Surf’s Up on Titan: Unveiling Waves on Saturn’s Mysterious Moon

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_06] This is Space News Today, Series 29, Episode 123, broadcast on the 14th of October, 2026. Coming up on Space Time... Surfs Up on Titan! How Planet Earth rock and rolls on its axis! And scientists have glue balls! All that and more coming up on Space Time.

[00:00:21] [SPEAKER_01] Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary.

[00:00:24] [SPEAKER_06] A new study suggests that lakes and seas on the Saturnian moon Titan can produce 3-metre surf under the right conditions.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_06] The findings, reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets, are based on a new wave model developed by scientists at MIT. The Planet Waves computer program is the first to capture the full dynamics of waves and what it takes to whip them up under different planetary conditions. It indicates that while on a calm day here on Earth, a light breeze might barely ripple the surface of a lake, on Saturn's largest moon Titan, a similar mild wind would kick up 3-metre-tall waves.

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_06] The authors applied the model to predict how waves would behave on planetary bodies that might host liquid lakes and oceans, including the liquid methane and ethane seas of Titan, as well as water on ancient Mars and hypothetical oceans on 3 exoplanets beyond our solar system. The new computer program shows that a gentle wind would be enough to stir up huge waves on Titan, where lakes are filled with light liquid hydrocarbons.

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_06] Now in contrast, it would take hurricane-forced winds to barely move the surface of a lake on the exoplanet 55 Cancri e, which is thought to be a lava world covered in hot, dense, molten liquid rock. The study's lead author, Andrew Ashton from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, says on Earth, we get accustomed to certain wave dynamics. But with this model, we can see how waves behave on other planets, planets with different liquids, different atmospheres and even different gravity, all of which can challenge our intuition.

[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_06] Ashton and colleagues were especially keen to see how waves would form on Titan. This massive moon is the only planetary body in our solar system, other than Earth, that's known to currently host liquid lakes. And anywhere, where there's a liquid surface with wind blowing over it, there's the potential to make waves. To tighten the tantalizing thing is that we don't actually have any direct observations of what these waves would look like. So we don't know for sure what kind of waves could exist there. And that's where this new model comes in.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_06] It gives us an idea. When wind blows over water, it creates waves that can be strong enough to carve out coastlines and redistribute sediment brought to the coast by rivers. Through this process, waves can be a significant force in shaping and reshaping landscape over time. The authors were wondering how waves might behave on other worlds where gravity, atmospheric conditions and liquid compositions could be very different from what's found here on Earth.

[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_06] Now there have been previous attempts to try and predict how gravity affects waves on other planets, but they don't quantify other factors, such as the composition of the liquid that's making the waves. But this new computer program takes all that into account, not just the planet's gravity, but also the properties of its surface liquid, such as density, viscosity and even surface tension, how resistant the liquid is to rippling. The authors also incorporated the effect of the planet's atmospheric pressure

[00:03:32] [SPEAKER_06] and how a planet's liquid surface would evolve in response to winds of a given speed. Ashton and colleagues first tested their new model using wave data here on Earth, using measurements of waves that were collected by buoys across Lake Superior over a 20 year span. They found their model, which took into account Earth's gravity, the composition of liquid water and the atmospheric conditions, was able to accurately predict the wind speeds it would take to generate waves across the lake, and how high those waves would grow for a given wind strength.

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_06] They then applied their model to predict how waves would behave on other planetary bodies that are known to host liquid on their surface. So they first looked at Titan, where NASA's Cassini mission previously captured radar images of lake formations and where NASA's new Dragonfly mission will soon go. The authors used the new model to calculate the Moon's wave dynamics given its gravity, atmospheric pressure and liquid composition. And they found that on Titan, it's surprisingly easy to make waves.

