosphere, along with nitrogen. But as opposed to the Earth, the atmosphere of Titan lacks oxygen, which is essential to fire.

Titan is larger than the planet Mercury and, because of its atmosphere, a popular setting for science-fiction tales of human colonization and exploration. The Cassini-Huygens mission to study Saturn's rings and moons was launched in 1997 and is named after two 17th-century European astronomers: Christiaan Huygens, who discovered Saturn's rings and Titan, and Jean-Dominique Cassini, who discovered the planet's other four major moons."