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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."
Any intelligent life form that eats farts should be feared. That is all.
"I drank what?" -Socrates
This is certainly an interesting idea, and one of the more unusual proposed.
:-)
Didn't Bush's new space exploration plan call for us to visit there, soon?
Ignore Alien Orders
Now if we could only be successful in finding intelligent life in Washington DC
Garry AKA -Phoenix- Rising Above the Flames
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
Even just from the summary, it would seem that the life itself is not acetylene-based, just the food the life would eat.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Excited missionaries are pulling out their cold weather gear.
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.
--Greg
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.
Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
No, nowadays they would stand in a stunned silence trying to decide which corporate executive is the most appropriate one to provide the most profitable answer.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
We should probably make sure they don't find out about the Acetylene genocide going on at every mechanic's garage and construction site every day.
Therefore, to expect the life on another planet may be complex-molecule-based instead of simple-carbon-based is feasible.
"Complex-molecule-based" versus "simple-carbon-based" ?? Did you make up those terms yourself? Could you please define them? And perhaps elaborate on how this is supposed to follow from the statement "acetylene is organic"?
Because the statement "acetylene is organic" doesn't mean anything in particular. It's saying that the acetylene molecule has a carbon-carbon bond in it.
But the other people saying 'no' are (as far as I can tell thru HISTORY) full of horse-hockey.
Who is saying 'no' to what?
Tell me exactly what in the world you know about organic compounds on another planet that will/will not produce life, please?
Since this is the first semi-intelligible statement in your post, I'll try and answer it:
1) Most scientists believe that life in all its forms, terrestrial or otherwise, follows the laws of chemistry. All life we know of appears to do so.
In the same way that we also believe that all the universe follows the same laws of physics. We have no reason to believe otherwise. (and the chemistry follows from the physics, anyway.)
2) We know that certain conditions are required to sustain life regardless of its form. For instance, life requires energy. This follows from the laws of thermodynamics being one of those things believed to be universal in 1).
3) We have labs. We don't have to go to another planet to figure out how chemistry works at extreme temperatures and pressures.
Yes, it's flamebait/trollbait. How about you editors/moderators tell me your experience on Titan, [..]
No, it's just moronic. How about you tell me about all those atoms you've seen yourself? Still believe they exist though, don't you?
Let the organic/biological scientists determine this, not the uneducated populace.
David Grinspoon is an adjunct Professor at the University of Colorado. Hardly "uneducated populace".
Even I don't dare step into this conversation, except as far as I have made my agrument.
You didn't really make one.
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.
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.
I'm assuming the warning covers the rest of the solar system. So those little black rectangles can kiss our carbon based rear ends.
Also, members of the Titan version of Slashdot are probably saying, "I for one welcome our monkey-based overlords."
This reaction doesn't make any sense.
Sure it does. C2H2 + H2 --> CH4 is exothermic by about 300 kJ/mol. That is, 300 kJ of heat are released for every mole of acetylene consumed.
Maybe it's confusing because we usually think of energy-releasing respiration-type reductions in the context of our nice highly oxidizing atmosphere? So that most reactions we think of as "energy producing" are combustion reactions, combinations of hydrocarbons with oxygen? But there's no free oxygen on Titan, so that's out. Nevertheless, there are zillions of chemical reactions that produce energy.
And on that note, I have to say the existence of some chemical reaction that can generate energy seems pretty much a given on any planet with an abundance of light elements and temperatures nontrivially above 0K. How could it be otherwise? The universe has hardly had time to reach complete chemical equilibrium...
So I guess I'm underwhelmed by the realization that this or that chemical reaction could power life. I'd think there's always a chemical reaction that can produce mere energy. That's the least of life's problems, maybe.
The trick, as I see it, lies more in figuring out what system of complex chemical reactions under Titanian conditions could mimic the Terrestrial transcription-translation-replication pas de deux our nucleic acids and proteins execute to regenerate and duplicate themselves indefinitely.
Here's one problem with Titan I see on general thermodynamic grounds: I would argue one of the key aspects of DNA/protein chemistry is the primacy of hydrogen bonds, which have an energy comparable to Earth's average temperature. That makes much of its chemistry nicely reversible -- you can build proteins or digest them, bind with DNA or unbind, and so on, by exerting only small control forces, e.g. by using enzymes.
Alas, the temperatures on Titan are only about 100K, so that's right out. At those temperatures hydrogen bonds are stronger than steel, so to speak. Their chemistry is no longer easily reversible.
But what else is there? It's hard to think of any chemistry which is easily reversible -- easily controllable -- at 100K, because there isn't anything even remotely like a chemical bond with energy that low.
Maybe life -- in the sense of self-replicating large molecules -- is pretty much impossible except where the temperatures are near the energy of a hydrogen bond, which -- aha -- means temperatures near the melting point of water.
Because the Huygens probe had many platinum-covered appendages, this (catalyst) triggered out the chemical reactions depicted in the OP, which heated the probe much more than expected (it is notorious that the probe's temperature was well above manufacturer's predictions during all descent).
:-)
Then once on ground, this heating continued, and Huygens whose batteries had been designed to last "the 3-hours descent + some margins" in a -150 degree environment, lasted indeed six hours more for being much hotter...
Hervé, part of the Huygens technical team
OK, as we are not april 1st now I wonder wether I shoulnd't have posted anonymously
Herve S.
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...:-( )
DG: By ultraviolet light and also by interactions with Saturn's magnetosphere. There's a lot of energy up there. Then the acetylene is raining down and getting buried....
Other than that small confusion in the heads of the interviewers, I find the concept of acetylene based life very intriguing.
I, for one, welcome our new acetylene metabolizing overlords.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
Hello? 21st century here, all $DEITY's should be buried by now. Open your eye's people, Darwin's theory has been out for nearly 150 years, religion has long been obsolete!
Bring it on you fundi's, I dare you. Modding me down will get you a one-way ticket to Hell...
This sig is intentionally left blank
How many overlords does this make? Doesn't it get a bit tiring every time you turn around we have welcome new overlords like those giant ants, black monoliths, 900 foot Jesus, giant squid, or even intelligent doormats. C'mon slashdot. Just stick with one overlord and we'll all be happy toiling away in the gallium arsnide mines, the selenium tarpits, and Wal-Marts. Hold on there's a knock at the door.
I'm back. The delivery man gave me this package. It had this cool hat in it. It's a gelatinous blue with tentacles. It looked just like the one he was wearing. Except his was pulsating. I'm going to try it on.
I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW ACETYLENE BASED LIFEFORM TITAN OVERLORDS. TIME TO DELIVER MORE HATS.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"