title: Transformers: Age of Extinction

text: "Transformers: Age of Extinction" is the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2014 in the U.S. and Canada. It was released on June 27, 2014, in across 4,233 theaters in North America. It earned $8.75 million from Thursday late-night run, which was the fifth-biggest of 2014. On Friday, the film grossed an additional $31.25 million bringing its total day gross to $41.6 million, including $10.7 million from IMAX 3D theatres. In its opening weekend, the film earned $100,038,390 setting an opening record of 2014 (overtaken by "" with $121.9 million), which is the fourth-highest opening for Paramount, and the fifth-highest for a film released in June. The opening-weekend audience was evenly split among those under and over the age of 25 (with 58%), male (64%), and under 18 (27%). The film remained at the summit for two consecutive weekends before being overtaken by "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" in its third weekend. It also crossed the $200 million mark in its third weekend, becoming the fifth film of 2014 to do so. The film closed down its theatrical run on October 9, 2014 and earned a total of $245,439,076, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2014 in the U.S.


title: Transformers: Age of Extinction

text: Outside North America, it is the highest-grossing film of 2014, and the sixth-highest-grossing film. "Transformers: Age of Extinction" earned $202.1 million in its opening weekend from 37 countries in 10,152 screens, which is 35% bigger than "Dark of the Moon" and marking the biggest international opening of 2014 (breaking ""s record set one month prior). It scored the biggest IMAX international opening weekend with $16.6 million from 266 theaters (overtaken by "Jurassic World"). The film topped the box office outside North America for four consecutive weekends despite coinciding with the 2014 FIFA World Cup before being overtaken by "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" in its fifth weekend.


title: Transformers: Age of Extinction

text: International openings of over $5 million occurred in South Korea ($21.7 million), Brazil ($16.5 million), Germany ($11.2 million), Australia ($9.6 million), France ($8.8 million), Taiwan ($8.1 million), Malaysia ($6.7 million), Japan ($6.4 million), the Philippines ($5.7 million), India ($5.35 million), Hong Kong ($5.1 million), and Italy ($5 million). In Russia, the film opened to number one with $21.7 million from 1,100 screens, which is the second-largest in the territory for which 3D accounted for 80% of the total gross. IMAX comprised $2.6 million of the total gross from 34 IMAX screens. Its biggest opener outside the U.S. was in China, where it scored one of the biggest non-North American openings of all time with $91.2 million from 4,400 screens, which was once the second-biggest opening of all time there. The film set an all-time IMAX opening record with $9.7 million. After five days of its release, "Age of Extinction" surpassed its North American run with $134.5 million. In China, the film earned an additional $50.9 million in its second weekend for a total of $212.8 million. In only 10 days of its release, it became the highest-grossing film in China with $222.74 million, thus overtaking "Avatar"s previous record. Adding to the film's revenue and popularity were product placements of Chinese brands edited into the movie specifically for Chinese audiences.


title: Transformers: Age of Extinction

text: It became the highest-grossing film in China, with $301–$320 million in revenue surpassing 2009's record set by "Avatar" ($204 million), until it was surpassed by "Furious 7" in 2015 over $390 million. It is also the first movie in China to gross more than $300 million at the box office. A large part of the success in China has been attributed to the large fan base there and because of its accompanying animated TV series—which ran during the 1980s and 1990—was one of the highest-quality TV programs at that time which resulted in many children getting attached to it. Transformers toy merchandising was one of the first successful cases by a foreign company in China at its time, its line of transforming robot toys was highly sought-after, especially by boys.


title: Transformers: Age of Extinction

text: At the end of its theatrical run outside North America, the film earned $858,600,000 which is 77.8% of its total gross. In total earnings, the highest revenue came from China ($301 million), Russia ($45.2 million), South Korea ($43.3 million), Germany ($38.2 million), Mexico ($33.5 million), the UK ($33.1 million) and Australia ($24.9 million).


title: Transformers: Age of Extinction

text: The $100 million opening announced for "Transformers: Age of Extinction" is disputed within the industry. According to Rentrak—which has a direct line into the vast majority of theatres in the United States and Canada to track actual ticket sales—about 4,100 of the 4,233 theatres playing the film generated $95.9 million. The projected total from the Rentrak sales data would put the opening three-day weekend gross at around $97.5 million. For "Transformers" to have crossed the $100 million threshold, it would have needed to gross more than the nationwide average in the theatres not tracked by Rentrak. Some media outlets have elected to go with the Rentrak figure.


title: Transformers: Age of Extinction

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads, "With the fourth installment in Michael Bay's blockbuster "Transformers" franchise, nothing is in disguise: Fans of loud, effects-driven action will find satisfaction, and all others need not apply." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 32 out of 100 based on 38 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Transformers: Age of Extinction

text: Richard Roeper gave the film a "D", saying that "the longer the movie goes on, the less interesting it becomes; it just wears you down. As we were finally reaching the 165-minute mark, all that noise and fury was about as exciting as the special effects in an Ed Wood movie." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" gave the film zero out of four stars, calling it "the worst and most worthless "Transformers" movie yet." Kyle Smith of the "New York Post" gave the film one-and-a-half out of four stars, commenting that "This series was never good, but it was once fun, or at least flashy. Now that its gears have gone rusty, it's time for an "Alien vs. Predator"-style rethink." A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" said in his review that "The story is scaffolding for the action and like every other standing structure, it is wrecked in a thunderous shower of metal, glass, masonry, and earth."


title: Transformers: Age of Extinction

text: Clarence Tsui of "The Hollywood Reporter" commented on his review that it "barely skirts the idea that humankind and planet Earth are about to be totally annihilated. What is extinguished is the audience's consciousness after being bombarded for nearly three hours with overwrought emotions ('There's a missile in the living room!' Tessa hollers — twice), bad one-liners, and battles that rarely rise above the banal. A trio of editors make a technical marvel out of the fight scenes, but can do little to link the story's multiple threads into something coherent." Roth Cornet of IGN gave the film a score of 6.3 out of 10, praising the "slightly darker/surprising tone and Lockdown" and his ship while criticizing the "logic/script issues and long running time." Joe Neumaier of the "New York Daily News" gave the film 1 out of five stars, commenting that "If the 'human scenes' all reek of adolescent dialogue and dopey snark masquerading as character development, it's a toss-up if that's better or worse than seeing clattering collections of caliginous junk."


title: Transformers: Age of Extinction

text: "Variety" called the movie “a splendidly patriotic film, if you happen to be Chinese.” They lamented the film's slipshod production and said that Michael Bay "crossed the line into self-parody".


title: Transformers: Age of Extinction

text: The sequel, titled "The Last Knight", was released on June 21, 2017, with Bay stating it was his final entry of the series. It received negative reviews and failed at the box office.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second-largest natural satellite in the Solar System. It is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere, and is the only known object in space other than Earth on which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan is one of the seven gravitationally rounded moons in orbit around Saturn, and the second most distant from Saturn of those seven. Frequently described as a planet-like moon, Titan is 50% larger (in diameter) than Earth's Moon and 80% more massive. It is the second-largest moon in the Solar System after Jupiter's moon Ganymede, and is larger than the planet Mercury, but only 40% as massive.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Discovered in 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, Titan was the first known moon of Saturn, and the sixth known planetary satellite (after Earth's moon and the four Galilean moons of Jupiter). Titan orbits Saturn at 20 Saturn radii. From Titan's surface, Saturn subtends an arc of 5.09 degrees, and if it were visible through the moon's thick atmosphere, it would appear 11.4 times larger in the sky, in diameter, than the Moon from Earth, which subtends 0.48° of arc.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan is primarily composed of ice and rocky material, which is likely differentiated into a rocky core surrounded by various layers of ice, including a crust of ice I and a subsurface layer of ammonia-rich liquid water. Much as with Venus before the Space Age, the dense opaque atmosphere prevented understanding of Titan's surface until the "Cassini–Huygens" mission in 2004 provided new information, including the discovery of liquid hydrocarbon lakes in Titan's polar regions. The geologically young surface is generally smooth, with few impact craters, although mountains and several possible cryovolcanoes have been found.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The atmosphere of Titan is largely nitrogen; minor components lead to the formation of methane and ethane clouds and heavy . The climate—including wind and rain—creates surface features similar to those of Earth, such as dunes, rivers, lakes, seas (probably of liquid methane and ethane), and deltas, and is dominated by seasonal weather patterns as on Earth. With its liquids (both surface and subsurface) and robust nitrogen atmosphere, Titan's methane cycle bears a striking similarity to Earth's water cycle, albeit at the much lower temperature of about .


