OK, so the obvious question then is just how much heat is lost to space per second and how much heat is generated by the gravitational interactions with Saturn?
This would give a fair indication of how long a body 2000km in radius would be able to sustain a fluid ocean of water in the absence of another more substantial heat source.
Furthermore, it would then point to just how much radioactive heat generation would be required to sustain the ocean for billions of years.

Somehow, I think the researchers are in for a major, mind-numbing surprise in the next five years.

So what permanently numbed yours?

But the new data show that Titan's shape is much more distorted than would be predicted by a simple gravitational model.

Maybe the use of the "simple gravitational model" should be deposited in the dust bin along with epicycles. The EM forces involved are far more powerful than gravity and can easily account for the observations of the odd shape, just as those same forces cause the Sun to be so round. Clearly the "simple gravitational model" needs to be replaced by a theory that is better at predicting the observations rather than resorting to huge underground oceans and miles thick glaciers.

So what permanently numbed yours?

the bible and a young earth creationist agenda.

Creationists shouldn't comment on science. It is hilarious, and making people think and then flee religion (see Dawkins' Converts' Corner).

Here the GW atmosphere of methane is at most ~ 0.5 billion years old. So any such simple model as proposed by our creationist troll isn't going to predict observations.

And of course the same goes for EU/PC religion. The article describes precisely the null hypothesis of known mechanisms. No sufficiently energetic EM field to heat Titan has been measured by Cassini. Anyone studying Cassini and EM for real would know that.

CD85....please, read other stuff. EM isn't resposible for everything. If it is your goal of furthering the understanding of EM and it's role in the universe, you have to at least appear to comprehend how it works. When you post as you do and try to pin everything on it, you hinder your goal.

What's the point to blame gravity for everything? Clearly the "simple gravitational model" isn't working on any level, but here they are tweeking every aspect of the model to make sure the gravity only model stays intact.
There is no mention of the electromotive potential created by a spinning charged body within an active plasma environment, something which is completely ignored by standard theorists and dogmatic believers such as bjorn larsson. Anyone studying Cassini data readily knows there is an highly complex active plasma environment around Saturn, it's the deniers and ignoramuses who claim differently.

http://www.thunde...e-way-2/

The observational data is interesting, but their interpretation seems to rely on quite a bit of interpretational analysis. I haven't seen the numbers, but when dealing with 'big' stuff like planetary density and such, a small deviation in an approximate value can produce very different results.

One major unknown here is the density of the internal ocean water. There's no way to know how much stuff is disolved in that water, or what exactly is disolved in it. It could be anywhere from nearly pure water to super-saturated. There could also be layers of accumulated condensate at the bottom, which they apparently haven't considered here.

Our own ocean demonstrates quite a bit of variability in density due to variations in salinity and temperature, and methane clathrates do condense on our ocean floor, amongst other things.

I would take the above theory with a grain of salt (pun intended).