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_06] See, the relatively light liquid combined with low gravity and atmospheric pressure means that even a gentle wind can stir up huge waves. To you and me, the result would look like really tall waves but moving in slow motion. If you were standing on the shore of this lake, you might feel only a soft breeze, but you'd see these enormous waves heading towards you, which you simply wouldn't expect to see under those conditions on Earth. The authors then considered wave activity on ancient Mars,

[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_06] when the red planet was a warmer, wetter world. Mars hosts many impact basins that were once filled with water. Before the planet's atmosphere dissipated, the water evaporated away and Mars was transformed into a freeze-dried desert. Now one of these basins they looked at was Jezero Crater, which is currently being explored by NASA's Perseverance rover. With the new model, the authors were able to show that as the red planet's atmosphere gradually disappeared, reducing its pressure over time,

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_06] it would have required stronger and stronger winds to make the same sized waves. And beyond our solar system, they applied the model to three different exoplanets. The first, LHS1140b, is a cool super-Earth colder and larger than our planet. It hosts liquid water, though because it's so large, it also has stronger gravity. And the model showed that the same wind on Earth would generate much smaller waves of water on a super-Earth, due to that difference in gravity.

[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_06] Meanwhile, on Kepler's 1649b, a Venus-like planet, which has gravity similar to Earth, but with leaks of sulfuric acid, which are about twice as dense as water is, the authors found that it would take strong winds to make even a ripple. And the effect was even more pronounced on the third exoplanet, 55 Cancri e, a lava world that has both higher gravity than Earth and also much denser, more viscous surface liquid. Scientists suspect the planet hosts oceans of liquefied rock.

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_06] In this environment, the model Britix hurricane-force winds on Earth, about 140 km per hour, would generate only very small waves just a few centimeters high. The new models also helped answer long-standing questions of planetary landscape formation. See, unlike Earth, where there's often a delta where a river meets the coast, on Titan, there are very few things that look like river deltas, even though there are plenty of rivers and coastlines. The question is, could waves be responsible for this?

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_06] NASA's Dragonfly mission will launch in 2028, arriving in the Titanian system in 2034. The car-sized nuclear-powered rotocopter will fly autonomously to numerous locations, focusing on the Shangri-La dune field and the Cilic impact crater. It'll use a mass spectrometer, a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer, a suite of cameras in a drill system, to study this strange world's prebiotic chemistry, its surface organic compounds and planetary habitability.

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_06] This report on Dragonfly from NASA TV.

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_00] NASA is pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and expanding the limits of technology. Our next New Frontiers mission, Dragonfly, will explore Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Dragonfly will be the first drone lander with the capability to fly over a hundred miles through Titan's thick atmosphere. Titan is unlike any other place in our solar system, and the most comparable to early Earth.

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_00] The instruments on board will help us investigate organic chemistry and search for chemical signatures of past or even present life.

[00:07:58] [SPEAKER_03] So we have, on Titan, opportunity to observe the processes that were present on early Earth when life began to form, and possibly even conditions that may be able to harbor life today.

[00:08:10] [SPEAKER_02] One of the things that is particularly exciting about this mission is that we can do the very detailed chemical measurements, but be able to put them in the context of Titan as a system.

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_01] It's the science that really motivates us to do this exciting and difficult mission.

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_06] And in that report from NASA TV, we heard from the agency's administrator, Jim Bridenstine, the director of NASA's planetary science division, Laurie Glaze, Dragonfly principal investigator, Elizabeth Turtle, and the associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate, Thomas Aboukin. This is Space Time. Still to come. How planet Earth rock and rolls on its axis, and scientists have glue balls. All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_06] Ancient sea level changes have provided new evidence showing that planet Earth experienced episodes of what's known as rapid true polar wander during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Because the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, its rotational axis is naturally balanced by the distribution of mass around the planet. So when tectonic and metal processes like continental drift redistribute mass,

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_06] this balance can be disturbed, and that causes the solid Earth to reorient itself relative to its spin axis, and that's the phenomena which scientists call true polar wander. During true polar wander, the crust and mantle effectively shift relative to the Earth's spin axis, while the core and climber belts remain tied to the axis. So this means, for example, that a region near the North Pole can end up near the equator, and an area near the equator can shift upwards to the pole.

