Saturn's largest moon may have had a violent birth.

New research led by SETI Institute scientist Matija Ćuk proposes that Titan formed when two earlier Saturnian moons collided and merged hundreds of millions of years ago. This dramatic event may explain several long-standing mysteries in the Saturn system—including Titan's unusual orbit, the origin of the strange tumbling moon Hyperion, and even the relatively young age of Saturn's iconic rings.

Using computer simulations, researchers found that a once-stable Saturnian moon system may have become unstable, sending an outer moon on a collision course with Titan. The merger would have resurfaced Titan—erasing many ancient craters—and scattered debris that later formed Hyperion. The resulting changes to Titan's orbit could have destabilized smaller inner moons, triggering collisions that eventually created Saturn's rings.

Join SETI Institute Social Media Manager Beth Johnson and planetary dynamicist Matija Ćuk as they explore this new model for the Saturn system's evolution, what clues led scientists to propose a moon-moon merger, and how future missions—like NASA's Dragonfly mission to Titan—might test this dramatic hypothesis.

Could Titan really be the survivor of an ancient cosmic crash?

📄 Paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ae422c

📰 Press release: https://www.seti.org/news/saturns-moon-titan-could-have-formed-in-a-merger-of-two-old-moons/

(Recorded live 12 March 2026.)

Astronomers have unveiled a novel technique for detecting faint signals from stellar and exoplanetary systems — potentially opening new pathways in the search for extraterrestrial technology and natural astrophysical phenomena alike.

In this episode of SETI Live, host Moiya McTier sits down with radio astronomer Cyril Tasse to explore the method described in Nature Astronomy. How does it work? Why is it different from traditional radio searches? And what kinds of signals could it reveal that we've been missing?

Radio waves from distant stars and planets are incredibly faint and often buried in noise. This new approach rethinks how we process and interpret complex data, potentially improving sensitivity to subtle, structured signals.

RIMS press release: https://observatoiredeparis.psl.eu/the-detection-of-radio-bursts.html

RIMS paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02757-7

Stellar storm press release: https://observatoiredeparis.psl.eu/evidence-of-a-massive-stellar.html

CME video: https://youtu.be/bHlOYFn0RUM

(Recorded live 5 March 2026.)

Dr. Franck Marchis, Director of Citizen Science at the SETI Institute and co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of SkyMapper, and Dr. Lauren Sgro, Outreach Manager at the SETI Institute, update us about citizen science with the Unistellar network in partnership with the SETI Institute. They discuss making 15,000 observations in 2025, pending confirmation of a planet candidate, Comet 29P outbursting, observing rocket bodies, and preparing to observe Artemis II. They also answer your questions about our program and discuss recent highlights. (Recorded live 27 February 2026.)