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Hints of Life Found On Saturn's Moon Titan
Calopteryx writes "New Scientist reports that in 2005, researchers predicted two potential signatures of life on Titan. Now, thanks to research done with the help of the Cassini spacecraft, both have been seen, although non-biological chemical reactions could also be behind the observations. NASA's writeup has further details: 'One key finding comes from a paper online now in the journal Icarus [abstract] that shows hydrogen molecules flowing down through Titan's atmosphere and disappearing at the surface. Another paper online now in the Journal of Geophysical Research maps hydrocarbons on the Titan surface and finds a lack of acetylene. This lack of acetylene is important because that chemical would likely be the best energy source for a methane-based life on Titan, said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., who proposed a set of conditions necessary for this kind of methane-based life on Titan in 2005. One interpretation of the acetylene data is that the hydrocarbon is being consumed as food. But McKay said the flow of hydrogen is even more critical because all of their proposed mechanisms involved the consumption of hydrogen.'"
When I was in Jr. High, my science class had an assignment where we had to make-up a life form, based on the planet chosen's conditions and mine was Saturn. Of course my design was completely ridiculous, but the idea was pretty much close to what they're saying about Hydrogen consumption. This is pretty cool...I *heart* Saturn. "Pro'lly 'cuz it gots money with all them rings it has!" lol =P
The worst thing that could possibly happen for any form of life anywhere would be its discovery by us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Mare_Explorer (hopefully not postponed to be part of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission )
Titan, and Saturn system generally, is a really big thing for our distant future. People like to imagine the colonisation of Jupiter system, but the radiation belts there make it not exactly feasible; only Callisto out of 4 big moons might be fine. Saturn doesn't have this problem; is still decently close and with huge system of moons.
Discovery of life on Titan might of course complicate things...OTOH, with it (if any) being probably so vastly different, there's little risk of crosscontamination in either direction.
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I think you misunderstand. The mechanisms that would cause life to consume the substances that are 'missing' are totally alien to life as we know it, but fit the model for methane based life very well. It could well be that there are non-biological chemical processes doing it, but the odds of it being from any contamination from Huygens is astronomically remote. Hugyens was also very, very carefully sterilized. Granted, a microbe or two might have made it to Titan, where it would most likely die rather than reproduce.
I do see your point and we need to continue to be careful, but I see nothing in these findings that makes the Hugyens discussion at all relevant to this story.
I, for one welco...ah, screw it.
Methane itself is odorless. I suppose you could be referring to the aromatic compounds that methane-based life might excrete. You're probably just going for the cheap methane is farts joke. Yeah, imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Breathing hydrogen basically works in the opposite direction of terrestrial biochemistry. The proposed organisms are breathing hydrogen and presumably fixing it to something (say, oxides they've eaten) rather than the other way around as for Earth life.
And even if it was possible, Huygens could not have contaminated things to such a degree as to affect widespread atmospheric phenomenon.
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I'm sorry if real science just isn't all that exciting.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Titan is a young celestial body - with its own dense atmosphere and the only body until now in the solar system that has surface liquids apart from us.
Sure it can be hypothesized that since Titan is young - it probably is taking a course that Earth took millions of years ago. With the distance from Sun rendering it cold and the fact that it orbits Saturn being the primary differences.
Of course finding Life would be an enormous discovery. But if we start with what we already know - that Organic reactions are taking place on Titan's surface, and that it is a giant Organic Soup -- It gives us a huge interesting laboratory to study and experiment!
We can even direct Titan's course of life by controlled introduction of earth's anaerobic life on its surface -- since we already know a hypothesis on how our own Earth's atmosphere has evolved into the current air composition -- we can *test* and use those theories to change Titan's atmosphere, in turn not only validating our theories, but may be making Titan inhabitable like Earth!
Exciting to say the least! If only we humans can, just for a second -- stop bickering amongst ourselves and look outwards to this possibility!!
I must be misinterpreting your comment. Can you explain how crashing a probe into a celestial body has LESS contamination risk than just letting it drift off into the void?
Generally, they crash it into a celestial body that has no capability to support life and, such as the case of Jupiter, is hostile to the biological processes of what could possibly contaminate it.
No life from Earth will survive in Jupiter's atmosphere. The pressure is... extreme beyond that of the extreme on Earth.
The pressure there would be 10,000 times greater than the pressure at the deepest point in Earth's ocean. 10,000,000 Earth Atmospheres compared to 1,000 in the Marianas Trench.
Then you have the temperature. The hottest spot on Earth (the core) is about 7300K. On the liquid 'surface' of Jupiter, it is 10,000k. The most extreme of the thermophiles on Earth live in an area less than 400k. The core of Jupiter is hotter than the surface of the Sun.
If you find me something that can survive 10,000k temperatures and 10 million atmospheres I'd bow down to my new overlord.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
If it uses DNA or RNA (quite unlikely) then I guess that contamination is possible. But since we'd want to totally sequence whatever replicator molecule it used, it would be reasonably easy to determine whether contamination is even a reasonable hypothesis.
Remember, all life on this planet is related to a measurable degree. If it's related, then we can figure out what it's most closely related to, and how long ago it diverged. (Remember, when the proto-moon collided with the earth it quite likely emitted fragments that went that far. But we could measure even that distant a relationship, albeit with less certainty.)
But it's most likely that whatever molecule it uses for a replicator would be something not related to our nucleic acids. For one thing, the major solvents appear to be non-polar rather than polar, so anything water-based would be insoluble, where things that are lipid based would tend to be soluble. Also, the reaction rate is very temperature dependent, so it would be probable that the major chemicals of life on Titan would be unstable at STP (standard temperature and pressure).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Life doesn't have to "get" there. If the chemistry is right, it will start itself.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Actually I don't think his is a bad point. First off, we DON'T understand the metabolisms of most microbes on earth: most CAN'T be cultured in a lab because of this, experimented with, etc. etc.: only a little subset of the entire known microbial biota are even available for us to research. Beyond this, however, the known range of things that microbes can eat is expanding beyond our wildest imaginings: and not just on the bottom of oceans. That's why we now have microbes to use to eat oil spills, nuclear waste, and even metals (ummm....iron and steal, yum!). Not kidding about the bacteria that eat metals, by the way, which incidentally...DO IT BY HYDROGEN AND ELECTRON EXCHANGES. There's all sorts of stuff that one can tell you haven't even considered from the comment you just made: you need to do more dreaming "dream[er]...".
P.S. bacteria have survived in the vaccum of space on the moon, so "[they] would most likely die" is also not a very informed statement. I don't mean to be too insulting here, just very frank about the state of knowledge on these things vs. what you wrote: that is rose to "5, Insightful" just demanded the bio nerd in me to respond.
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.