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Earth Life Possibly Could Reach Titan
dylanduck writes "New simulations show that big asteroid impacts on Earth could have sent about 600 million boulders flying into space. About 100 have reached Jupiter's moon Europa - but they landed at 24 miles/sec. 'This must be rather frustrating if you're a bacterium that survived launch from Earth,' says a researcher. But 30 boulders from each impact reach Titan - and they land gently." From the article: "'I thought the Titan result was really surprising - how many would get there and how slowly they'd land,' Treiman told New Scientist. 'The thing I don't know about is if there are any bugs on Earth that would be happy living on Titan.' Titan's surface temperature is a very cold -179C and its chemistry is very different from Earth's."
Leads to the interesting possibility of xenophilic bacteria and algae impacting Jupiter and having their entry slowed greatly by the thick atmosphere.
On the other hand, the Earth was apparently seeded by xenophobic bacteria that was kicked off their home planet.
"The team ran computer models of such giant impacts, estimating that each would send about 600 million boulders into space to orbit the Sun. Some of those launched at relatively high speeds - faster than 6 kilometres per second - got as far as Jupiter and Saturn in about a million years.
In the simulations, about 100 of the boulders from each impact reached Jupiter's moon Europa. "
UNFOUNDED I TELL YOU!!! They're just pulling these numbers out of thin air!! Ludicrous!!!
The whole thing was a simulated what-if, something made abundantly clear from start to finish. They "Know" these impacts happened and at precisely what speed because IT WAS A FEKKING SIMULATION, DAMN IT!
Sheesh.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
The fact that we have determined these things hit Earth makes them no more likely to hit Earth. I say we carry on ignoring them like we did before anyone had any clue such a thing could happen.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
...why shouldn't bacteria from Earth be able to grow on Titan? Microbes are amazingly hardy organisms, they can thrive as chemotrophs at the bottom of the ocean near volcanic vents or in other incredibly hot temperatures (one such microbe has an enzyme that lets biologists amplify DNA for legal and research purposes). If they can survive the extremes of air, ocean depth, and heat, why not those of cold and darkness?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
I could imagine something like a geode crystal managing to stay warm and moist in outer space, hell we could discover at the very heart of Halley is an entire ecosystem which comes alive once every 76 years like flowers in the desert.
We just never get close enough to see it bloom.
liqbase
People are also only pointing out animals we know exist being on those boulders. It's entirely possible there were many more species hundreds of millions of years ago that were as resiliant as the "Water Bear" towards harsh conditions, but suffered some other short coming that lead to their extinction on Earth.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
Wouldn't it be something if everyone stopped dodging the most likely possibillity that life started on this planet?
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
Now I know that everyone and his dog likes to point out how hardy bacteria are. They turn into spores and can survive insane periods of time, etc. However the article said that 100 rocks arrive at Titan in a million years.
A million years.
That's long enough for some really slow chemical processes to become significant. Like the ones that cause replacement of organic tissue with minerals - aka fossilization.
OK, if they arrive at that rate, the first one is likely to arrive in 5-15,000 years or so. Go bugs! You have a chance!
But these aren't rocks that just flew straight to Jupiter and landed on Titan. They are ones that went into an elliptical orbit that touches Jupiter's orbit and stayed there for a while. So those rocks are going to be going out to Jupiter (nice and cold) then coming in close to the Sun. How close? Venus? Mercury? I don't know (though I could probably work it out). But regardless, it is going to be a lot closer than Earth. Which means that it will be pretty toasty. Think autoclave.
Oh, let's add hard radiation. Solar storms produce enough radiation that it was a real concern that the Apollo astronauts might encounter one. And here we are, experiencing half of every solar storm for thousands of years. (Depends which way the rock was facing whether a bug gets hit or protected.) That's going to add up.
I'd put pretty dim odds on the bacteria surviving to land on Titan.
First off, I tend to agree with you and I think life did start here, but...
Given how hard it is for life to start on a planet, how can you say this is the most likely possibility?
Maybe it is (talking about the odds) more likely that we evolved from some bacteria that somehow found it's way here...
Panspermia is just a dodge. For some reason people can't believe that here on earth, where life as we know it has done better by far than anyother place that we know of, could possibly have been where life originated. The probabillity of life evolving somewhere else and then being magically whisped away to earth is even MORE improbable than life originating here. Just because something that we know has happened is improbable doesn't mean we have to completely throw all of the most probable scenarios for it to happen out the window.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?