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since we're probably never going to get

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to the surface of Titan and be able to

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pick up the rocks and take samples of

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the liquid we want to be able to

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understand a place that we can get to

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and then draw conclusions about Titan we

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believe that geology is geology

8
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everywhere so we've come to death valley

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to racetrack playa it's dry lake right

10
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now but it's a lake nonetheless so we

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can look for similar pieces of evidence

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the reason we do that is we can crawl

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around Death Valley and measure things

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we can find out what's happening we can

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find out what causes that the evidence

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to occur and it's just like a detective

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game from there on so whenever you have

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a high thing next to a low thing you can

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be sure that something's going to happen

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nature likes to even itself out on

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Ontario Lokus we have high things right

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next to low things so the rainfall is

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going to move the material from the high

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to the low and it's going to form these

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same alluvial fans that where material

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washes out from the gully like it does

27
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here and it's going to flow the material

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at Ontario lochus there are pieces of

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bedrock like this only probably made out

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of water ice that make fingers that

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extend down into the lake it's as though

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the lake had risen up and flooded those

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valleys now this is a much smaller

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example than we see it Ontario lochus

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but it tells us that the level of the

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water is what has made this into a

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finger not the finger itself on Titan we

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think that the lakes are filled by

39
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seasonal drainages sometimes those

40
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drainages make cross-hatched patterns

41
00:02:04,149 --> 00:02:02,840
that look like gullies so we looked on

42
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earth for a place that has those

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00:02:08,859 --> 00:02:06,619
cross-hatched gullies and here we find

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it at racetrack playa water that comes

45
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down from those hills flows in

46
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infrequent but violent thunderstorms out

47
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onto racetrack playa as the rainfall

48
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comes down closer to the playa on Titan

49
00:02:24,789 --> 00:02:23,000
they form Delta something like the

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Mississippi Delta out there this is a

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dry lake bed so what happens is that the

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gravel just gets pushed out onto the

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lake bed and that's a clue that what's

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happening on Titan is a fluid not a dry

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lake bed so by studying the relationship

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between the evidence and the events here

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in Death Valley where we can measure

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them we can connect that same set of

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evidence to the events that might have

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happened on Titan it's important because

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if we're going to find life somewhere

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else in the universe it has to have