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan was discovered on March 25, 1655, by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens. Huygens was inspired by Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's four largest moons in 1610 and his improvements in telescope technology. Christiaan, with the help of his elder brother Constantijn Huygens Jr., began building telescopes around 1650 and discovered the first observed moon orbiting Saturn with one of the telescopes they built. It was the sixth moon ever discovered, after Earth's Moon and the Galilean moons of Jupiter.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Huygens named his discovery "Saturni Luna" (or "Luna Saturni", Latin for "moon of Saturn"), publishing in the 1655 tract "De Saturni Luna Observatio Nova" ("A New Observation of Saturn's Moon"). After Giovanni Domenico Cassini published his discoveries of four more moons of Saturn between 1673 and 1686, astronomers fell into the habit of referring to these and Titan as Saturn I through V (with Titan then in fourth position). Other early epithets for Titan include "Saturn's ordinary satellite". The International Astronomical Union officially numbers Titan as Saturn VI.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The name "Titan", and the names of all seven satellites of Saturn then known, came from John Herschel (son of William Herschel, discoverer of two other Saturnian moons, Mimas and Enceladus), in his 1847 publication "Results of Astronomical Observations Made during the Years 1834, 5, 6, 7, 8, at the Cape of Good Hope". Numerous small moons have been discovered around Saturn since then. Saturnian moons are named after mythological giants. The name Titan comes from the Titans, a race of immortals in Greek mythology.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan orbits Saturn once every 15 days 22 hours. Like Earth's Moon and many of the satellites of the giant planets, its rotational period (its day) is identical to its orbital period; Titan is tidally locked in synchronous rotation with Saturn, and permanently shows one face to the planet. Longitudes on Titan are measured westward, starting from the meridian passing through this point. Its orbital eccentricity is 0.0288, and the orbital plane is inclined 0.348 degrees relative to the Saturnian equator, and hence also about a third of a degree off of the equatorial ring plane. Viewed from Earth, Titan reaches an angular distance of about 20 Saturn radii (just over ) from Saturn and subtends a disk 0.8 arcseconds in diameter.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The small, irregularly shaped satellite Hyperion is locked in a 3:4 orbital resonance with Titan. Hyperion probably formed in a stable orbital island, whereas the massive Titan absorbed or ejected any other bodies that made close approaches.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan is in diameter, 1.06 times that of the planet Mercury, 1.48 that of the Moon, and 0.40 that of Earth. Titan is the tenth-largest object in the solar system, including the Sun. Before the arrival of "Voyager 1" in 1980, Titan was thought to be slightly larger than Ganymede (diameter ) and thus the largest moon in the Solar System; this was an overestimation caused by Titan's dense, opaque atmosphere, with a haze layer 100-200 kilometres above its surface. This increases its apparent diameter. Titan's diameter and mass (and thus its density) are similar to those of the Jovian moons Ganymede and Callisto. Based on its bulk density of 1.88 g/cm, Titan's composition is half ice and half rocky material. Though similar in composition to Dione and Enceladus, it is denser due to gravitational compression. It has a mass 1/4226 that of Saturn, making it the largest moon of the gas giants relative to the mass of its primary. It is second in terms of relative diameter of moons to a gas giant; Titan being 1/22.609 of Saturn's diameter, Triton is larger in diameter relative to Neptune at 1/18.092.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan is probably partially differentiated into distinct layers with a rocky center. This rocky center is surrounded by several layers composed of different crystalline forms of ice. Its interior may still be hot enough for a liquid layer consisting of a "magma" composed of water and ammonia between the ice I crust and deeper ice layers made of high-pressure forms of ice. The presence of ammonia allows water to remain liquid even at a temperature as low as (for eutectic mixture with water). The "Cassini" probe discovered the evidence for the layered structure in the form of natural extremely-low-frequency radio waves in Titan's atmosphere. Titan's surface is thought to be a poor reflector of extremely-low-frequency radio waves, so they may instead be reflecting off the liquid–ice boundary of a subsurface ocean. Surface features were observed by the "Cassini" spacecraft to systematically shift by up to between October 2005 and May 2007, which suggests that the crust is decoupled from the interior, and provides additional evidence for an interior liquid layer. Further supporting evidence for a liquid layer and ice shell decoupled from the solid core comes from the way the gravity field varies as Titan orbits Saturn. Comparison of the gravity field with the RADAR-based topography observations also suggests that the ice shell may be substantially rigid.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The moons of Jupiter and Saturn are thought to have formed through co-accretion, a similar process to that believed to have formed the planets in the Solar System. As the young gas giants formed, they were surrounded by discs of material that gradually coalesced into moons. Whereas Jupiter possesses four large satellites in highly regular, planet-like orbits, Titan overwhelmingly dominates Saturn's system and possesses a high orbital eccentricity not immediately explained by co-accretion alone. A proposed model for the formation of Titan is that Saturn's system began with a group of moons similar to Jupiter's Galilean satellites, but that they were disrupted by a series of giant impacts, which would go on to form Titan. Saturn's mid-sized moons, such as Iapetus and Rhea, were formed from the debris of these collisions. Such a violent beginning would also explain Titan's orbital eccentricity.


title: Titan (moon)

text: A 2014 analysis of Titan's atmospheric nitrogen suggested that it was possibly sourced from material similar to that found in the Oort cloud and not from sources present during co-accretion of materials around Saturn.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan is the only known moon with a significant atmosphere, and its atmosphere is the only nitrogen-rich dense atmosphere in the Solar System aside from Earth's. Observations of it made in 2004 by "Cassini" suggest that Titan is a "super rotator", like Venus, with an atmosphere that rotates much faster than its surface. Observations from the "Voyager" space probes have shown that Titan's atmosphere is denser than Earth's, with a surface pressure about 1.45 atm. It is also about 1.19 times as massive as Earth's overall, or about 7.3 times more massive on a per surface area basis. Opaque haze layers block most visible light from the Sun and other sources and obscure Titan's surface features. Titan's lower gravity means that its atmosphere is far more extended than Earth's. The atmosphere of Titan is opaque at many wavelengths and as a result, a complete reflectance spectrum of the surface is impossible to acquire from orbit. It was not until the arrival of the "Cassini–Huygens" spacecraft in 2004 that the first direct images of Titan's surface were obtained.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan's atmospheric composition is nitrogen (97%), methane (2.7±0.1%), and hydrogen (0.1–0.2%), with trace amounts of other gases. There are trace amounts of other hydrocarbons, such as ethane, diacetylene, methylacetylene, acetylene and propane, and of other gases, such as cyanoacetylene, hydrogen cyanide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, cyanogen, argon and helium. The hydrocarbons are thought to form in Titan's upper atmosphere in reactions resulting from the breakup of methane by the Sun's ultraviolet light, producing a thick orange smog. Titan spends 95% of its time within Saturn's magnetosphere, which may help shield it from the solar wind.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Energy from the Sun should have converted all traces of methane in Titan's atmosphere into more complex hydrocarbons within 50 million years—a short time compared to the age of the Solar System. This suggests that methane must be replenished by a reservoir on or within Titan itself. The ultimate origin of the methane in its atmosphere may be its interior, released via eruptions from cryovolcanoes.


title: Titan (moon)

text: On April 3, 2013, NASA reported that complex organic chemicals, collectively called tholins, likely arise on Titan, based on studies simulating the atmosphere of Titan.


title: Titan (moon)

text: On June 6, 2013, scientists at the IAA-CSIC reported the detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the upper atmosphere of Titan.


title: Titan (moon)

text: On September 30, 2013, propene was detected in the atmosphere of Titan by NASA's "Cassini" spacecraft, using its composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS). This is the first time propene has been found on any moon or planet other than Earth and is the first chemical found by the CIRS. The detection of propene fills a mysterious gap in observations that date back to NASA's "Voyager 1" spacecraft's first close planetary flyby of Titan in 1980, during which it was discovered that many of the gases that make up Titan's brown haze were hydrocarbons, theoretically formed via the recombination of radicals created by the Sun's ultraviolet photolysis of methane.


title: Titan (moon)

text: On October 24, 2014, methane was found in polar clouds on Titan. On December 1, 2022, astronomers reported viewing clouds, likely made of methane, moving across Titan, using the James Webb Space Telescope.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan's surface temperature is about . At this temperature, water ice has an extremely low vapor pressure, so the little water vapor present appears limited to the stratosphere. Titan receives about 1% as much sunlight as Earth. Before sunlight reaches the surface, about 90% has been absorbed by the thick atmosphere, leaving only 0.1% of the amount of light Earth receives.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Atmospheric methane creates a greenhouse effect on Titan's surface, without which Titan would be much colder. Conversely, haze in Titan's atmosphere contributes to an anti-greenhouse effect by absorbing sunlight, cancelling a portion of the greenhouse effect and making its surface significantly colder than its upper atmosphere.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan's clouds, probably composed of methane, ethane or other simple organics, are scattered and variable, punctuating the overall haze. The findings of the "Huygens" probe indicate that Titan's atmosphere periodically rains liquid methane and other organic compounds onto its surface.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Clouds typically cover 1% of Titan's disk, though outburst events have been observed in which the cloud cover rapidly expands to as much as 8%. One hypothesis asserts that the southern clouds are formed when heightened levels of sunlight during the southern summer generate uplift in the atmosphere, resulting in convection. This explanation is complicated by the fact that cloud formation has been observed not only after the southern summer solstice but also during mid-spring. Increased methane humidity at the south pole possibly contributes to the rapid increases in cloud size. It was summer in Titan's southern hemisphere until 2010, when Saturn's orbit, which governs Titan's motion, moved Titan's northern hemisphere into the sunlight. When the seasons switch, it is expected that ethane will begin to condense over the south pole.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The surface of Titan has been described as "complex, fluid-processed, [and] geologically young". Titan has been around since the Solar System's formation, but its surface is much younger, between 100 million and 1 billion years old. Geological processes may have reshaped Titan's surface. Titan's atmosphere is four times as thick as Earth's, making it difficult for astronomical instruments to image its surface in the visible light spectrum. The "Cassini" spacecraft used infrared instruments, radar altimetry and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging to map portions of Titan during its close fly-bys. The first images revealed a diverse geology, with both rough and smooth areas. There are features that may be volcanic in origin, disgorging water mixed with ammonia onto the surface. There is also evidence that Titan's ice shell may be substantially rigid, which would suggest little geologic activity.


