Slashdot Mirror
Tropical Lakes On Saturn Moon Could Expand Options For Life
ananyo writes "Nestling among the dunes in the dry equatorial region of Saturn's moon Titan is what appears to be a hydrocarbon lake. The observation, by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, suggests that oases of liquid methane — which might be a crucible for life — lie beneath the moon's surface. Besides Earth, Titan is the only object in the Solar System to circulate liquids in a cycle of rain and evaporation, although on Titan the process is driven by methane rather than water. This cycle is expected to form liquid bodies near the moon's poles, but not at its dune-covered equator. Now scientists think they have found a tropical lake — some 60 kilometers long and 40 kilometers wide, and at least 1 meter deep — in Cassini observations made between 2004 and 2008. Because tropical lakes on Titan should evaporate over a period of just a few thousand years, the researchers argue that these ponds and lakes are being replenished by subsurface oases of liquid methane. That would expand the number of places on the moon where life could potentially originate."
Absolutely positively evidence that the universe was crawling with life!
It would mean life is not only not based on DNA (and thus couldn't be a result of cross-contamination with earth as has been suggested might be the case for any Maryian life we might come across), but wouldn't even be based on WATER! It would mean that perhaps anywhere there was a liquid at perhaps almost any temperature we should be on the lookout for life! (Liquid helium on Pluto? Molton magma in the earth's mantle?)
I read in the book "Life as we do not know it" that Titan could be the home to up to three(!) completely separate "Domains" (the authors term) of life. Water based (around some heated cryo-volcanoes perhaps), ammonia-water, and methane based.
Someday we'll send a manned mission to orbit Titan. Then using remote balloons(!) and boats(!) they'll be able to really investigate these possibilities. Until then, the time lag will make things difficult (but not impossible I hope).
Was it discovered using something besides imaging and spread radar, such as point radar?
Imaging of data gathered in a chronosynclastic infundibulum, AFAIK.
Every end has half a stick.
Titan is the only object in the Solar System to circulate liquids in a cycle of rain and evaporation
The relatives of the Slylandro would argue about that ~
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
AFAIK there's nothing to say that methane-based life couldn't also use DNA. Methane is still carbon and hydrogen. All living organisms on Earth are composed primarily of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (CHON), and the general presumption looking for life elsewhere in the universe is that places with high concentrations of those elements is a good place to look, because we know life can be built out of them. Hydrogen and carbon dioxide are interconvertible with methane and water very much like carbohydrates (such as methane) and oxygen are interconvertible with carbon dioxide and water; all these processes involve the, C, H, and O of CHON equally, and the former was actually quite common early in the history of life on Earth. It wasn't until photosynthetic organisms started using light to convert CO2 and H20 into O2 and various CH's that the now-free O2 and CH4 reacted to become more of the H2O and CO2 that now cover our planet. (And then the O2 kept piling up and almost killed it all until some enterprising organisms started combusting it with those other CH's into more H20 and CO2).
TL:DR; methane really isn't all that weird an environment to find life much like we know it. Molten silicon and iron, on the other hand, or liquid helium, that would require some as-yet-unknown chemistry).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Maybe liquid methane flows from the poles to the equator and evaporates there. Then gaseous methane flows to the pole through the atmosphere and precipitates out.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
There is no proof that there is any life at all. The paper(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103510001053- login needed) that interpreted the data from the Cassini mission has been questioned by Chris McKay (NASA http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Have_We_Discovered_Evidence_For_Life_On_Titan_999.html). The possibilities do NOT rule out life but comes out with other explanations that are more plausible.
1. The determination that there is a strong flux of hydrogen into the surface is mistaken. It will be interesting to see if other researchers, in trying to duplicate Strobel's results, reach the same conclusion.
2. There is a physical process that is transporting H2 from the upper atmosphere into the lower atmosphere. One possibility is adsorption onto the solid organic atmospheric haze particles which eventually fall to the ground. However this would be a flux of H2, and not a net loss of H2.
