Saturn's Moon Titan Has an Ocean as Salty as Earth's Dead Sea

NASA's Cassini has uncovered some startling new findings when it comes to Saturn's moon, Titan. It turns out that the massive sea within the moon may be as salty as Earth's very own Dead Sea.

"Titan continues to prove itself as an endlessly fascinating world, and with our long-lived Cassini spacecraft, we're unlocking new mysteries as fast as we solve old ones," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist who was not involved in the study, in a news release.

The recent findings come from a study of gravity and topography data that was collected during Cassini's repeated flybys of Titan during the past 10 years. Using this data, scientists created a model structure for Titan. This, in turn, resulted in an improved understanding of the moon's outer ice shell.

Titan has a rigid icy shell that's in the process of freezing solid. Yet beneath this icy shell is a vast ocean. More specifically, researchers found that a relatively high density was needed for Titan's inner ocean in order to explain gravity data that was collected. This, in turn, indicates that the ocean is an extremely salty brine of water mixed with dissolved salts that are likely composed of sulfur, sodium and potassium.

"This is an extremely salty ocean by Earth standards," said Guiseppe Mitri, the lead author of the new study, in a news release. "Knowing this may change the way we view this ocean as a possible abode for present-day life, but conditions might have been very different in the past."

The findings reveal a bit more about this massive ocean that lurks beneath the surface of Titan. Currently, scientists plan to continue their studies when it comes to this moon in order to learn a bit more about it. The findings could, in turn, tell researchers a bit more about other worlds in our universe.

The findings are published in the journal Icarus.