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Liquid methane¹-filled canyons² hundreds of meters deep with walls as steep as ski slopes etch the surface of Titan, researchers report in a new study. The new findings provide the first direct evidence of these features on Saturn³'s largest moon, and could give scientists insights into Titan's origins and similar geologic⁴ processes on Earth, according to the study's authors. New Cassini radar⁵ observations of Titan's north pole depict⁶ cavernous gorges⁷ a little less than a kilome-ter (less than half a mile) wide with walls up to 570 meters (1870 feet) tall -- about 30 meters (98 feet) higher than New York's Freedom Tower. The eight canyons branch off from Vid Flumina, a more than 400-kilometer (249-mile) long river flowing into Titan's second-largest sea, Ligeia Mare⁸. The new data confirm the canyons are filled with flowing methane -- a feature researchers had suspected but not directly observed, according to the study's authors. 

 

The new findings suggest the canyons were likely carved by liquid methane draining into Vid Flumina, a process similar to the carving⁹ of river gorges on Earth, according to the study's authors. The new re-search could help scientists better understand these geological processes, they said. 

 

"These are processes we need to totally understand because they can shed deeper light on our own planet," said Valerio Poggiali, a planetary scientist at the La Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, and lead author of the new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

 

NASA's Cassini spacecraft, launched in 1997, has granted scientists their first up-close look at Saturn, its rings and moons. Cassini's observations of Titan -- with its many Earth-like features -- have given sci-entists a glimpse of what our planet might have been like millions of years ago, according to NASA.

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