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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.
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
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!
What's the difference?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.
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
I wonder how religious groups would rationalize something like this?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Slashdot summaries are confused, when not outright inaccurate - news at 11. If you actually want to know details, you're pretty much required to RTFA.
As for your question, humans (/mammals/animals/multicellular organisms) are a recent addition, not typical of Earth-based life.
Earth life is water-based (well, suspended anyway), with lipid(hydrocarbon)-based cell walls to keep vital chemistry sufficiently concentrated to continue. Eventually blue-green algae evolved their ability to photosynthesize and poisoned the planet with toxic oxygen byproducts, which some of the survivors later managed to harness as a fuel. But that's really an incidental development so far as life itself is concerned. Before that life was all chemovores - likely consuming complex organic molecules from either hydrothermal vents and/or their fellows for both nutrients and energy.
In this case researchers have found some other hydrocarbons that can form "cell walls" with properties very similar to those in our own cells, except that they operate in a liquid methane suspension instead of water, at temperatures that would render our own cell walls solid. One of those hydrocarbons is acrylonitrile, a compound found in Titan's atmosphere, so the building blocks for cell walls at least are already present there.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
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
Well, it eats, excretes, and reproduces, all that's missing is some form of self-organization.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"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"
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.
It's worse than that. He's dead, Jim!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
... 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.
What is life? Maybe active homeostasis? Maybe any system where continuing active homeostasis is required to maintain the system and for continuing on-going functionality. Where the failure of active homeostasis leads to irreversible 'death' where the system cannot be restarted... of course that still doesn't cover hibernation.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..