title: Titan (moon)

text: There are also streaky features, some of them hundreds of kilometers in length, that appear to be caused by windblown particles. Examination has also shown the surface to be relatively smooth; the few objects that seem to be impact craters appeared to have been filled in, perhaps by raining hydrocarbons or volcanoes. Radar altimetry suggests height variation is low, typically no more than 150 meters. Occasional elevation changes of 500 meters have been discovered and Titan has mountains that sometimes reach several hundred meters to more than 1 kilometer in height.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan's surface is marked by broad regions of bright and dark terrain. These include Xanadu, a large, reflective equatorial area about the size of Australia. It was first identified in infrared images from the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994, and later viewed by the "Cassini" spacecraft. The convoluted region is filled with hills and cut by valleys and chasms. It is criss-crossed in places by dark lineaments—sinuous topographical features resembling ridges or crevices. These may represent tectonic activity, which would indicate that Xanadu is geologically young. Alternatively, the lineaments may be liquid-formed channels, suggesting old terrain that has been cut through by stream systems. There are dark areas of similar size elsewhere on Titan, observed from the ground and by "Cassini"; at least one of these, Ligeia Mare, Titan's second-largest sea, is almost a pure methane sea.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The possibility of hydrocarbon seas on Titan was first suggested based on "Voyager 1" and "2" data that showed Titan to have a thick atmosphere of approximately the correct temperature and composition to support them, but direct evidence was not obtained until 1995 when data from Hubble and other observations suggested the existence of liquid methane on Titan, either in disconnected pockets or on the scale of satellite-wide oceans, similar to water on Earth.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The "Cassini" mission confirmed the former hypothesis. When the probe arrived in the Saturnian system in 2004, it was hoped that hydrocarbon lakes or oceans would be detected from the sunlight reflected off their surface, but no specular reflections were initially observed. Near Titan's south pole, an enigmatic dark feature named Ontario Lacus was identified (and later confirmed to be a lake). A possible shoreline was also identified near the pole via radar imagery. Following a flyby on July 22, 2006, in which the "Cassini" spacecraft's radar imaged the northern latitudes (that were then in winter), several large, smooth (and thus dark to radar) patches were seen dotting the surface near the pole. Based on the observations, scientists announced "definitive evidence of lakes filled with methane on Saturn's moon Titan" in January 2007. The "Cassini–Huygens" team concluded that the imaged features are almost certainly the long-sought hydrocarbon lakes, the first stable bodies of surface liquid found outside Earth. Some appear to have channels associated with liquid and lie in topographical depressions. The liquid erosion features appear to be a very recent occurrence: channels in some regions have created surprisingly little erosion, suggesting erosion on Titan is extremely slow, or some other recent phenomena may have wiped out older riverbeds and landforms. Overall, the "Cassini" radar observations have shown that lakes cover only a small percentage of the surface, making Titan much drier than Earth. Most of the lakes are concentrated near the poles (where the relative lack of sunlight prevents evaporation), but several long-standing hydrocarbon lakes in the equatorial desert regions have also been discovered, including one near the "Huygens" landing site in the Shangri-La region, which is about half the size of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA. The equatorial lakes are probably "oases", i.e. the likely supplier is underground aquifers.


title: Titan (moon)

text: In June 2008, the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer on "Cassini" confirmed the presence of liquid ethane beyond doubt in Ontario Lacus. On December 21, 2008, "Cassini" passed directly over Ontario Lacus and observed specular reflection in radar. The strength of the reflection saturated the probe's receiver, indicating that the lake level did not vary by more than 3 mm (implying either that surface winds were minimal, or the lake's hydrocarbon fluid is viscous).


title: Titan (moon)

text: On July 8, 2009, "Cassini's" VIMS observed a specular reflection indicative of a smooth, mirror-like surface, off what today is called Jingpo Lacus, a lake in the north polar region shortly after the area emerged from 15 years of winter darkness. Specular reflections are indicative of a smooth, mirror-like surface, so the observation corroborated the inference of the presence of a large liquid body drawn from radar imaging.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Early radar measurements made in July 2009 and January 2010 indicated that Ontario Lacus was extremely shallow, with an average depth of 0.4–3 m, and a maximum depth of . In contrast, the northern hemisphere's Ligeia Mare was initially mapped to depths exceeding 8 m, the maximum discernable by the radar instrument and the analysis techniques of the time.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Later science analysis, released in 2014, more fully mapped the depths of Titan's three methane seas and showed depths of more than . Ligeia Mare averages from in depth, while other parts of "Ligeia" did not register any radar reflection at all, indicating a depth of more than . While only the second largest of Titan's methane seas, "Ligeia" "contains enough liquid methane to fill three Lake Michigans".


title: Titan (moon)

text: In May 2013, "Cassini"'s radar altimeter observed Titan's Vid Flumina channels, defined as a drainage network connected to Titan's second largest hydrocarbon sea, Ligeia Mare. Analysis of the received altimeter echoes showed that the channels are located in deep (up to ~570 m), steep-sided, canyons and have strong specular surface reflections that indicate they are currently filled with liquid. Elevations of the liquid in these channels are at the same level as Ligeia Mare to within a vertical precision of about 0.7 m, consistent with the interpretation of drowned river valleys. Specular reflections are also observed in lower order tributaries elevated above the level of Ligeia Mare, consistent with drainage feeding into the main channel system. This is likely the first direct evidence of the presence of liquid channels on Titan and the first observation of hundred-meter deep canyons on Titan. Vid Flumina canyons are thus drowned by the sea but there are a few isolated observations to attest to the presence of surface liquids standing at higher elevations.


title: Titan (moon)

text: During six flybys of Titan from 2006 to 2011, "Cassini" gathered radiometric tracking and optical navigation data from which investigators could roughly infer Titan's changing shape. The density of Titan is consistent with a body that is about 60% rock and 40% water. The team's analyses suggest that Titan's surface can rise and fall by up to 10 metres during each orbit. That degree of warping suggests that Titan's interior is relatively deformable, and that the most likely model of Titan is one in which an icy shell dozens of kilometres thick floats atop a global ocean. The team's findings, together with the results of previous studies, hint that Titan's ocean may lie no more than below its surface. On July 2, 2014, NASA reported the ocean inside Titan may be as salty as the Dead Sea. On September 3, 2014, NASA reported studies suggesting methane rainfall on Titan may interact with a layer of icy materials underground, called an "alkanofer", to produce ethane and propane that may eventually feed into rivers and lakes.


title: Titan (moon)

text: In 2016, Cassini found the first evidence of fluid-filled channels on Titan, in a series of deep, steep-sided canyons flowing into Ligeia Mare. This network of canyons, dubbed Vid Flumina, range in depth from 240 to 570 m and have sides as steep as 40°. They are believed to have formed either by crustal uplifting, like Earth's Grand Canyon, or a lowering of sea level, or perhaps a combination of the two. The depth of erosion suggests that liquid flows in this part of Titan are long-term features that persist for thousands of years.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Radar, SAR and imaging data from "Cassini" have revealed few impact craters on Titan's surface. These impacts appear to be relatively young, compared to Titan's age. The few impact craters discovered include a two-ring impact basin named Menrva seen by "Cassini's" ISS as a bright-dark concentric pattern. A smaller, , flat-floored crater named Sinlap and a crater with a central peak and dark floor named Ksa have also been observed. Radar and "Cassini" imaging have also revealed "crateriforms", circular features on the surface of Titan that may be impact related, but lack certain features that would make identification certain. For example, a ring of bright, rough material known as Guabonito has been observed by "Cassini". This feature is thought to be an impact crater filled in by dark, windblown sediment. Several other similar features have been observed in the dark Shangri-La and Aaru regions. Radar observed several circular features that may be craters in the bright region Xanadu during "Cassini's" April 30, 2006 flyby of Titan.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Many of Titan's craters or probable craters display evidence of extensive erosion, and all show some indication of modification. Most large craters have breached or incomplete rims, despite the fact that some craters on Titan have relatively more massive rims than those anywhere else in the Solar System. There is little evidence of formation of palimpsests through viscoelastic crustal relaxation, unlike on other large icy moons. Most craters lack central peaks and have smooth floors, possibly due to impact-generation or later eruption of cryovolcanic lava. Infill from various geological processes is one reason for Titan's relative deficiency of craters; atmospheric shielding also plays a role. It is estimated that Titan's atmosphere reduces the number of craters on its surface by a factor of two.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The limited high-resolution radar coverage of Titan obtained through 2007 (22%) suggested the existence of nonuniformities in its crater distribution. Xanadu has 2–9 times more craters than elsewhere. The leading hemisphere has a 30% higher density than the trailing hemisphere. There are lower crater densities in areas of equatorial dunes and in the north polar region (where hydrocarbon lakes and seas are most common).


title: Titan (moon)

text: Pre-"Cassini" models of impact trajectories and angles suggest that where the impactor strikes the water ice crust, a small amount of ejecta remains as liquid water within the crater. It may persist as liquid for centuries or longer, sufficient for "the synthesis of simple precursor molecules to the origin of life".


title: Titan (moon)

text: Scientists have long speculated that conditions on Titan resemble those of early Earth, though at a much lower temperature. The detection of argon-40 in the atmosphere in 2004 indicated that volcanoes had spawned plumes of "lava" composed of water and ammonia. Global maps of the lake distribution on Titan's surface revealed that there is not enough surface methane to account for its continued presence in its atmosphere, and thus that a significant portion must be added through volcanic processes.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Still, there is a paucity of surface features that can be unambiguously interpreted as cryovolcanoes. One of the first of such features revealed by "Cassini" radar observations in 2004, called Ganesa Macula, resembles the geographic features called "pancake domes" found on Venus, and was thus initially thought to be cryovolcanic in origin, until Kirk et al. refuted this hypothesis at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in December 2008. The feature was found to be not a dome at all, but appeared to result from accidental combination of light and dark patches. In 2004 "Cassini" also detected an unusually bright feature (called Tortola Facula), which was interpreted as a cryovolcanic dome. No similar features have been identified as of 2010. In December 2008, astronomers announced the discovery of two transient but unusually long-lived "bright spots" in Titan's atmosphere, which appear too persistent to be explained by mere weather patterns, suggesting they were the result of extended cryovolcanic episodes.


title: Titan (moon)

text: A mountain range measuring long, wide and high was also discovered by "Cassini" in 2006. This range lies in the southern hemisphere and is thought to be composed of icy material and covered in methane snow. The movement of tectonic plates, perhaps influenced by a nearby impact basin, could have opened a gap through which the mountain's material upwelled. Prior to "Cassini", scientists assumed that most of the topography on Titan would be impact structures, yet these findings reveal that similar to Earth, the mountains were formed through geological processes.


title: Titan (moon)

text: In 2008 Jeffrey Moore (planetary geologist of Ames Research Center) proposed an alternate view of Titan's geology. Noting that no volcanic features had been unambiguously identified on Titan so far, he asserted that Titan is a geologically dead world, whose surface is shaped only by impact cratering, fluvial and eolian erosion, mass wasting and other exogenic processes. According to this hypothesis, methane is not emitted by volcanoes but slowly diffuses out of Titan's cold and stiff interior. Ganesa Macula may be an eroded impact crater with a dark dune in the center. The mountainous ridges observed in some regions can be explained as heavily degraded scarps of large multi-ring impact structures or as a result of the global contraction due to the slow cooling of the interior. Even in this case, Titan may still have an internal ocean made of the eutectic water–ammonia mixture with a temperature of , which is low enough to be explained by the decay of radioactive elements in the core. The bright Xanadu terrain may be a degraded heavily cratered terrain similar to that observed on the surface of Callisto. Indeed, were it not for its lack of an atmosphere, Callisto could serve as a model for Titan's geology in this scenario. Jeffrey Moore even called Titan "Callisto with weather".


