Scientist for a Day

Chaei Baek

Grade: 11

School: North London Collegiate School, Jeju

City: Jeju-do

Topic: Triton

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"Triton, an often-forgotten moon, is the largest moon of Neptune. The voyager 2, the one and only spacecraft that landed on Triton, brought back photographs of the ice formations, impact craters, and general surface characteristics. The unique traits and mysteries that the moon Triton holds thus intrigues oneself further research, which has led into an engaging conclusion about what might be discovered in Triton, the most extraordinary moon in the solar system.

Interestingly, Triton is an irregular moon, a moon that follows an inclined retrograde orbit. Though Jupiter and Saturn's Moon also have a clockwise orbit, for example, Triton’s orbit is especially unique, due to the fact that these moons are much smaller in comparison with Triton. Also, Triton’s revolution is a nearly perfect circle with its eccentricity being almost zero. A new force acting on Triton may have perhaps caused this gigantic mass to have an extremely circular orbit.

Most striking of all, Triton in fact, shares several traits with Pluto, which arouses an assumption that perhaps the phenomenons that happen in Pluto might also happen in Triton. Several theories have been suggested, however, to oneself, it seems that they must have shared a common origin: The Kuiper belt. Titon is only a few hundred kilometers larger than Pluto, with its mass being nearly identical, thus as well as its density. They also share similar surface materials, such as nitrogen, methane and Carbon monoxide, which amazingly falls right to the hypothesis that they might have come from an identical origin. Though the process of resurfacing is different from one another, the fact that both landmasses resurface through volcanism, one using the pulls on the dwarf planet’s surface(pluto) and the other have geysers of liquid water(Titron), these two planets are amazingly similar. Considering the idea that pluto has a rocky surface area as well as a hazy atmosphere, through investigating the components of the sediments and the chemicals in the atmosphere, it might lead into an intriguing explanation on why these two planets are peculiarly similar.

Finally, the discovery of organisms of outer space. Triton, having an, though unstable, atmosphere, might hold organisms that are yet to be found. Titan, having a Radioactive core, that constantly decays at a high rate, is enough to heat and power convection in a subsurface ocean of water that lies just beneath the crust of Titan. Many life is capable of form with a suiting atmosphere, warmth, and water, which even heightens the possibility of finding life on Titan. The fact that the geysers contain organic matter which are also organic components of the ocean such as hydrogen. These organic compounds hold high potential to create life, which oneself wishes to find in the future years. Also, the Titan being the only moon in the Solar system that has a fully developed atmosphere that contains various gases which are also rich in organic matter, is considered chemically active. This also triggers that idea of life living in Titan."