Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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."
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.