title: Titan (moon)

text: In March 2009, structures resembling lava flows were announced in a region of Titan called Hotei Arcus, which appears to fluctuate in brightness over several months. Though many phenomena were suggested to explain this fluctuation, the lava flows were found to rise above Titan's surface, consistent with it having been erupted from beneath the surface.


title: Titan (moon)

text: In December 2010, the "Cassini" mission team announced the most compelling possible cryovolcano yet found. Named Sotra Patera, it is one in a chain of at least three mountains, each between 1000 and 1500 m in height, several of which are topped by large craters. The ground around their bases appears to be overlaid by frozen lava flows.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Crater-like landforms possibly formed via explosive, maar-like or caldera-forming cryovolcanic eruptions have been identified in Titan's polar regions. These formations are sometimes nested or overlapping and have features suggestive of explosions and collapses, such as elevated rims, halos, and internal hills or mountains. The polar location of these features and their colocalization with Titan's lakes and seas suggests volatiles such as methane may help power them. Some of these features appear quite fresh, suggesting that such volcanic activity continues to the present.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Most of Titan's highest peaks occur near its equator in so-called "ridge belts". They are believed to be analogous to Earth's fold mountains such as the Rockies or the Himalayas, formed by the collision and buckling of tectonic plates, or to subduction zones like the Andes, where upwelling lava (or cryolava) from a melting descending plate rises to the surface. One possible mechanism for their formation is tidal forces from Saturn. Because Titan's icy mantle is less viscous than Earth's magma mantle, and because its icy bedrock is softer than Earth's granite bedrock, mountains are unlikely to reach heights as great as those on Earth. In 2016, the Cassini team announced what they believe to be the tallest mountain on Titan. Located in the Mithrim Montes range, it is 3,337 m tall.


title: Titan (moon)

text: If volcanism on Titan really exists, the hypothesis is that it is driven by energy released from the decay of radioactive elements within the mantle, as it is on Earth. Magma on Earth is made of liquid rock, which is less dense than the solid rocky crust through which it erupts. Because ice is less dense than water, Titan's watery magma would be denser than its solid icy crust. This means that cryovolcanism on Titan would require a large amount of additional energy to operate, possibly via tidal flexing from nearby Saturn. The low-pressure ice, overlaying a liquid layer of ammonium sulfate, ascends buoyantly, and the unstable system can produce dramatic plume events. Titan is resurfaced through the process by grain-sized ice and ammonium sulfate ash, which helps produce a wind-shaped landscape and sand dune features. Titan may have been much more geologically active in the past; models of Titan's internal evolution suggest that Titan's crust was only 10 kilometers thick until about 500 million years ago, allowing vigorous cryovolcanism with low viscosity water magmas to erase all surface features formed before that time. Titan's modern geology would have formed only after the crust thickened to 50 kilometers and thus impeded constant cryovolcanic resurfacing, with any cryovolcanism occurring since that time producing much more viscous water magma with larger fractions of ammonia and methanol; this would also suggest that Titan's methane is no longer being actively added to its atmosphere and could be depleted entirely within a few tens of millions of years.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Many of the more prominent mountains and hills have been given official names by the International Astronomical Union. According to JPL, "By convention, mountains on Titan are named for mountains from Middle-earth, the fictional setting in fantasy novels by J. R. R. Tolkien." Colles (collections of hills) are named for characters from the same Tolkien works.


title: Titan (moon)

text: In the first images of Titan's surface taken by Earth-based telescopes in the early 2000s, large regions of dark terrain were revealed straddling Titan's equator. Prior to the arrival of "Cassini", these regions were thought to be seas of liquid hydrocarbons. Radar images captured by the "Cassini" spacecraft have instead revealed some of these regions to be extensive plains covered in longitudinal dunes, up to high about a kilometer wide, and tens to hundreds of kilometers long. Dunes of this type are always aligned with average wind direction. In the case of Titan, steady zonal (eastward) winds combine with variable tidal winds (approximately 0.5 meters per second). The tidal winds are the result of tidal forces from Saturn on Titan's atmosphere, which are 400 times stronger than the tidal forces of the Moon on Earth and tend to drive wind toward the equator. This wind pattern, it was hypothesized, causes granular material on the surface to gradually build up in long parallel dunes aligned west-to-east. The dunes break up around mountains, where the wind direction shifts.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The longitudinal (or linear) dunes were initially presumed to be formed by moderately variable winds that either follow one mean direction or alternate between two different directions. Subsequent observations indicate that the dunes point to the east although climate simulations indicate Titan's surface winds blow toward the west. At less than 1 meter per second, they are not powerful enough to lift and transport surface material. Recent computer simulations indicate that the dunes may be the result of rare storm winds that happen only every fifteen years when Titan is in equinox. These storms produce strong downdrafts, flowing eastward at up to 10 meters per second when they reach the surface.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The "sand" on Titan is likely not made up of small grains of silicates like the sand on Earth, but rather might have formed when liquid methane rained and eroded the water-ice bedrock, possibly in the form of flash floods. Alternatively, the sand could also have come from organic solids called tholins, produced by photochemical reactions in Titan's atmosphere. Studies of dunes' composition in May 2008 revealed that they possessed less water than the rest of Titan, and are thus most likely derived from organic soot like hydrocarbon polymers clumping together after raining onto the surface. Calculations indicate the sand on Titan has a density of one-third that of terrestrial sand. The low density combined with the dryness of Titan's atmosphere might cause the grains to clump together because of static electricity buildup. The "stickiness" might make it difficult for the generally mild breeze close to Titan's surface to move the dunes although more powerful winds from seasonal storms could still blow them eastward.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Around equinox, strong downburst winds can lift micron-sized solid organic particles up from the dunes to create Titanian dust storms, observed as intense and short-lived brightenings in the infrared.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan is never visible to the naked eye, but can be observed through small telescopes or strong binoculars. Amateur observation is difficult because of the proximity of Titan to Saturn's brilliant globe and ring system; an occulting bar, covering part of the eyepiece and used to block the bright planet, greatly improves viewing. Titan has a maximum apparent magnitude of +8.2, and mean opposition magnitude 8.4. This compares to +4.6 for the similarly sized Ganymede, in the Jovian system.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Observations of Titan prior to the space age were limited. In 1907 Spanish astronomer Josep Comas i Solà observed limb darkening of Titan, the first evidence that the body has an atmosphere. In 1944 Gerard P. Kuiper used a spectroscopic technique to detect an atmosphere of methane.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The first probe to visit the Saturnian system was "Pioneer 11" in 1979, which revealed that Titan was probably too cold to support life. It took images of Titan, including Titan and Saturn together in mid to late 1979. The quality was soon surpassed by the two "Voyagers".


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan was examined by both "Voyager 1" and "2" in 1980 and 1981, respectively. "Voyager 1"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s trajectory was designed to provide an optimized Titan flyby, during which the spacecraft was able to determine the density, composition, and temperature of the atmosphere, and obtain a precise measurement of Titan's mass. Atmospheric haze prevented direct imaging of the surface, though in 2004 intensive digital processing of images taken through "Voyager 1"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s orange filter did reveal hints of the light and dark features now known as Xanadu and Shangri-la, which had been observed in the infrared by the Hubble Space Telescope. "Voyager 2", which would have been diverted to perform the Titan flyby if "Voyager 1" had been unable to, did not pass near Titan and continued on to Uranus and Neptune.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Even with the data provided by the "Voyagers", Titan remained a body of mystery—a large satellite shrouded in an atmosphere that makes detailed observation difficult.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The "Cassini–Huygens" spacecraft reached Saturn on July 1, 2004, and began the process of mapping Titan's surface by radar. A joint project of the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, "Cassini–Huygens" proved a very successful mission. The "Cassini" probe flew by Titan on October 26, 2004, and took the highest-resolution images ever of Titan's surface, at only , discerning patches of light and dark that would be invisible to the human eye.


title: Titan (moon)

text: On July 22, 2006, "Cassini" made its first targeted, close fly-by at from Titan; the closest flyby was at on June 21, 2010. Liquid has been found in abundance on the surface in the north polar region, in the form of many lakes and seas discovered by "Cassini".


title: Titan (moon)

text: "Huygens" was an atmospheric probe that touched down on Titan on January 14, 2005, discovering that many of its surface features seem to have been formed by fluids at some point in the past. Titan is the most distant body from Earth to have a space probe land on its surface.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The "Huygens" probe landed just off the easternmost tip of a bright region now called Adiri. The probe photographed pale hills with dark "rivers" running down to a dark plain. Current understanding is that the hills (also referred to as highlands) are composed mainly of water ice. Dark organic compounds, created in the upper atmosphere by the ultraviolet radiation of the Sun, may rain from Titan's atmosphere. They are washed down the hills with the methane rain and are deposited on the plains over geological time scales.


title: Titan (moon)

text: After landing, "Huygens" photographed a dark plain covered in small rocks and pebbles, which are composed of water ice. The two rocks just below the middle of the image on the right are smaller than they may appear: the left-hand one is 15 centimeters across, and the one in the center is 4 centimeters across, at a distance of about 85 centimeters from "Huygens". There is evidence of erosion at the base of the rocks, indicating possible fluvial activity. The ground surface is darker than originally expected, consisting of a mixture of water and hydrocarbon ice.


title: Titan (moon)

text: In March 2007, NASA, ESA, and COSPAR decided to name the "Huygens" landing site the "Hubert Curien Memorial Station" in memory of the former president of the ESA.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The "Dragonfly" mission, developed and operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, will launch in June 2027. It consists of a large drone powered by an RTG to fly in the atmosphere of Titan as New Frontiers 4. Its instruments will study how far prebiotic chemistry may have progressed. The mission is planned to arrive at Titan in 2034.


