Saturn’s icy moon Titan is like an alternate-reality twin of Earth, with itsfair share of mysteries.
It even has a dense atmosphere, seasonal weather and rainfall.
Titan seems alien, but it shares many organic molecules with our planet.
But it’s a much colder place.
Runcevski’s “Titan-in-a-glass” aimed to do just that.
The team combined features of Titan, such as its plunging temperatures and characteristic liquids, within glass cylinders.
Then, they added two molecules, acetonitrile and propionitrile, present in the moon’s atmosphere.
Mixing the molecules together produced a somewhat surprising result.
The compounds' properties were adjusted, too.
Titan boasts freezing temperatures dropping down to -290 degrees Fahrenheit.
But that didn’t stop high temperature polymorphs from forming.
The result shows it’s not just temperature affecting Titan’s chemistry.
“On Titan, we cannot assume that these molecules will be alone,” Runcevski said.
“Titan is a world.
