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Titan Occupies A Solar System Sweet Spot
SocietyoftheFist writes "From an article on the BBC website, scientists have determined that Titan occupies a 'sweet spot' much like Earth. Venus is the same size as Earth but too hot so water boiled off long ago ending most geologic processes. Mars is too small to generate enough heat to keep water from freezing so it too slowed down geologically. Titan is much like the Earth with winds, rains and tectonic forces but instead of water it has an abundance of methane. Methane is liquid at the temperatures found in Titan's atmosphere and replaces water in the equation."
You're thinking too narrowly - not all life has to be carbon-based, mostly water, and oxygen-breathing.
1. Go to bookshelf
2. Take out the dictionary
3. Look up the word theoretical
Then theres the lipid bi-layer that forms the cell membrane.
Is there any analog of a lipid in methane? One which can form a bi-layer bubble?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The thing with life is, once it has started its' complexity will rise with the next generations
This is a fallacy. There is no inherent trend towards complexity. Evolution progresses only towards adaptedness, even if it means that the next generation is simpler than the current one.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Do you have an example to prove that life must be carbon based, and mostly water and oxygen breathing? Let's face it, our little planet is unique right now. It could swing either way. One example - us - is hardly sufficient to prove a model. There are physical properties about the elements and molecules that make life possible on this planet, but only our life. Truth be told we don't quite know how life ever came into existence. Until we find another form of life that didn't come from our little back-water planet all we have is speculation.
So if you can prove the reverse, please contact someone in the scientific community immediately.
Surface life may well prove to the the rarity.
Somewhere like Ganymede, or Europa, has a far greater habitability beneath the surface.
Sub-surface regions seems generally more likely to allow life to get started than surfaces. A bit of activity there is good, as life thrives in changing rather than fixed environments (as far as we know).
Even life on earth began below the surface, in the oceans.
Sub-surface is where we may find life on Mars, there's no question of life on the surface there.
The polarity of water is a, if not the (biochemists feel free to correct me, i'm synthetic org.), major factor in protein folding;
Proteins fold no matter what environment they are in, they simply fold differently in different environments. There is no reason to believe that folding in solvents other than water would be any worse for evolving life than folding in water.
the ability of water to dissolve ionic compounds is also vitally important, e.g. nerve function
Organisms on Titan may dispense with all those inconvenient ions and channels and instead just use efficient organic conductors, maybe even superconductors, an option that evolution didn't have in the hot, conductive, and corrosive environments where life evolved one earth.
a nonpolar organic solvent is a *lot* less likely, if not impossible, to support life.
There is no scientific basis for such statements. It's not even clear what "less likely" means