title: Titan (moon)

text: There have been several conceptual missions proposed in recent years for returning a robotic space probe to Titan. Initial conceptual work has been completed for such missions by NASA (and JPL), and ESA. At present, none of these proposals have become funded missions.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The Titan Saturn System Mission (TSSM) was a joint NASA/ESA proposal for exploration of Saturn's moons. It envisions a hot-air balloon floating in Titan's atmosphere for six months. It was competing against the Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM) proposal for funding. In February 2009 it was announced that ESA/NASA had given the EJSM mission priority ahead of the TSSM.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The proposed Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) was a low-cost lander that would splash down in a lake in Titan's northern hemisphere and float on the surface of the lake for three to six months. It was selected for a Phase-A design study in 2011 as a candidate mission for the 12th NASA Discovery Program opportunity, but was not selected for flight.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Another mission to Titan proposed in early 2012 by Jason Barnes, a scientist at the University of Idaho, is the Aerial Vehicle for In-situ and Airborne Titan Reconnaissance (AVIATR): an unmanned plane (or drone) that would fly through Titan's atmosphere and take high-definition images of the surface of Titan. NASA did not approve the requested $715 million, and the future of the project is uncertain.


title: Titan (moon)

text: A conceptual design for another lake lander was proposed in late 2012 by the Spanish-based private engineering firm SENER and the Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid. The concept probe is called Titan Lake In-situ Sampling Propelled Explorer (TALISE). The major difference compared to the TiME probe would be that TALISE is envisioned with its own propulsion system and would therefore not be limited to simply drifting on the lake when it splashes down.


title: Titan (moon)

text: A Discovery Program contestant for its mission #13 is Journey to Enceladus and Titan (JET), an astrobiology Saturn orbiter that would assess the habitability potential of Enceladus and Titan.


title: Titan (moon)

text: In 2015, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program (NIAC) awarded a Phase II grant to a design study of a Titan Submarine to explore the seas of Titan.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Titan is thought to be a prebiotic environment rich in complex organic compounds, but its surface is in a deep freeze at so life as we know it cannot exist on the moon's frigid surface. However, Titan seems to contain a global ocean beneath its ice shell, and within this ocean, conditions are potentially suitable for microbial life.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The "Cassini–Huygens" mission was not equipped to provide evidence for biosignatures or complex organic compounds; it showed an environment on Titan that is similar, in some ways, to ones hypothesized for the primordial Earth. Scientists surmise that the atmosphere of early Earth was similar in composition to the current atmosphere on Titan, with the important exception of a lack of water vapor on Titan.


title: Titan (moon)

text: The Miller–Urey experiment and several following experiments have shown that with an atmosphere similar to that of Titan and the addition of UV radiation, complex molecules and polymer substances like tholins can be generated. The reaction starts with dissociation of nitrogen and methane, forming hydrogen cyanide and acetylene. Further reactions have been studied extensively.


title: Titan (moon)

text: It has been reported that when energy was applied to a combination of gases like those in Titan's atmosphere, five nucleotide bases, the building blocks of DNA and RNA, were among the many compounds produced. In addition, amino acids, the building blocks of protein were found. It was the first time nucleotide bases and amino acids had been found in such an experiment without liquid water being present.


title: Titan (moon)

text: On April 3, 2013, NASA reported that complex organic chemicals could arise on Titan based on studies simulating the atmosphere of Titan.


title: Titan (moon)

text: On June 6, 2013, scientists at the IAA-CSIC reported the detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in the upper atmosphere of Titan.


title: Titan (moon)

text: On July 26, 2017, Cassini scientists positively identified the presence of carbon chain anions in Titan's upper atmosphere which appeared to be involved in the production of large complex organics.


title: Titan (moon)

text: These highly reactive molecules were previously known to contribute to building complex organics in the Interstellar Medium, therefore highlighting a possibly universal stepping stone to producing complex organic material.


title: Titan (moon)

text: On July 28, 2017, scientists reported that acrylonitrile, or vinyl cyanide, (CHCN), possibly essential for life by being related to cell membrane and vesicle structure formation, had been found on Titan.


title: Titan (moon)

text: In October 2018, researchers reported low-temperature chemical pathways from simple organic compounds to complex polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) chemicals. Such chemical pathways may help explain the presence of PAHs in the low-temperature atmosphere of Titan, and may be significant pathways, in terms of the PAH world hypothesis, in producing precursors to biochemicals related to life as we know it.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Laboratory simulations have led to the suggestion that enough organic material exists on Titan to start a chemical evolution analogous to what is thought to have started life on Earth. The analogy assumes the presence of liquid water for longer periods than is currently observable; several hypotheses postulate that liquid water from an impact could be preserved under a frozen isolation layer. It has also been hypothesized that liquid-ammonia oceans could exist deep below the surface. Another model suggests an ammonia–water solution as much as deep beneath a water-ice crust with conditions that, although extreme by terrestrial standards, are such that life could survive. Heat transfer between the interior and upper layers would be critical in sustaining any subsurface oceanic life. Detection of microbial life on Titan would depend on its biogenic effects, with the atmospheric methane and nitrogen examined.


title: Titan (moon)

text: It has been speculated that life could exist in the lakes of liquid methane on Titan, just as organisms on Earth live in water. Such organisms would inhale H in place of O, metabolize it with acetylene instead of glucose, and exhale methane instead of carbon dioxide. However, such hypothetical organisms would be required to metabolize at a deep freeze temperature of .


title: Titan (moon)

text: All life forms on Earth (including methanogens) use liquid water as a solvent; it is speculated that life on Titan might instead use a liquid hydrocarbon, such as methane or ethane, although water is a stronger solvent than methane. Water is also more chemically reactive, and can break down large organic molecules through hydrolysis. A life form whose solvent was a hydrocarbon would not face the risk of its biomolecules being destroyed in this way.


title: Titan (moon)

text: In 2005, astrobiologist Chris McKay argued that if methanogenic life did exist on the surface of Titan, it would likely have a measurable effect on the mixing ratio in the Titan troposphere: levels of hydrogen and acetylene would be measurably lower than otherwise expected. Assuming metabolic rates similar to those of methanogenic organisms on Earth, the concentration of molecular hydrogen would drop by a factor of 1000 on the Titanian surface solely due to a hypothetical biological sink. McKay noted that, if life is indeed present, the low temperatures on Titan would result in very slow metabolic processes, which could conceivably be hastened by the use of catalysts similar to enzymes. He also noted that the low solubility of organic compounds in methane presents a more significant challenge to any possible form of life. Forms of active transport, and organisms with large surface-to-volume ratios could theoretically lessen the disadvantages posed by this fact.


title: Titan (moon)

text: In 2010, Darrell Strobel, from Johns Hopkins University, identified a greater abundance of molecular hydrogen in the upper atmospheric layers of Titan compared to the lower layers, arguing for a downward flow at a rate of roughly 10 molecules per second and disappearance of hydrogen near Titan's surface; as Strobel noted, his findings were in line with the effects McKay had predicted if methanogenic life-forms were present. The same year, another study showed low levels of acetylene on Titan's surface, which were interpreted by McKay as consistent with the hypothesis of organisms consuming hydrocarbons. Although restating the biological hypothesis, he cautioned that other explanations for the hydrogen and acetylene findings are more likely: the possibilities of yet unidentified physical or chemical processes (e.g. a surface catalyst accepting hydrocarbons or hydrogen), or flaws in the current models of material flow. Composition data and transport models need to be substantiated, etc. Even so, despite saying that a non-biological catalytic explanation would be less startling than a biological one, McKay noted that the discovery of a catalyst effective at would still be significant. With regards to the acetylene findings, Mark Allen, the principal investigator with the NASA Astrobiology Institute Titan team, provided a speculative, non-biological explanation: sunlight or cosmic rays could transform the acetylene in icy aerosols in the atmosphere into more complex molecules that would fall to the ground with no acetylene signature.


title: Titan (moon)

text: As NASA notes in its news article on the June 2010 findings: "To date, methane-based life forms are only hypothetical. Scientists have not yet detected this form of life anywhere." As the NASA statement also says: "some scientists believe these chemical signatures bolster the argument for a primitive, exotic form of life or precursor to life on Titan's surface."


title: Titan (moon)

text: In February 2015, a hypothetical cell membrane capable of functioning in liquid methane at cryogenic temperatures (deep freeze) conditions was modeled. Composed of small molecules containing carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, it would have the same stability and flexibility as cell membranes on Earth, which are composed of phospholipids, compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus. This hypothetical cell membrane was termed an "azotosome", a combination of "azote", French for nitrogen, and "liposome".


title: Titan (moon)

text: Despite these biological possibilities, there are formidable obstacles to life on Titan, and any analogy to Earth is inexact. At a vast distance from the Sun, Titan is frigid, and its atmosphere lacks CO. At Titan's surface, water exists only in solid form. Because of these difficulties, scientists such as Jonathan Lunine have viewed Titan less as a likely habitat for life than as an experiment for examining hypotheses on the conditions that prevailed prior to the appearance of life on Earth. Although life itself may not exist, the prebiotic conditions on Titan and the associated organic chemistry remain of great interest in understanding the early history of the terrestrial biosphere. Using Titan as a prebiotic experiment involves not only observation through spacecraft, but laboratory experiments, and chemical and photochemical modeling on Earth.


title: Titan (moon)

text: It is hypothesized that large asteroid and cometary impacts on Earth's surface may have caused fragments of microbe-laden rock to escape Earth's gravity, suggesting the possibility of panspermia. Calculations indicate that these would encounter many of the bodies in the Solar System, including Titan. On the other hand, Jonathan Lunine has argued that any living things in Titan's cryogenic hydrocarbon lakes would need to be so different chemically from Earth life that it would not be possible for one to be the ancestor of the other.


title: Titan (moon)

text: Conditions on Titan could become far more habitable in the far future. Five billion years from now, as the Sun becomes a red giant, its surface temperature could rise enough for Titan to support liquid water on its surface, making it habitable. As the Sun's ultraviolet output decreases, the haze in Titan's upper atmosphere will be depleted, lessening the anti-greenhouse effect on the surface and enabling the greenhouse created by atmospheric methane to play a far greater role. These conditions together could create a habitable environment, and could persist for several hundred million years. This is proposed to have been sufficient time for simple life to spawn on Earth, though the higher viscosity of ammonia-water solutions coupled with low temperatures would cause chemical reactions to proceed more slowly on Titan.