[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_06] When scientists study true polar wander, they usually look at evidence of ancient magnetic fields locked in rocks. That's because large rapid episodes of true polar wander can produce major changes in climate, the biosphere, and the Earth's magnetic field. However, determining whether rapid true polar wander has occurred in the past is challenging, because tectonic motion can mimic true polar wander signatures. And previous studies have viewed a conflicting interpretation from negligible or slow true polar wander

[00:10:32] [SPEAKER_06] to brief episodes of rapid large-scale reorientation. The new findings, reported in the journal Science, refute the view that true polar wander is negligible or persistently slow. It shows that this provides an episodic control on sea level change, and possibly on other global, environmental, and biological dynamics. To determine the truth, the study's lead author, Matthew Domier from the University of Oslo,

[00:10:57] [SPEAKER_06] developed a new way to detect true polar wander by examining ancient sea level changes. Because true polar wander can cause predictable, global, spanning patterns of continental flooding and exposure, Domier and colleagues analyzed maps of these changes at 10 million year intervals, and they used statistical modeling to identify patterns consistent with rapid true polar wander over the past 320 million years. When our planet's solid outer layers shift relative to its spin axis,

[00:11:25] [SPEAKER_06] the oceans respond faster than what the solid Earth can change shape. And this causes relative sea levels to rise in two opposite regions and fall into others. And finding that distinct high and low pattern across ancient maps helped the authors confirm when rapid true polar wander actually occurred. Their analysis revealed four intervals with significant true polar wander signals. One was during the Oligocene and Miocene period between 30 and 20 million years ago.

[00:11:55] [SPEAKER_06] Another happened in the mid-Cretaceous between 190 million years ago. There was one in the late Jurassic in early Cretaceous between 150 and 140 million years ago. And another during the early Jurassic between 200 and 190 million years ago. The new findings broadly corroborate earlier paleomagnetic and plate motion studies, which have already suggested that rapid true polar wander is real. This is space-time.

[00:12:22] [SPEAKER_06] Still to come, the discovery of glue balls. And later in the science report, new warnings about the dangers of daylight saving. And it's actually worse than you think. All that and more still to come on Space Time. Physicists have finally discovered long elusive glue balls,

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_06] a substance made entirely of elemental particles called gluons. The new findings reported at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Brazil is the strongest evidence yet confirming the existence of this exotic form of matter, composed entirely, or at least almost entirely, of particles carrying the strong nuclear force. The discovery, by scientists from the International BEARS III collaboration at the Beijing Electron-Positron Collider, was able to reach a significance of 11.7 sigma.

[00:13:17] [SPEAKER_06] Now in particle physics, the gold standard threshold for the confirmation of a new fact is 5 sigma. Gluons are force particles, which carry the strong nuclear force, which is the most powerful of the four fundamental forces in nature, roughly 100 times stronger than electromagnetism, and 100 trillion trillion trillion times stronger than gravity. The strong nuclear force confines quarks inside protons and neutrons, and it binds these and other hadrons together inside atomic nuclei,

[00:13:46] [SPEAKER_06] overcoming the electrostatic repulsion of the positively charged protons. But the strong force only acts over extremely short distances, typically between just 1 and 3 femtometers, dropping off rapidly past the edge of an atomic nucleus. The thing is, quantum chromodynamics predicts that gluons could attract one another and bind together independently. And that's where this new discovery comes in. It follows a comprehensive analysis of more than 100 billion particle collisions,

[00:14:13] [SPEAKER_06] showing that a particle designated as X2370 is dominated by a glueball component. Because gluons themselves carry a color charge, they can stick together to form a stable particle of pure self-interacting force, without any valence quarks inside. By the way, color change? Well that's a property of quarks and gluons that dictates how they interact through the strong nuclear force in particle physics. It acts sort of similar to an electric charge, but it comes in three types, labelled red, blue and green,

