Thursday, December 23, 2010

Titan

Titan is a gorgeous looking moon of Saturn.

The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn is still swooping around Titan and has produced some amazing data that has scientists aflutter.

Think about it - volcanoes that spew slushy ice, prospects for pre-biotic chemistry, and hydrocarbon lakes.

Nice place to visit. The idea is that Titan is in a type of pre-Earth-like state. It is a bio-chemists dream world.

CS Monitor: What's new with Titan? Five intriguing findings about Saturn's moon
To be sure, planetary scientists had posited that Titan was home to liquid-hydrocarbon lakes or seas.


...Titan, so on a very young Earth, complex pre-biotic molecules could literally have fallen from the skies.


...there are four possible explanations. But the most provocative involves the presence of organisms that are methane-based, rather than water-based, as terrestrial organisms are.

2 comments:

Glynn Kalara said...

With all that OIL and Nat. gas just lying around I'm sure Fox news will find that WMD's might exist here so we need to mount a pre-emptive strike.

Jim Sande said...

As long as they are also leading the charge, filling in the middle, and holding down the flanks I say, let em attack