title: Skull and Bones

text: Skull and Bones, also known as The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death, is an undergraduate senior secret student society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The oldest senior class society at the university, Skull and Bones has become a cultural institution known for its powerful alumni and various conspiracy theories. It is one of the "Big Three" societies at Yale, the other two being Scroll and Key and Wolf's Head.


title: Skull and Bones

text: The society's alumni organization, the Russell Trust Association, owns the organization's real estate and oversees the membership. The society is known informally as "Bones," and members are known as "Bonesmen," "Members of The Order" or "Initiated to The Order."


title: Skull and Bones

text: Skull and Bones was founded in 1832 after a dispute among Yale debating societies Linonia, Brothers in Unity, and the Calliopean Society over that season's Phi Beta Kappa awards. William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft co-founded "the Order of the Skull and Bones". The first senior members included Russell, Taft, and 12 other members. Alternative names for Skull and Bones are The Order, Order 322 and The Brotherhood of Death.


title: Skull and Bones

text: The society's assets are managed by its alumni organization, the Russell Trust Association, incorporated in 1856 and named after the Bones' co-founder. The association was founded by Russell and Daniel Coit Gilman, a Skull and Bones member.


title: Skull and Bones

text: The first extended description of Skull and Bones, published in 1871 by Lyman Bagg in his book "Four Years at Yale", noted that "the mystery now attending its existence forms the one great enigma which college gossip never tires of discussing." Brooks Mather Kelley attributed the interest in Yale senior societies to the fact that underclassmen members of then freshman, sophomore, and junior class societies returned to campus the following years and could share information about society rituals, while graduating seniors were, with their knowledge of such, at least a step removed from campus life.


title: Skull and Bones

text: Skull and Bones selects new members among students every spring as part of Yale University's "Tap Day", and has done so since 1879. Since the society's inclusion of women in the early 1990s, Skull and Bones selects fifteen men and women of the junior class to join the society. Skull and Bones "taps" those that it views as campus leaders and other notable figures for its membership.


title: Skull and Bones

text: The number "322" appears in Skull and Bones' insignia and is widely reported to be significant as the year of Greek orator Demosthenes' death. A letter between early society members in Yale's archives suggests that 322 is a reference to the year 322 BCE and that members measure dates from this year instead of from the common era. In 322 BC, the Lamian War ended with the death of Demosthenes and Athenians were made to dissolve their government and establish a plutocratic system in its stead, whereby only those possessing 2,000 drachmas or more could remain citizens. Documents in the Tomb have purportedly been found dated to "Anno-Demostheni." Members measure time of day according to a clock 5 minutes out of sync with normal time, the latter is called "barbarian time."


title: Skull and Bones

text: One legend is that the numbers in the society's emblem ("322") represent "founded in '32, 2nd corps", referring to a first Corps in an unknown German university.


title: Skull and Bones

text: The building was built in three phases: the first wing was built in 1856, the second wing in 1903, and Davis-designed Neo-Gothic towers were added to the rear garden in 1912. The front and side facades are of Portland brownstone in an Egypto-Doric style. The 1912 tower additions created a small enclosed courtyard in the rear of the building, designed by Evarts Tracy and Edgerton Swartwout of Tracy and Swartwout, New York. Evarts Tracy was an 1890 Bonesman, and his paternal grandmother, Martha Sherman Evarts, and maternal grandmother, Mary Evarts, were the sisters of William Maxwell Evarts, an 1837 Bonesman.


title: Skull and Bones

text: The architect was possibly Alexander Jackson Davis or Henry Austin. Architectural historian Patrick Pinnell includes an in-depth discussion of the dispute over the identity of the original architect in his 1999 Yale campus history. Pinnell speculates that the re-use of the Davis towers in 1911 suggests Davis's role in the original building and, conversely, Austin was responsible for the architecturally similar brownstone Egyptian Revival Grove Street Cemetery gates, built in 1845. Pinnell also discusses the Tomb's esthetic place in relation to its neighbors, including the Yale University Art Gallery. In the late 1990s, New Hampshire landscape architects Saucier and Flynn designed the wrought iron fence that surrounds a portion of the complex.


title: Skull and Bones

text: The society owns and manages Deer Island, an island retreat on the St. Lawrence River (). Alexandra Robbins, author of a book on Yale secret societies, wrote:


title: Skull and Bones

text: Skull and Bones's membership developed a reputation in association with the "power elite". Regarding the qualifications for membership, Lanny Davis wrote in the 1968 Yale yearbook:


title: Skull and Bones

text: Like other Yale senior societies, Skull and Bones membership was almost exclusively limited to white Protestant males for much of its history. While Yale itself had exclusionary policies directed at particular ethnic and religious groups, the senior societies were even more exclusionary. While some Catholics were able to join such groups, Jews were more often not. Some of these excluded groups eventually entered Skull and Bones by means of sports, through the society's practice of tapping standout athletes. Star football players tapped for Skull and Bones included the first Jewish player (Al Hessberg, class of 1938) and African-American player (Levi Jackson, class of 1950, who turned down the invitation for the Berzelius Society).


title: Skull and Bones

text: Yale became coeducational in 1969, prompting some other secret societies such as St. Anthony Hall to transition to co-ed membership, yet Skull and Bones remained fully male until 1992. The Bones class of 1971's attempt to tap women for membership was opposed by Bones alumni, who dubbed them the "bad club" and quashed their attempt. "The issue", as it came to be called by Bonesmen, was debated for decades. The class of 1991 tapped seven female members for membership in the next year's class, causing conflict with the alumni association. The trust changed the locks on the Tomb and the Bonesmen instead met in the Manuscript Society building. A mail-in vote by members decided 368–320 to permit women in the society, but a group of alumni led by William F. Buckley obtained a temporary restraining order to block the move, arguing that a formal change in bylaws was needed. Other alumni, such as John Kerry and R. Inslee Clark, Jr., spoke out in favor of admitting women. The dispute was highlighted on an editorial page of "The New York Times". A second alumni vote, in October 1991, agreed to accept the Class of 1992, and the lawsuit was dropped.


title: Skull and Bones

text: Members are assigned nicknames (e.g., "Long Devil", the tallest member; "Boaz", a varsity football captain; or "Sherrife" prince of future). Many of the chosen names are drawn from literature (e.g., "Hamlet", "Uncle Remus") religion, and myth. The banker Lewis Lapham passed on his nickname, "Sancho Panza", to the political adviser Tex McCrary. Averell Harriman was "Thor", Henry Luce was "Baal", McGeorge Bundy was "Odin", and George H. W. Bush was "Magog".


title: Skull and Bones

text: Judith Ann Schiff, Chief Research Archivist at the Yale University Library, has written: "The names of its members weren't kept secretthat was an innovation of the 1970sbut its meetings and practices were." While resourceful researchers could assemble member data from these original sources, in 1985, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt provided Antony C. Sutton with rosters and records that had belonged to her father, a member of the organization. This membership information was kept privately for over 15years, as Sutton feared that the photocopied pages could somehow identify the member who leaked it. He wrote a book on the group, "America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones". The information was finally reformatted as an appendix in the book "Fleshing out Skull and Bones", a compilation edited by Kris Millegan and published in 2003.


title: Skull and Bones

text: Among prominent alumni are former president and Chief Justice William Howard Taft (a founder's son); former presidents and father and son George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush; Chauncey Depew, president of the New York Central Railroad System, and a United States Senator from New York; Juan Terry Trippe, Founder & CEO, Pan American World Airways (Pan Am); Joseph Gibson Hoyt, the first chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis; Supreme Court Justices Morrison R. Waite and Potter Stewart; James Jesus Angleton, "mother of the Central Intelligence Agency"; Henry Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War (1940–1945); Robert A. Lovett, U.S. Secretary of Defense (1951–1953); William B. Washburn, Governor of Massachusetts; and Henry Luce, founder and publisher of "Time", "Life", "Fortune", and "Sports Illustrated" magazines.


title: Skull and Bones

text: John Kerry, former U.S. Secretary of State and former U.S. Senator; Stephen A. Schwarzman, founder of Blackstone Group; Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers; Harold Stanley, co-founder of Morgan Stanley; and Frederick W. Smith, founder of FedEx, are all reported to be members.


title: Skull and Bones

text: In the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, both the Democratic and Republican nominees were alumni. George W. Bush wrote in his autobiography, "[In my] senior year I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society; so secret, I can't say anything more." When asked what it meant that he and Bush were both Bonesmen, former presidential candidate John Kerry said, "Not much, because it's a secret." Tim Russert on "Meet The Press" asked both President Bush and John Kerry about their memberships to Skull and Bones, to which the president replied, "It's so secret we can't talk about it." Kerry replied, "You trying to get rid of me here?"


title: Skull and Bones

text: Skull and Bones has a reputation for stealing keepsakes from other Yale societies or from campus buildings; society members reportedly call the practice "crooking" and strive to outdo each other's "crooks".


title: Skull and Bones

text: The society has been accused of possessing the stolen skulls of Martin Van Buren, Geronimo, and Pancho Villa.


title: Skull and Bones

text: The group Skull and Bones is featured in books and movies which claim that the society plays a role in a global conspiracy for world control. There have been rumors that Skull and Bones is a branch of the Illuminati, having been founded by German university alumni following the order's suppression in their native land by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria with the support of Frederick the Great of Prussia, or that Skull and Bones itself controls the CIA.


title: Druze

text: The Druze (; , ' or ', , "") are an Arabic-speaking esoteric ethnoreligious group from Western Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, syncretic, and ethnic religion based on the teachings of Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad and ancient Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and Zeno of Citium. Adherents of the Druze religion call themselves "the Monotheists" or "the Unitarians" ("al-Muwaḥḥidūn").


title: Druze

text: The Epistles of Wisdom is the foundational and central text of the Druze faith. The Druze faith incorporates elements of Isma'ilism, Christianity, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Pythagoreanism, and other philosophies and beliefs, creating a distinct and secretive theology based on an esoteric interpretation of scripture, which emphasizes the role of the mind and truthfulness. Druze believe in theophany and reincarnation. Druze believe that at the end of the cycle of rebirth, which is achieved through successive reincarnations, the soul is united with the Cosmic Mind ().


