What kinds of life could exist in Saturn’s largest moon, Titan? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated possible scenarios for the existence of life on Titan, including its size, abundance, and location. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand the conditions for finding life beyond Earth, either life as we know it or as we don’t know it.
For the study, the researchers used a series of computer models to simulate how a process called glycine fermentation, which is used by bacteria on Earth, could exist within Titan’s lakes of liquid methane and ethane based on the moon’s current parameters, including atmospheric characteristics, temperature, and pressure. In the end, while the team found that glycine fermentation is possible, it likely results in very small amounts and finding life teeming across Titan’s surface is unlikely.
Artist’s illustration of a lake on Titan. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
"There has been this sense that because Titan has such abundant organics, there is no shortage of food sources that could sustain life," said Dr. Antonin Affholder, who is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Arizona and lead author of the study. "We point out that not all of these organic molecules may constitute food sources, the ocean is really big, and there's limited exchange between the ocean and the surface, where all those organics are, so we argue for a more nuanced approach."
This study comes as NASA is preparing to send its Dragonfly mission to Titan with the goal of ascertaining the moon’s potential habitability. Dragonfly is a quadcopter that will “hop” around the surface of Titan while collecting data and images regarding the surface conditions and whether it possesses life as we know it, or even as we don’t know it.
What new discoveries about the potential for finding life on Titan will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: The Planetary Science Journal, EurekAlert!
