{"id":292644,"date":"2017-03-27T11:00:05","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T15:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?guid=d66370a30511d7a2756f19f255a0bbd5"},"modified":"2017-03-27T11:00:05","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T15:00:05","slug":"the-electric-sands-of-titan-the-grains-that-cover-saturns-moon-act-like-clingy-packing-peanuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=292644","title":{"rendered":"The electric sands of Titan: The grains that cover Saturn&#8217;s moon act like clingy packing peanuts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Experiments led by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology suggest the particles that cover the surface of Saturn&#8217;s largest moon, Titan, are &#8220;electrically charged.&#8221; When the wind blows hard enough (approximately 15 mph), Titan&#8217;s non-silicate granules get kicked up and start to hop in a motion referred to as saltation. As they collide, they become frictionally charged, like a balloon rubbing against your hair, and clump together in a way not observed for sand dune grains on Earth\u2014they become resistant to further motion. They maintain that charge for days or months at a time and attach to other hydrocarbon substances, much like packing peanuts used in shipping boxes here on Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Experiments led by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology suggest the particles that cover the surface of Saturn&#8217;s largest moon, Titan, are &#8220;electrically charged.&#8221; When the wind blows hard enough (approximately 15 mph), Titan&#8217;s non-silicate granules get kicked up and start to hop in a motion referred to as saltation. As they collide, they become frictionally charged, like a balloon rubbing against your hair, and clump together in a way not observed for sand dune grains on Earth&mdash;they become resistant to further motion. They maintain that charge for days or months at a time and attach to other hydrocarbon substances, much like packing peanuts used in shipping boxes here on Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=292644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292645,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292644\/revisions\/292645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=292644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=292644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=292644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}