3. If the loss of hydrogen at the surface is correct, the non-biological explanation requires that there be some sort of surface catalyst, presently unknown, that can mediate the hydrogenation reaction at 95 K, the temperature of the Titan surface. That would be quite interesting and a startling find although not as startling as the presence of life.
4. The depletion of hydrogen, acetylene, and ethane, is due to a new type of liquid-methane based life form as predicted (Benner et al. 2004, McKay and Smith 2005, and Schulze-Makuch and Grinspoon 2005).
Could it be a brew of organic compounds that would normally freeze, but with just enough methane to keep it liquid? The methane vapor pressure could be in equilibrium with the atmospheric methane. It'd also have to be some blend that doesn't want to slowly crystallize out the solute. So solubility would have to be high for the solutes.
An Earth equivalent would be honey. Liquid, water based, stable, doesn't dry out.
Chances are the authors have thought of this and rejected it. If someone could explain why, that'd be great.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Besides Earth, Titan is the only object in the Solar System to circulate liquids in a cycle of rain and evaporation
No, it is not.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
It was one of the last NASA / Esa proposals for an ambitious large mission, only, the thing was automated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission -nicknamed 'TSSM'
In 2009 an easier-to-do competitor was chosen, to Jupiter (also because we already went to Titan with Cassini/Huygens, similarly a joint NASA/ESA mission), but TSSM does remains a convincing candidate for the next row of selection...
Herve5, former tech. resp. of the Huygens probe to Titan ;-)
Herve S.
We know on earth deserts can form in a few thousand years so why not on Titan? Perhaps that lake is the remenant of something much larger that formed when that part of the moon was far wetter a few thousand years ago?
Guess we will call the lake "Clear Lake".
What other bass fishermen out there read that of the summary and immediately thought, "Topwater!"
(I'm going on a fishing vacation all next week. All I've been doing this week is planning rod setups, and posting to /. of course, to the detriment of my real work.)
Are you joking or trolling?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
What makes you think we're not already doing that? Well, sometimes we're not living in harmony with each other.
below -160C, who in their right mind actually thinks that there will be life?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Implications of the fact that step one in building a technology base/civilization is the discovery of fire, which for a methane based life source is not going to go over so well. I can only assume that development is going to be stunted in an enviroment where a strike anywhere match is the same equivilant as the deathstars laser.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
Oh, you're a creationist?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
That explains at least why you claimed that Titan is thousands of years old. If it was formed thousands of years ago, it would still be forming today, since those processes of accretion don't operate on such small timescales. Not to mention that it would still be quite hot. It's only sensible if you believe some sort of fairy with a magical wand came by and poofed it into existence. Which is fine by me, but I see no reason to jump to that conclusion.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
But the thing is, we have these instruments called telescopes, and you can look at star nurseries where stars are being formed, you can see stars exploding, etc. And now we can even see accretion disks around young stars with some object sweeping up dust as they move along it (proto-planets). So this is a big hint as to how things work. Accretion is happening. Sorry but I really can't wrap my head around your point of view. If you are correct then things should either be really very different from what we observe, or some thousands of years ago everything should have popped into existence in a way that deliberately hides the fact that these were created at that time. All of a sudden, earth would be here, with layered sediments, a moon full of craters, light streaming in from non-existent stars and galaxies, creating them as our horizon deepens, gravity fields already in place while we await for the actual gravity fields to arrive, etc. I could go on and on, but you should get the point by now. And then, this creator forgot about making Titan look old. Hmm.. Call me gullible, but I think there is a better explanation than that to explain Titan's atmosphere.
PS: to anyone moderating, could you please stop modding MadFan down, I'm trying to have a discussion here, this is a rather old thread by now so please, don't waste your points on it. (if you insist, mod me up instead :-))
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Thank you for the reply. I do appreciate you're not the dumb kind of theist and genuinely try to make sense of your point of view. Some points you made were really interesting. I wish I could go deeper into this, but I'm sorry to say that due to personal events unfolding, I won't have much time to delve into it for the next weeks :(. I did manage to read your document though.