title: Druze

text: The Druze have a special reverence for Shuaib, who they believe is the same person as the Biblical Jethro. The Druze believe that Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and Isma'il ibn Ja'fari were prophets. Druze tradition also honors and reveres Salman the Persian, al-Khidr (who they identify as Elijah, reborn as John the Baptist and Saint George), Job, Luke the Evangelist, and others as "mentors" and "prophets".


title: Druze

text: The Druze do not permit outsiders to convert to their religion. Marriage outside the Druze faith is rare and strongly discouraged. Most Druze religious practices are kept secret.Even though the faith originally developed out of Isma'ilism, the Druze are not Muslims. The Druze faith is one of the major religious groups in the Levant, with between 800,000 and a million adherents. They are found primarily in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, with small communities in Jordan. They make up 5.5% of the population of Lebanon, 3% of Syria and 1.6% of Israel. The oldest and most densely-populated Druze communities exist in Mount Lebanon and in the south of Syria around Jabal al-Druze (literally the "Mountain of the Druze").


title: Druze

text: The Druze community played a critically important role in shaping the history of the Levant, where it continues to play a significant political role. As a religious minority in every country in which they are found, they have frequently experienced persecution by different Muslim regimes, including contemporary Islamic extremism.


title: Druze

text: The name Druze is derived from the name of Muhammad bin Ismail Nashtakin ad-Darazī (from Persian "", "seamster") who was an early preacher. Although the Druze consider ad-Darazī a heretic, the name has been used to identify them, possibly by their historical opponents as a way to attach their community with ad-Darazi's poor reputation.


title: Druze

text: Before becoming public, the movement was secretive and held closed meetings in what was known as Sessions of Wisdom. During this stage a dispute occurred between ad-Darazi and Hamza bin Ali mainly concerning ad-Darazi's ' ("exaggeration"), which refers to the belief that God was incarnated in human beings to ad-Darazi naming himself "The Sword of the Faith", which led Hamza to write an epistle refuting the need for the sword to spread the faith and several epistles refuting the beliefs of the '.


title: Druze

text: In 1016 ad-Darazi and his followers openly proclaimed their beliefs and called people to join them, causing riots in Cairo against the Unitarian movement including Hamza bin Ali and his followers. This led to the suspension of the movement for one year and the expulsion of ad-Darazi and his supporters.


title: Druze

text: Although the Druze religious books describe ad-Darazi as the "insolent one" and as the "calf" who is narrow-minded and hasty, the name "Druze" is still used for identification and for historical reasons. In 1018, ad-Darazi was assassinated for his teachings; some sources claim that he was executed by Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah.


title: Druze

text: Some authorities see in the name "Druze" a descriptive epithet, derived from Arabic ' ("she who studies"). Others have speculated that the word comes from the Persian word ' ( "bliss") or from Shaykh Hussayn ad-Darazī, who was one of the early converts to the faith. In the early stages of the movement, the word "Druze" is rarely mentioned by historians, and in Druze religious texts only the word "Muwaḥḥidūn" ("Unitarian") appears. The only early Arab historian who mentions the Druze is the eleventh century Christian scholar Yahya of Antioch, who clearly refers to the heretical group created by ad-Darazī, rather than the followers of Hamza ibn 'Alī. As for Western sources, Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveler who passed through Lebanon in or around 1165, was one of the first European writers to refer to the Druze by name. The word "" ("Druzes") occurs in an early Hebrew edition of his travels, but it is clear that this is a scribal error. Be that as it may, he described the Druze as "mountain dwellers, monotheists, who believe in 'soul eternity' and reincarnation". He also stated that "they loved the Jews".


title: Druze

text: The number of Druze people worldwide is between 800,000 and one million, with the vast majority residing in the Levant. Druze people reside primarily in Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.


title: Druze

text: The Institute of Druze Studies estimates that in 1998 40–50% of Druze live in Syria, 30–40% in Lebanon, 6–7% in Israel, and 1–2% in Jordan. About 2% of the Druze population are also scattered within other countries in the Middle East, and according to The Institute of Druze Studies there were approximately 20,000 Druzes in the United States in 1998. According to scholar Colbert C. Held of University of Nebraska, Lincoln the number of Druze people worldwide is around one million, with about 45% to 50% live in Syria, 35% to 40% live in Lebanon, and less than 10% live in Israel, with recently there has been a growing Druze diaspora.


title: Druze

text: Large communities of Druze also live outside the Middle East, in Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America (mainly Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil), the United States, and West Africa. They are Arabs who speak the Arabic language and follow a social pattern very similar to those of the other peoples of the Levant (eastern Mediterranean). In 2021 the largest Druze communities outside the Middle East are in Venezuela (60,000) and in the United States (50,000). According to the "Los Angeles Times" in 2017 "there are about 30,000 in the United States, with the largest concentration in Southern California".


title: Druze

text: The story of the creation of the Druze faith in the two years between 1017 and 1018 is dominated by three men and their struggle for influence.


title: Druze

text: Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad, an Ismaili mystic and scholar from Zozan, Khorasan, in the Samanid Empire. arrived in Fatimid Egypt in 1014 or 1016. He assembled a group of scholars that met regularly in the Raydan Mosque, near the Al-Hakim Mosque. In 1017, Hamza began to preach a "Muwaḥḥidūn" (Unitarian) doctrine.


title: Druze

text: Hamza gained the support of the Fātimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who issued a decree promoting religious freedom and eventually became a central figure in the Druze faith.


title: Druze

text: Little is known about the early life of al-Darazi. According to most sources, he was born in Bukhara. He is believed to have been of Persian origins and his title "al-Darazi" is Persian in origin, meaning "the tailor". He arrived in Cairo in 1015, or 1017, after which he joined the newly emerged Druze movement.


title: Druze

text: Al-Darazi was converted early to the Unitarian faith and became one of its early preachers. At that time, the movement enlisted a large number of adherents. As the number of his followers grew, he became obsessed with his leadership and gave himself the title "The Sword of the Faith". Al-Darazi argued that he should be the leader of the daʻwah rather than Hamza ibn Ali and gave himself the title "Lord of the Guides" because Caliph al-Hakim referred to Hamza as "Guide of the Consented". It is said that al-Darazi allowed wine, forbidden marriages and taught metempsychosis although this may be exaggeration by contemporary and later historians and polemicists.


title: Druze

text: This attitude led to disputes between Ad-Darazi and Hamza ibn Ali, who disliked his behavior and his arrogance. In the "Epistles of Wisdom", Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad warns al-Darazi, saying, "Faith does not need a sword to aid it", but al-Darazi ignored Hamza's warnings and continued to challenge the Imam.


title: Druze

text: The divine call or unitarian call is the Druze period of time that was opened at sunset on Thursday 30 May 1017 by Ad-Darazi. The call summoned people to a true unitarian belief that removed all attributes (wise, just, outside, inside, etc.) from God. It promoted absolute monotheism and the concepts of supporting your fellow man, true speech and pursuit of oneness with God. These concepts superseded all ritual, law and dogma and requirements for pilgrimage, fasting, holy days, prayer, charity, devotion, creed and particular worship of any prophet or person was downplayed. Sharia was opposed and Druze traditions started during the call continue today, such as meeting for reading, prayer and social gathering on a Thursday instead of a Friday at Khalwats instead of mosques. Such gatherings and traditions were not compulsory and people were encouraged to pursue a state of compliance with the real law of nature governing the universe. Epistle thirteen of the "Epistles of Wisdom" called it "A spiritual doctrine without any ritualistic imposition".


title: Druze

text: The time of the call was seen as a revolution of truth, with missionaries preaching its message all around the Middle East. These messengers were sent out with the Druze epistles and took written vows from believers, whose souls are thought to still exist in the Druze of today. The souls of those who took the vows during the call are believed to be continuously reincarnating in successive generations of Druze until the return of al-Hakim to proclaim a second Divine call and establish a Golden Age of justice and peace for all.


title: Druze

text: By 1018, al-Darazi had gathered around him partisans – "Darazites" – who believed that universal reason became incarnated in Adam at the beginning of the world, was then passed to the prophets, then into Ali, and then into his descendants, the Fatimid Caliphs. Al-Darazi wrote a book laying out this doctrine, but when he read from his book in the principal mosque in Cairo, it caused riots and protests against his claims and many of his followers were killed.


title: Druze

text: Hamza ibn Ali rejected al-Darazi's ideology, calling him "the insolent one and Satan". The controversy led Caliph al-Hakim to suspend the Druze "daʻwah" in 1018.


title: Druze

text: In an attempt to gain the support of al-Hakim, al-Darazi started preaching that al-Hakim and his ancestors were the incarnation of God. An inherently modest man, al-Hakim did not believe that he was God, and felt al-Darazi was trying to depict himself as a new prophet. In 1018 Al-Hakim had al-Darazi executed, leaving Hamza the sole leader of the new faith and al-Darazi considered to be a renegade.


title: Druze

text: Al-Hakim disappeared one night while out on his evening ride – presumably assassinated, perhaps at the behest of his formidable elder sister Sitt al-Mulk. The Druze believe he went into Occultation with Hamza ibn Ali and three other prominent preachers, leaving the care of the "Unitarian missionary movement" to a new leader, al-Muqtana Baha'uddin.


title: Druze

text: The call was suspended briefly between 19 May 1018 and 9 May 1019 during the apostasy of al-Darazi and again between 1021 and 1026 during a period of persecution by Ali az-Zahir for those who had sworn the oath to accept the call.


title: Druze

text: Persecutions started forty days after the disappearance into Occultation of al-Hakim, who was thought to have been converting people to the Unitarian faith for over twenty years prior. Al-Hakim convinced some heretical followers such as al-Darazi of his soteriological divinity and officially declared the Divine call after issuing a decree promoting religious freedom.


title: Druze

text: Al-Hakim was replaced by his underage son, ʻAlī al-Zahir. The Unitarian/Druze movement acknowledged al-Zahir as the caliph, but continued to regard Hamzah as its Imam. The young caliph's regent, Sitt al-Mulk, ordered the army to destroy the movement in 1021. At the same time, Bahāʼ al-Dīn was assigned the leadership of the Unitarians by Hamza.


