Signs of Life on Saturn's moon?
Saturn moon offers hints of early life on Earth
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Titan, the orange-shrouded moon of Saturn, may harbor hints to answering the riddle of life, three new studies suggest.
Saturn's largest moon, Titan possesses an ammonia and methane atmosphere that obscures its frozen surface from view. Since a 1980 Voyager I flyby, astrobiologists have been tantalized by the world, seeing it as a chilled time capsule of early planetary conditions at the start of the 4.6-billion year old solar system.
The surface of Titan "is still enshrouded in a cloud of mystery despite the initial flood of data," begins a current Journal of Geophysical Researchreport led by Roger Clark of the United States Geological Survey. That mystery persists, notwithstanding 68 overflights since 2004 by the international Cassini space probe, and an intentional plummet into the atmosphere by the 2005 European Space Agency's Huygens lander.. A 69th flyby of the moon, passing some 1,200 miles over the 3,000-mile-wide world, comes early Saturday, June 5.
Using new Cassini data, Clark and colleagues report that the moon's surface is a stew of organic compounds, benzene, ethane and methane. But what is interesting is that another compound, acetylene, appears absent.
Why is that interesting? Well, five years ago, NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay, suggested acetylene might make dandy fuel for any life living on the -290 degree surface of the moon. "One interpretation of the acetylene data is that the hydrocarbon is being consumed as food," noted a Jet Propulsion Laboratory statement highlighting the research this week.
Another interesting Titan find comes in the current Icarus journal, where Cassini planetary atmosphere investigator Darrell Strobel of Johns Hopkins University, reports about half as much hydrogen as expected on the surface of the moon. McCay predicted in a 2005 paper that life on Titan might eat both hydrogen and acetylene. "It's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth," McKay said in the JPL statement, pointing to the possibility of methane-based life on the mystery moon.
This is exciting, could we have found life on another planet!?
Good bio on Titan
