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Methane-Based Life Possible On Titan
Randym writes: With the simultaneous announcement of a possible nitrogen-based, cell-like structure allowing life outside the "liquid water zone" (but within a methane atmosphere) announced by researchers at Cornell (academic paper) and the mystery of fluctuating methane levels on Mars raising the possibility of methane-respiring life, there now exists the possibility of a whole new branch of the tree of life that does not rely on either carbon or oxygen for respiration. We may find evidence of such life here on Earth down in the mantle where "traditional" life cannot survive, but where bacteria has evolved to live off hydrocarbons like methane and benzene.
Making a shell is nice, but that's hardly the most fundamental aspect of life.
We haven't even defined what life is exactly. What you see as life I may see as self-propagating chemical reactions.
They've already established methane based life in Utah, so anything's possible.
The summary is using those interchangeably, but they're very different: humans are carbon-based, oxygen-inhaling, and CO2-exhaling. Given this terminology, where does methane fit with Titan life and Martian life?
Once this get out, we won't have Any problems with funding for NASA. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Although the third planet from the Sun suffers from crippling gravity and heat, scientists long held that the corrosive atmosphere of oxygen and water vapor is what forbids life as we know it.
If we didn't melt instantly from the heat or collapse from the gravity, the oxygen would burn us up in a flash! Scientists have been unable to explain how so much uncombined oxygen could exist in the atmosphere of such a hot planet, but new data suggests life *is* possible with a carbon-based shell of special molecules called lipids and proteins.
etc... etc.. etc...
Methane is CH4. The C is for carbon. Come on people!
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
There probably aren't bacteria like that deep in the earth our they would have eaten a lot of our oil and we would have found then in wells already
Why aren't you feeding the poor instead of posting on Slashdot? Isn't that the most important thing? You could have given some well deserved, undernourished child one of your twinkies. Oh wait, the child lives in some stinking desert without a functioning water well in five miles.
Or maybe we could use some of the earth sensing satellites (created by those self same hair-brains) to map out artesian flows and show people on the ground where an inexpensive well could be dug. Or we could give the kid a vaccine (developed by that same complex and expensive infrastructure created by those hair-brains) to keep him healthy so he can go to school and break out of the cycle of fear, anger and misuse that characterizes his world.
Or perhaps not - the world is a complex and often ugly place. Quite a bit more complex than your apparent world view, I won't comment on whether or not your view is particularly unattractive but I'm damned sure glad I don't feel that way.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Is it possible that some of it knows CSS?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
According to a news flash I just made up, NASA sent a probe to titan and not only found definitive proof of life there but they were able to take pictures of ancient civilizations of methane based life on titan... According to a new hypothesis formulated by the lead scientist on the mission, "This must be some very old fart" :p
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
That's "harebrained" you retard.
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
Do they farts cows there? I'm a staunch republican so I should know these things, I know. Still learning about vaginas, and how what you swallow cannot come out from down there.
This is so proof that the hot gases filling the White House these days is defined as life and not just rotting feces.
... has degraded to polls and articles on how to get more people to code, how to teach them and why everyone should know how to code.
Titan is gorgeous.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
http://www.astrobio.net/wp-con...
True color: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
It's also the setting of the first chapter in the brilliant hard sci-fi novel Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem.
I can't wait for new probes to report from there.
And unicorns *may* suddenly leap out of my bum, but without some form of supporting evidence for that claim I'm not going to take it seriously. All life we know of depends on cell walls to maintain a sufficient density of organic chemistry, and now we know that cell walls functionally much like our own could exist on Titan, using compounds we already know exist in the atmosphere. That's a big boost for the argument that there might be life on Titan.
As for porous materials - life might well start there, but it's not likely to get very far unless its chemistry is either all bound to a single macro-molecule, or is contained within some sort of semi-permeable envelope. The very porosity which contained the chemistry would also severely restrict the flow of energy and nutrients, so that probably only a very thin layer of pores could support life, and the first bit of life that found a way to leave its prison would have a bounty of resources at its disposal beyond anything its ancestors could have "dreamed" of.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Since the inhabitants of Titan are now scientifically confirmed as substance abuse users, I wonder if we could use this scientific discovery to further promote our global corporate government surveillance state. We obviously need to further our police presence to combat these meth heads on Titan. Also some of the meth based life forms may be procreating before the government sanctioned age of 18. Therefore we can use this finding to increase our funding to Child Protective services. Some of titans meth heads may come down and start feeding meth to our kids. We need lots more cameras everywhere to monitor for this danger to national security. One thing we don't fucking need is to send spaceships or do any kind of science related to Titan, because science just proved that the entire moon is infested with methamphetamine, and we need to stay away from that stuff. If not for us, then for the children.
Gee I love science when it is used to promote an agenda.
I'd love this to be true, but it seems unlikely from the point of view of the Gaia hypothesis. Life tends to transform its surroundings, hence the Earth's oxygen atmosphere that we depend on. This is why James Lovelock predicted, back in the '70s, that the Mars probes would not find life there: if Mars had life, we'd be able to see unambiguous evidence of it from here. The fluctuating methane levels on Mars are intriguing, but given the billions of years that Mars (and Titan) have been around, it seems like any life would have had plenty of time to evolve and make an unmistakable impact.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Will be super cool if Titan (and/or Mars) has this happening. Saying it's a new form of life is either ignorant or sensationalism. Check out the obligate anaerobes and the Great Oxygenation Event that happened about 2,300,000,000 years ago.
"We are the only life forms. Get over it"
You make an assertion without a shred of proof.
The earth formed life over 3.7 billion years ago, and you are saying no other rocky planet in the universe has had similar conditions at any time in the last 13.8 billion years? That's unreasonable.
Harebrained.
Brains don't have hairs, but hares have brains....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
We are the only life forms.
You don't know that.
Go feed some poor people.
Why don't you go ask your church to do that instead of wasting money on gold and jewel encrusted mega-cathedrals? A tent and some lawn chairs should be good enough to sit around doing nothing of value.
At the same time, why don't you ask your church to start paying taxes like the rest of us?
Typical defocusing the argument. Not to mention the total inability to detect sarcasm.
.
Pedantic fuck. You still will never find life outside of our planet. Unless WE put it there. Humans are so fucking arrogant, I kinda hope God changes his mind and just kills all of us. I know I wouldn't bother with such useless life forms. ;)
I laugh at what the church has done to your HAIR BRAINS>
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Fuck your karma bullshit. I got some nice karma sitting in my cats littler box for ya.
If these materials that act as surfactants for liquid methane at cryogenic temperatures occur naturally on Titan the obvious evidence for their presence would be foam. The next probe to follow Huygens should be an autonomous boat to study the shores.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
... down in the Earth's mantle. Where do you think all our "fossil" fuel deposits came/come from [Deep Hot Biosphere]?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.