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."

Comments

Re:One point I haven't seen mentioned.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Launch isn't like reentry.

The mass of material lifted from beside the strike and above what will be the crater goes up with the atmosphere surrounding it and doesn't experience the sort of extreme heating you're supposing.

It's still pretty abrupt accelleration (which bacteria handle pretty well, especially if embedded in something of a similar density). But the rock isn't plowing through dense air that is at a speed differing from its own by something in excess of escape velocity. The air gets launched, too.