News in Science › Space and Astronomy

Saturn moon awash with oil

Saturn moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, scientists report.

But this massive reserve is at least 1.2 billion kilometres away from us, on a tiny inhospitable world where on a warm day it's minus 179°C.

Researchers from the European Space Agency (ESA), report their findings about Saturn's orange moon in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Their results suggest that methane and ethane fall like rain from the sky, forming massive lakes and seas.

And complex organic molecules called tholins are believed to make up Titan's oily dunes.

"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material. It's a giant factory of organic chemicals," says scientist Dr Ralph Lorenz, Johns Hopkins University.

Lorenz is a member of a team poring over radar data sent back by the US space probe Cassini, which dispatched a European probe, Huygens, to the moon's surface.

Understanding Titan's carbon-chemistry cookbook may unlock knowledge as to how Earth's carbon-based life began, the researchers hope.