Pluto’s implications for a Snowball Titan

The current Cassini–Huygens Mission to the Saturn system provides compelling evidence that the present state of Titan’s dense atmosphere is unsustainable over the age of the Solar System. Instead, for most of its existence, Titan’s atmosphere might have been in a Snowball state, characterized by a colder surface and a smaller amount of atmospheric CH4, similar to that of Pluto or Triton. We run a 1-D chemical transport model and show that the rates of organic synthesis on a Snowball Titan are significantly slower than those on present-day Titan. The primary method of methane destruction—photosensitized dissociation in the stratosphere—is greatly dampened on Snowball Titan. The downward flux of higher-order molecules through the troposphere is dominated not by hydrocarbons such as ethane, as is the case on Titan today, but by nitriles. This result presents a testable observation that could confirm the Snowball Titan hypothesis. Because Pluto’s atmosphere is similar to Titan’s in composition, it serves as a basis for comparison. Future observations of Pluto by the New Horizons Mission will inform photochemical models of Pluto’s atmosphere and can help us understand the photochemical nature of paleo-Titan’s atmosphere.