[00:14:42] [SPEAKER_06] instead of just positive and negative. By the way, those names red, blue and green aren't really colors, they're just used for convenience sake. The authors first detected the X2370 particle back in 2011, and spent the next 15 years mapping its properties and finding its spin parity. The new data reported to the Institute of High Energy Physics confirmed that X2370 decays in a mathematical flavor singlet signature. That means it breaks down evenly across particle types

[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_06] without showing any preference for a specific quark flavor, a fundamental constant in a particle-borne puliatic gluons. Quarks also come in three color types of red, blue and green, as well as six flavors, up, down, top, bottom or beauty, charm and strange. Ordinary subatomic mass is determined heavily by the quarks inside them. But a gluons mass emerges almost entirely out of the vacuum state kinetic energy of the strong nuclear force itself.

[00:15:38] [SPEAKER_06] Proving that massless force mediators can bind together generating measurable mass and the quantum mechanics of the quantum mechanics and the quantum mechanics dictates that the X2370 state likely mixes a small percentage of ordinary quarks into the structure at roughly an 80-20 ratio, the dominance of the glue ball component represents an historic shift in science's understanding of these basic building blocks of the universe.

[00:16:05] [SPEAKER_06] It's a fascinating discovery and will open a new window into quantum dynamics. This is Space Time. And time now to take another brief look at some of the other stories

[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_06] making news in science this week with a science report. A new study says that sticking with standard time is more likely better overall for a population's health than swapping to daylight savings time. The findings reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal looked at how different Canadian regions might act if they were to switch to just a single time zone for the year. Several regions in the country considering ditching the time changing between summer and winter and the authors say there's evidence that time zone changes

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_06] are linked to short-term health and safety risks. The authors analysed existing research on the effects of daylight savings versus standard time to figure out which would be more suitable to keep permanently. The transition at daylight saving time disrupts circadian rhythms and sleep-wake cycles leading to acute cardiovascular stress including a notable spike in heart attacks and ischemic strokes, mood disturbances and fatigue-related accidents including a 6% increase in fatal accidents.

[00:17:30] [SPEAKER_06] It also induces a sort of mini jet lag impairing cognitive performance, judgment and elevating the rates of mood disturbances, irritability and missed appointments. They say while some people may prefer a permanent daylight savings time to be introduced because it allows them more daylight in their recreational time after work, standard time is generally more beneficial for human health, especially for those whose mood and mental health are particularly affected by dark mornings.

[00:17:58] [SPEAKER_06] A new study claims too much exposure to light during night can influence the shape of your heart. The findings reported in the European Heart Journal could explain a known link between light pollution and heart disease. Looking into this link, the authors asked 11,000 UK adults to wear light sensors on their wrists for a week to see how dark their sleep environment was. Three years later, the participants underwent a heart scan using MRI. The authors say the scan results for the participants

[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_06] who were exposed to the most amount of light at night were remarkably different. There was evidence of changes in the structure of three of the four heart chambers and their hearts didn't appear to be flexing as effectively during each beat. The researchers say these are all signs of stress or injury and could lead to a weaker heart or even heart failure. Paleontologists have discovered the first ever Diplodocus dinosaur fossils outside North America. The discovery, which includes 14 exceptionally well-preserved tail vertebra

[00:18:57] [SPEAKER_06] and several chevron bones, were unearthed at a dig site in Spain. Diplodocus are members of the iconic Cerepod dinosaur family, the ones with elephant-like bodies and legs, a long long tail at one end and a long neck and small head at the other. Just think of Fred Flintstone's pet Dino. They can reach lengths of over 25 metres. Until now, all confirmed Diplodocus specimens have come exclusively from the Morrison formation in the western United States.

