Around 4:30 A.M. eastern standard time on the morning of January 14, 2005, a flying-saucer-shaped object named Huygens will encounter an atmosphere for the first time since it left Earth, in 1997. In that atmosphere's thin, cold gas, the object, roughly nine feet in diameter and hurtling through space at 13,500 miles an hour, will make its first palpable contact with Titan, the largest moon of the planet Saturn. Ever so slightly, the friction with Titan's atmosphere will slow down the spacecraft, triggering a complex sequence of events that, in the ensuing few hours, should unravel some of the secrets of what could be the most exotic environment in our solar system. By all signs to date, that environment could be dominated by complex organic molecules and seas made of liquefied hydrocarbons. A day at a Titanian beach would be spent freezing to death under hazy skies made of methane and nitrogen, a scenario similar to what would have taken place on the early Earth (though our young planet probably wasn't freezing).
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