Share this story Close X Switch to Desktop Site  Saturn moon's
'buoyant' mountains perplex, befuddle  What if Titan's crust
isn't thin and brittle like an eggshell, but thick and rigid,
with huge floating mountains? What does that do to the
implications for ice volcanoes, subsurface seas, and life?
Saturn moon Titan reveals a hazy purple haze above its opaque
orange atmosphere as the international Cassini spacecraft flies
past Saturn's largest moon in 2004. A new study released August
28, 2013 suggests Titan's crust could be more rigid than
previously thought.  European Space Agency/AP  About these ads
Titan is tricky. The enormous moon of Saturn has topography like
Earth's, but it's made of ice instead of rock. Throw in an
opaque (and poisonous) atmosphere and a space probe that only
occasionally passes by to pick up a new swath of data, and you
have a truly mysterious planet. Er, moon.  "Titan has been a
hard planet to study," says Chuck Wood, a member of the Cassini
science team based at the Planetary S