Bizarre Crystals in Titan's Lakes Could Break a Fundamental Rule of Chemistry

A discovery about Saturn 's moon Titan has challenged what scientists thought was a basic rule of chemistry.

There, in the extreme cold , some supposedly fundamentally incompatible molecules may combine to form solids that have never been seen before in the Solar System, new research suggests.

This alien matter, according to a team led by chemist Fernando Izquierdo-Ruiz of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, is likely to be abundant on Titan.

"These are very exciting findings that can help us understand something on a very large scale, a moon [Titan] as big as the planet Mercury ," says chemist Martin Rahm of Chalmers University of Technology.

Related: Titan Could Have An Alien Biosphere – But It Might Be Dog-Sized

Titan is a fascinating little corner of the So