[00:19:25] [SPEAKER_06] Its presence in Europe provides compelling evidence that dinosaurs could migrate between North America and Europe during the late Triassic period 150 million years ago, likely crossing temporary land bridges that emerged as the proto-North Atlantic Ocean underwent regressive phases. A new study warns that people in the early stages of psychosis may be more vulnerable to AI chatbots making their condition worse. A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_06] claims AI psychosis is more common in people experiencing their first episode of the mental illness. The study used health records to look at the role AI chatbots played in people's psychotic symptoms. They found that around 0.013% of patients with psychosis had records showing their psychosis worsened when they used chatbots. The authors say psychosis worsening interactions with AI chatbots were most common among patients experiencing their first episode of psychosis,

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_06] which suggests that the early phase of the psychotic illness may leave people especially vulnerable. Beijing says it now expects to have a fully combat-ready robotic army within the next five to ten years. China is now producing tens of thousands of humanoids annually. Beijing is now actively testing and integrating humanoid robots, quadruped robotic dogs, and unmanned ground and aerial vehicles into the People's Liberation Army.

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_06] Chinese state media and the PLA have already showcased humanoid super soldiers, including prototypes from Unitree and UBtech, which are capable of autonomous actions while navigating stairs, rubble and rough terrain, participating in tactical drills and urban combat exercises. They've also demonstrated armed B-1 series quadrupeds carrying automatic rifles, grenade launchers and even rocket launchers. While they're now being deployed into operational situations like police patrols,

[00:21:17] [SPEAKER_06] most current machines still face limitations, including battery life limits of just two to three hours. Nevertheless, the recent robotic Olympics set numerous human-beating records, including the 100 and 400-meter sprints and the high jump. With the details of just where our robotic future is going, we're joined by technology editor Alex Sahar of Reut from TechAdvice.live.

[00:21:39] [SPEAKER_05] We have seen these robots from China running marathons. There's a story of this robot barista in China, in one of their cities. They did 202 coffees in an hour. They did it very smoothly. The people were impressed how their puppet tasted.

[00:21:54] [SPEAKER_04] They turned up, thought they had to wait in a long queue and before they knew it, they had their coffee. I think what people are more concerned about that

[00:21:59] [SPEAKER_06] is the scenes that we've seen where these robots are running at really high speeds, much faster than a human can. They're jumping higher than a person can. And we've already seen robot dogs fitted with guns.

[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_04] This is sort of the area we're heading into now, isn't it? Well, it is. And you've got both Elon Musk and all the Chinese manufacturers

[00:22:16] [SPEAKER_05] racing ahead to try and create robots that are superhuman. They can run faster, they can jump higher, as you said. But, you know, we've also seen the robots that have run at the end of the Chinese marathon and somehow tripped and then fell into, you know, broke into a million pieces. Or robots that have reached the finish line, but instead of stopping, they kept on going, ran into a wall and started convulsing on the floor and fell apart. Again, people are trying very hard to accelerate this technology and to make it an android that is indistinguishable from a human, like we've seen in all the science fiction movies and books by Isomov and all the rest.

[00:22:44] [SPEAKER_05] But it's still going to take a decade or two before we get to true, and potentially longer, but this true dexterity. Robots that can truly be creative. Robots that can feel at the moment AI can fake empathy, fake feelings, fake concern and seem very sincere. But at the moment the robot can't feel anything. Now, is that going to change in the future? Yes, inevitably it will. But at the moment, yes, the robot called Neo, if you watch the video on YouTube eight minutes long, I mean, it's very slow. It can vacuum, it can clean your room, it can unload the dishwasher and put things in the dryer.

[00:23:14] [SPEAKER_05] But it's so slow and funky. It's like watching a 33.6K modem. You'll be able to buy robots by the end of this decade that will be a home robot, will be the roads of the robot. But the robots that you'll truly trust to give you a hygiene at the dentist,

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_04] cook your food to perfection, I mean, that's still some years away and potentially decades away. I see the prices getting lower. $20,000 or something in the US. That's the price of a used car. Well, it is. But wait until those robots are $2,000 at your local Harvey Norman. That's Alex Zahar of Royce from techadvice.life.

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