Craggy coastlines seem to have been carved out by waves across the methane seas and lakes of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan – and a NASA mission launching in 2028 might give us a better look.

Titan is the one physique within the photo voltaic system other than Earth that has liquid on its floor, within the type of lakes and oceans made up of hydrocarbons like liquid methane, ethane and different natural molecules. Scientists suppose that winds in Titan’s thick nitrogen-rich ambiance would possibly produce rippling waves on these lakes, however these have by no means been immediately noticed as a result of the moon’s ambiance is simply too hazy to see by.

Now, Rose Palermo on the US Geological Survey in Florida and her colleagues have discovered that the form of Titan’s coastlines are greatest defined by the existence of waves on the ocean floor which have eroded them over time.

Palermo and her crew seemed on the coasts round Titan’s largest seas and lakes, just like the Kraken Mare and Ligeia Mare, and in contrast them with coastlines on Earth whose origin we perceive, comparable to Lake Rotoehu in New Zealand, which was initially made by flooding and later eroded from waves. They then created completely different simulations of Titan’s oceans, wherein coastal erosion got here from waves or simply from dissolving on the edges.

They discovered that the photographs of Titan’s shoreline had been greatest represented by the simulation with waves, and bore a resemblance to wave-eroded coastlines on Earth.

“Though it’s tentative, I discover it very thrilling,” says Ingo Mueller-Wodarg at Imperial School London. Whereas we haven’t seen the waves themselves, that is very sturdy proof that they exist, he says, and provides to a big physique of oblique proof, such because the presence of dune-like structures.

The one option to actually confirm that waves are there can be to ship a spacecraft to the floor, says Mueller-Wodarg, comparable to NASA’s deliberate Dragonfly drone mission as a result of launch in 2028.

Learning Titan’s shoreline may also assist us examine how the primary coasts on Earth shaped, says Palermo. “Titan is a novel laboratory for coastal processes as a result of it’s untouched by folks and vegetation. It’s actually a spot the place we will examine the coast as a bodily course of alone.”