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Acetylene Based Life on Titan?
mindpixel writes "Astrobiology Magazine's Leslie Mullen has a fascinating interview with funky science dude David Grinspoon about the possibility that there may exist a whole new biology on Titan where the extreme cold slows normally explosive reactions to a biologically useful pace." From the article: "What's really new in our paper is that we go into the question of energy sources. If there's life there, what's it going to eat? What kind of food is there? And it turns out there's abundant food because of all this photochemistry in the upper atmosphere, where methane is being turned into other organic molecules. Some of those organic molecules are very energy-rich, and one that we consider in the paper is acetylene. We know it's being made in the atmosphere, we know it's raining down on the surface, and it's been detected at the surface with the Huygens probe. We calculated that, if acetylene is reacting with the hydrogen gas to turn it back into methane, quite a bit of energy is being released. So that's our basis for saying there is something to eat on Titan. We don't know if there are any customers, but there's something on the menu."
Reading the article makes we wonder exactly what life is, anyway. It sounds as though we only require chemical conversion. What if there is a big rock that serves as a catalyst for this conversion of acetylene and hydrogen to methane. Would we think of that as a life form? Or would we require reproduction? Would reproduction be possible in this slow-motion frozen gel we find on Titan?
It is interesting, though, how the life and the planet co-evolves. Life has really changed Earth and it may have affected Titan, as well.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Suppose there is intelligent life in there, what will they think of earth creatures?
"Amazing! The third planet creatures support temperatures so high that none of the titan lifeforms could withstand. Let's call them extremophiles".
Kinda makes you think...
Clement's Ice World was set on a unthinkably frigid world where sulfur was a solid and liquified steam covered the surface!
It was Earth, of course. The protagonist was an alien scientist kidnapped by drug smugglers and forced to analyze a horrific drug they'd been buying from the natives. It's a juvenile, really, but enjoyable by adults as well.
Who elsewould like to see 10 billion taken out of that moon landing money and put towards a few swarms probes to Titan to confirm this. Something to researhc this, and the JIMO mission are what i'd really pushed up schedule. Life outside our planet is the type of scientific and philisophical question that we should make all strides to answering. Jupites moons and Titan are the only places we essentially have left in our immediate solar system that might contain life. We really owe it to ourselves to research these to their final conclusion. I'd be happy to expand humanity into the solar system once we know we're not the only thing on it.
We should be feared when we eat bread (the farts of yeast) and honey (the piss of bees). Or a can of beans.
Is the impact on religion. The 7th day and so forth. Like Copernicus and Gallileo popping the churches/government bubble isn't pleasent and because of the current polical atmosphere, these times are no exception.
Not anonymous because I am not afraid, though I may regret it in the near term.
As I understand it, bees create honey as a convenient way to store sustenance for themselves, not as a waste product. So it's not so much the piss of bees as the cud of bees, or perhaps the canned food of bees.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
How does the earth replenishes its carbon 14 source (half-life of 5730 yrs)? Spallation. This is the reason for carbon dating can be "somewhat" constant and "more or less" reliable. (Assuming that the high energy particles are constant.)
This is a great topic to stump some of the more well educated scientists. N2 ----> 14CN.
http://www.sns.gov/aboutsns/what-why.htm
My question: does spallation work on Titan? I know that Saturn has an intense magnetic field, but I don't know if Saturn emits high energy particles. Can high energy particles from our sun can reach that far to influence Titan? I wonder if he factored this into his theory or not. The article does not explain this. I would figure that he would have to take this into account, if high energy particles are "abound." These particles can change most of the gases in the upper atmosphere to many different types of molecules. Using acetylene from methane as an example is very loaded. If there is enough energy to make this, why would acetylene not want to change into larger organic chains when exposed to this high energy or react with the next nearest neighbor molecules. Considering life is a major leap, however there is some chemistry (using high energy light/particles) that can do similar things.
Reactions slows with temperature either because diffundation speed slows (the speed of molecules) or that the energy of the collisions between molecules aren't enought to make them react.
The molecular speed should be a problem. I believe cell size of modern life is limited by diffundation of oxygen and other molecules. Any life would have to use lots of transportation engines in their cells (or keep them very, very small).
Life generally needs to do reactions in long chains (especially things that are energetic like acetylene!) Some enzymes could be good catalysators and help the reaction rates, I guess. But are they really made from proteins on Titan? What is used instead of water? Methane?
Assume that the "proteins" are working in clusters. Then we have cell membranes, DNA and...
Any physical chemist care to comment? Is there some trick to keep big C-based molecules moving about at ca 94 K average temperature?? (According to Wikipedia)
Now, even if possible functional cell parts can be conceived, considering the slower reaction rates -- how muc longer would life take to evolve? (Fewer reactions/second means that random reactions are tried slower.)
(No pun intended with my "Subject".)
Is there a slashdot site for physical chemists I can go read their comments about this story? :-)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
That's correct. From Wikipedia: "Honey is laid down by bees as a food source. In cold weather or when food sources are scarce, bees use their honey as their sole source of nutrition."
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Or it could have been touched by his noodly appendage
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Only one overlord? Think of all the money we'd lose from betting on the Overlord Championships. The small toy market alone would collapse overnight if we pulled all the Overlord action figures from the shelves. Think of the children!