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TitanTitan

2004-07-07 - 8:28 a.m.
Titan has hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are evidence, at the very least, of prebiotic organic chemistry.

This is what happens before life occurs.

Hydrocarbon molecules can also form from decaying organic garbage, or they can form after millions of years of heat and pressure on buried vegetable matter.

This would mean be life itself existed on Titan.

Methane has been detected in the atmosphere of Titan. Biologic methane is microbially derived from recent organic matter, whereas geologic methane comes from the thermal alteration of ancient organic matter deep within the geosphere. Methane is sometimes called marsh gas. Significant amounts of methane could indicate recent biological activity.

Cassini has found what appear to be large methane clouds on Titan.

Life also needs energy. Geological and atmospheric activity of some kind.

The clouds are certainly active, and the Cassini images there has been some geological activity on Titan.

You also need nitrogen, which Titan has lots of. Interestingly, you don't need oxygen. Oxygen is actually harmful to life. That's why when things rust, they 'oxidize'. And why products that contain 'Anti-oxidants' are so popular. Free radicals are oxygen's way of making us rust.

Titan's atmosphere is not conducive to human life, although it would certainly get your windows nice and clean.

But that doesn't mean that it couldn't (or indeed, doesn't) support other forms of life. It also has atmospheric pressure, and has an average surface temperature of 94K. A little cold for us, but positively toasty for some extremophiles.

In fact, given what we think we know about what conditions are needed for life, Titan has more of them than any other planet beyond Earth that we currently know of.

Cassini will not be able to determine if there is life on the surface of Titan unfortunately.

We should definitely send something else that can, although that's probably not likely to happen for another 20 years.

There are now three possible targets for extraterrestrial life in our Solar System:
Mars
Europa
Titan

If only one of them contained evidence of life, what would that do to the odds of finding life on other planets around other stars?

With just one planet to live on, we are always playing celestial roulette with comets, asteroids, superbugs and nuclear wars...Wouldn't it be nice if we could stop all the bullshit and focus our attention as a global society on searching for other baskets to keep our eggs in?

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