SATURN’S giant moon Titan has an atmosphere a thousand times more poisonous than thought.
Titan’s thick atmosphere is made of nitrogen and methane, and the action of UV light forms many organic compounds, such as deadly hydrogen cyanide.
In 1980 the Voyager spacecraft found only a trace of cyanide. But observations of higher altitudes made with the Keck II telescope in Hawaii paint a dramatically different picture. In a future issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, Tom Geballe and his team report hydrogen cyanide levels high enough to kill a person instantly.