Maybe some remarks I'd like to make: I have this eery feeling that if you do the math, there are some real problems that need to be explained from your side: one thing is the cratering (not only of the moon but of other celestial bodies).. if all these craters happened to be impacts of the last thousands of years, would there have been enough time to dissipate away all the heat?
Another is about the flooding theory: If biblical accounts are correct, then you'd get a world-wide flood in 40 days of rain. That makes 8000m/40 days = 200m of rainfall per day. World-wide. Quite hefty I'd say. Have you considered what the air pressure before that event would have been, and also, how much condensation energy would have been released by turning vapour into rain?
If you can't answer these questions directly, I wont hold it against you, as the discussion will have to wind down, I will be over my ears in work.
Cheers,
Mr2Cents.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
The biggest problem with Christianity is Christians, as a Christian I find that so often to be the case. I sometimes agree with what you say and sometimes want to just slap you through your monitor.
You keep saying "we creationists believe" as if there's only one interpretation of scripture. The bible is meant to tell us things we could not figure out ourselves (We could not have figured out the trinity or Christ's sacrifice, for example, without divine revelation of those things.) and contains many different writing styles. Some is poetry, some is history, some is laws. It is, in effect, a love letter from a parent to the children. Christians take various interpretations, quite a few, myself included, simply admit that we don't know how it happened in regards to the floods. I can of course think of a few ways, but I don't know. He could have used natural forces, he could have just plonked down a few miles of water, I don't know and that is OK. You are entitled to your interpretations, but please don't lump me in with your interpretation as you seem to frequently do.
I am reminded of Matthew 22:37, Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'
We Christians don't get brownie points for being stupid. Science itself was founded on the Christian worldview, that the universe was real, orderly, and understandable. This is unique among worldviews. Robert Boyle, whom you yourself have quoted in the past, said “From a knowledge of God's work we shall know Him.” To ignore what we have learned about his creation, and instead try to make your interpretation of scripture fit instead, is a slap in the face of God himself.
We do this in our everyday lives, I read the Chilton's manual for my pickup and take an interpretation of the information there. Often I go investigate my pickup and find that my interpretation of that book was wrong, does that mean that the Chilton's manual is useless and was written by someone who had never worked on my pickup? No, it just means that my interpretation, based on the information I had at the time, was incorrect. The more I learn the better my understanding and the greater appreciation of the information I find within. Thus it is with the bible. Also like the bible, there is plenty I don't understand. Just because I don't understand all of it is no reason to dismiss the parts I do understand, nor is it reason to not try to understand it.
Wisdom 11:17-20
For not without means was your almighty hand,l
that had fashioned the universe from formless matter,*
to send upon them many bears or fierce lions,
Or newly created, wrathful, unknown beasts
breathing forth fiery breath,
Or pouring out roaring smoke,
or flashing terrible sparks from their eyes.
Not only could these attack and completely destroy them;
even their frightful appearance itself could slay.
Even without these, they could have been killed at a single blast,
pursued by justice
and winnowed by your mighty spirit.
But you have disposed all things by measure and number and weight.
To translate for those unfamiliar. God COULD have created a world that operated like the Paean worldview, at the whims of magical beasts and demi-gods, but in his love created a world that we humans, created in his image, could come to know and understand. If Science says that the world is 14 billion years old, then great. The fact that our dating isn't 100% perfect or we don't fully understand something doesn't mean we throw it all in the bin and shoehorn a biblical interpretation in. We just say humbly that we don't know and continue looking for explanations. We are not going to have a complete understanding of the universe tomorrow, next year, or next century. Perhaps we'll find a reason for the supposed discrepancies.
I don't buy the interpretations that show the wold as only 6,000 years old or that scripture shows the date of the second coming. (Ma