title: Druze

text: For the next seven years, the Druze faced extreme persecution by the new caliph, al-Zahir, who wanted to eradicate the faith. This was the result of a power struggle inside of the Fatimid empire in which the Druze were viewed with suspicion because of their refusal to recognize the new caliph as their Imam. Many spies, mainly the followers of al-Darazi, joined the Unitarian movement in order to infiltrate the Druze community. The spies set about agitating trouble and soiling the reputation of the Druze. This resulted in friction with the new caliph who clashed militarily with the Druze community. The clashes ranged from Antioch to Alexandria, where tens of thousands of Druze were slaughtered by the Fatimid army, "this mass persecution known by the Druze as the period of the "mihna"". The largest massacre was at Antioch, where 5000 prominent Druze were killed, followed by that of Aleppo. As a result, the faith went underground, in hope of survival, as those captured were either forced to renounce their faith or be killed. Druze survivors "were found principally in southern Lebanon and Syria".


title: Druze

text: In 1038, two years after the death of al-Zahir, the Druze movement was able to resume because the new leadership that replaced him had friendly political ties with at least one prominent Druze leader.


title: Druze

text: In 1043, al-Muqtana Baha'uddin declared that the sect would no longer accept new pledges, and since that time proselytism has been prohibited awaiting al-Hakim's return at the Last Judgment to usher in a new Golden Age.


title: Druze

text: Some Druze and non-Druze scholars like Samy Swayd and Sami Makarem state that this confusion is due to confusion about the role of the early preacher al-Darazi, whose teachings the Druze rejected as heretical. These sources assert that al-Hakim rejected al-Darazi's claims of divinity, and ordered the elimination of his movement while supporting that of Hamza ibn Ali.


title: Druze

text: Wadi al-Taym, in Lebanon, was one of the two most important centers of Druze missionary activity in the 11th century. And that was the first area where the Druze appeared in the historical record under the name "Druze". It is generally considered the "birthplace of the Druze faith".


title: Druze

text: It was during the period of Crusader rule in Levant (1099–1291) that the Druze first emerged into the full light of history in the Gharb region of the Chouf Mountains. As powerful warriors serving the Muslim rulers of Damascus against the Crusades, the Druze were given the task of keeping watch over the crusaders in the seaport of Beirut, with the aim of preventing them from making any encroachments inland. Subsequently, the Druze chiefs of the Gharb placed their considerable military experience at the disposal of the Mamluk rulers of Egypt (1250–1516); first, to assist them in putting an end to what remained of Crusader rule in coastal Levant, and later to help them safeguard the Lebanese coast against Crusader retaliation by sea.


title: Druze

text: In the early period of the Crusader era, the Druze feudal power was in the hands of two families, the Tanukhs and the Arslans. From their fortresses in the Gharb area (now in Aley District of southern Mount Lebanon Governorate), the Tanukhs led their incursions into the Phoenician coast and finally succeeded in holding Beirut and the marine plain against the Franks. Because of their fierce battles with the Crusaders, the Druze earned the respect of the Sunni Muslim caliphs and thus gained important political powers. After the middle of the twelfth century, the Ma'an family superseded the Tanukhs in Druze leadership. The origin of the family goes back to a Prince Ma'an who made his appearance in the Lebanon in the days of the 'Abbasid caliph al-Mustarshid (1118–35 CE). The Ma'ans chose for their abode the Chouf District in south-western Lebanon (southern Mount Lebanon Governorate), overlooking the maritime plain between Beirut and Sidon, and made their headquarters in Baaqlin, which is still a leading Druze village. They were invested with feudal authority by Sultan Nur ad-Din and furnished respectable contingents to the Muslim ranks in their struggle against the Crusaders.


title: Druze

text: Ibn Taymiyyah believed that Druze had a high level of infidelity, besides being apostates. Thus, they were not trustworthy and should not be forgiven. He taught also that Muslims cannot accept Druze penitence nor keep them alive, and Druze property should be confiscated, and their women enslaved. Having cleared the holy land of the Franks, the Mamluk sultans of Egypt turned their attention to the schismatic Muslims of Syria. In 1305, after the issuing of a fatwa by the scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, calling for jihad against all non-Sunni Muslims like the Druze, Alawites, Ismaili, and Twelver Shia Muslims, al-Malik al-Nasir inflicted a disastrous defeat on the Druze at Keserwan, and forced outward compliance on their part to Orthodox Sunni Islam. Later, under the Ottoman, they were severely attacked at Saoufar in the 1585 Ottoman expedition, after the Ottomans claimed that they assaulted their caravans near Tripoli. As a result of the Ottoman experience with the rebellious Druze, the word "Durzi" in Turkish came, and continues, to mean someone who is the ultimate thug. One influential Islamic sage of that time labeled them as "infidels" and argued that, even though they might behave like Muslims on the outside, this is no more than a pretense. He also declared that confiscation of Druze property and even the death sentence would conform to the laws of Islam.


title: Druze

text: Consequently, the 16th and 17th centuries were to witness a succession of armed Druze rebellions against the Ottomans, countered by repeated Ottoman punitive expeditions against the Chouf, in which the Druze population of the area was severely depleted and many villages destroyed. These military measures, severe as they were, did not succeed in reducing the local Druze to the required degree of subordination. This led the Ottoman government to agree to an arrangement whereby the different nahiyes (districts) of the Chouf would be granted in "iltizam" ("fiscal concession") to one of the region's amirs, or leading chiefs, leaving the maintenance of law and order and the collection of its taxes in the area in the hands of the appointed amir. This arrangement was to provide the cornerstone for the privileged status which ultimately came to be enjoyed by the whole of Mount Lebanon, Druze and Christian areas alike.


title: Druze

text: With the advent of the Ottoman Turks and the conquest of Syria by Sultan Selim I in 1516, the Ma'ans were acknowledged by the new rulers as the feudal lords of southern Lebanon. Druze villages spread and prospered in that region, which under Ma'an leadership so flourished that it acquired the generic term of "Jabal Bayt-Ma'an" (the mountain home of the Ma'an) or "Jabal al-Druze". The latter title has since been usurped by the Hawran region, which since the middle of the 19th century has proven a haven of refuge to Druze emigrants from Lebanon and has become the headquarters of Druze power.


title: Druze

text: Under Fakhr-al-Dīn II (Fakhreddin II), the Druze dominion increased until it included Lebanon-Phoenicia and almost all Syria, extending from the edge of the Antioch plain in the north to Safad in the south, with a part of the Syrian desert dominated by Fakhr-al-Din's castle at Tadmur (Palmyra), the ancient capital of Zenobia. The ruins of this castle still stand on a steep hill overlooking the town. Fakhr-al-Din became too strong for his Turkish sovereign in Constantinople. He went so far in 1608 as to sign a commercial treaty with Duke Ferdinand I of Tuscany containing secret military clauses. The Sultan then sent a force against him, and he was compelled to flee the land and seek refuge in the courts of Tuscany and Naples in 1613 and 1615 respectively.


title: Druze

text: In 1618, political changes in the Ottoman sultanate had resulted in the removal of many enemies of Fakhr-al-Din from power, signaling the prince's triumphant return to Lebanon soon afterwards. Through a clever policy of bribery and warfare, he extended his domains to cover all of modern Lebanon, some of Syria and northern Galilee.


title: Druze

text: In 1632, Küçük Ahmed Pasha was named Lord of Damascus. Küçük Ahmed Pasha was a rival of Fakhr-al-Din and a friend of the sultan Murad IV, who ordered the pasha and the sultanate's navy to attack Lebanon and depose Fakhr-al-Din.


title: Druze

text: This time the prince decided to remain in Lebanon and resist the offensive, but the death of his son Ali in Wadi al-Taym was the beginning of his defeat. He later took refuge in Jezzine's grotto, closely followed by Küçük Ahmed Pasha who eventually caught up with him and his family.


title: Druze

text: Fakhr-al-Din was captured, taken to Istanbul, and imprisoned with two of his sons in the infamous Yedi Kule prison. The Sultan had Fakhr-al-Din and his sons killed on 13 April 1635 in Istanbul, bringing an end to an era in the history of Lebanon, which would not regain its current boundaries until it was proclaimed a mandate state and republic in 1920. One version recounts that the younger son was spared, raised in the harem and went on to become Ottoman Ambassador to India.


title: Druze

text: Fakhr-al-Din II was the first ruler in modern Lebanon to open the doors of his country to foreign Western influences. Under his auspices the French established a khān (hostel) in Sidon, the Florentines a consulate, and Christian missionaries were admitted into the country. Beirut and Sidon, which Fakhr-al-Din II beautified, still bear traces of his benign rule. See the new biography of this Prince, based on original sources, by TJ Gorton: "Renaissance Emir: a Druze Warlord at the Court of the Medici" (London, Quartet Books, 2013), for an updated view of his life.


title: Druze

text: Fakhr ad Din II was succeeded in 1635 by his nephew Mulhim Ma'n, who ruled through his death in 1658. (Fakhr ad Din's only surviving son, Husayn, lived the rest of his life as a court official in Constantinople.) Emir Mulhim exercised Iltizam taxation rights in the Shuf, Gharb, Jurd, Matn, and Kisrawan districts of Lebanon. Mulhim's forces battled and defeated those of Mustafa Pasha, Beylerbey of Damascus, in 1642, but he is reported by historians to have been otherwise loyal to Ottoman rule.


title: Druze

text: Following Mulhim's death, his sons Ahmad and Korkmaz entered into a power struggle with other Ottoman-backed Druze leaders. In 1660, the Ottoman Empire moved to reorganize the region, placing the sanjaks (districts) of Sidon-Beirut and Safed in a newly formed province of Sidon, a move seen by local Druze as an attempt to assert control. Contemporary historian Istifan al-Duwayhi reports that Korkmaz was killed in act of treachery by the Beylerbey of Damascus in 1662. Ahmad however emerged victorious in the power struggle among the Druze in 1667, but the Maʿnīs lost control of Safad and retreated to controlling the iltizam of the Shuf mountains and Kisrawan. Ahmad continued as local ruler through his death from natural causes, without heir, in 1697.