Narrator: This is Science Today. The best images yet of Saturn's moon Titan have been captured by astrophysicists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of California. These images, taken by the Keck telescope, utilized a special computer processing technique that provided higher resolution. Lab physicist Bruce Macintosh says this enabled researchers to see past a hazy smog that had long obscured Titan and confirmed a previous theory its surface features a sea - not of water, but an oily black substance made up of liquid hydrocarbons.

Macintosh: Which makes it the first open body of liquid that's been seen on any planet in the solar system, other than the Earth.

Narrator: In fact, Macintosh says Titan is a lot like the Earth was four billion years ago.

Macintosh: So, in some sense, it's a laboratory for studying what conditions were like on Earth before life formed. On Titan, they're not likely to lead to life. It's way to cold. There's no liquid water there's just these other liquids. But nonetheless, it can provide an analogy for what conditions were like on the Earth four billion years ago. e is trying to treat a problem as opposed to taking healthy people and trying to do better.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.