# Lake on Titan! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 29, 2005, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lake-on-titan/310332 "2005-06-29T06:43:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lake-on-titan/310332/1 "2005-06-29T06:43:12Z")
If there’s oil, can we invade? 😉 > [@](#): > > Now, a dark surface marking at high southern latitude has come into focus and we are riveted. > Darker than anything immediately around it, its outline is familiar … like the fresh water shorelines of Earth we might have played on as children on a summer’s day. Titan summer, however, is -300 degrees F, and it is not water filling this striking feature. Located in the cloudiest region of Titan and presumably the most likely place to find depressions filled by methane rains, this feature, the size of Lake Ontario, has set imaginations aflame. Could this be one of the fabled bodies of liquid hydrocarbons believed, prior to Cassini, to dot the Titan landscape? Or even perhaps a dried lake-bed, once filled to brimming with the Titan equivalent of paint thinner, and now caked with the solid residue left behind by methane evaporation? ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lake-on-titan/310332/2 "2005-06-29T07:19:29Z")
Man, strap on some sliders\*, and think of the Hockey games you could have!!! \*Sliders, for those of you who don’t know, are genuine US Navy hamburgers, so called because they’re so hard, and greasy that they’ll slide even over non-skid. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lake-on-titan/310332/3 "2005-06-29T17:15:01Z")
Can we name it lake Bobbiepoopoo? ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lake-on-titan/310332/4 "2005-06-29T19:32:24Z")
Of course there’s a lake. Where else would the sirens live? ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lake-on-titan/310332/5 "2005-06-29T21:51:03Z")
Seriously, is there any reasonable chance of life in such a lake? Liquid methane is a solvent, after all, just like water - only colder. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2005, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lake-on-titan/310332/6 "2005-06-30T01:37:00Z")
Unknown. The problem with any of the organic solvents is that while they’ll dissolve non-polar molecules, they don’t do so well with molecules that are polar, or ionic. So, while sugar would dissolve in methane, salt won’t. Water has some rather unique qualities as a solvent that make it hard for most scientists to imagine life being based upon some other solvent. Of course, whether the scientists believe in it, or not, if non-water based life is out there, they’ll just have to go back to the drawing board. At the moment, I don’t know that we have a large enough sample size to say anything about whether life in such conditions is possible.