The Huygens probe will break away and study the atmosphere of Titan. It could tell us more about whether there is a chance for life on this moon, which is as large as a small planet.
Titan is considered one of the few possible candidates for bearing life in our solar system. It has a solid surface, a substantial atmosphere, and lots of good chemicals like methane and ethane. It might be able to support simple life forms like protazoa.
Of course, chances of Titan bearing life are generally considered remote, but what is your assessment? My guess is that it is about 1 in a million.
I’m really hoping the chances of life are 1:1.
Doubtful, but it would be damn interesting.
I think we will learn a whole lot of interesting stuff regardless.
I can’t wait to read all the fun stuff they find.
Going down to Titan gonna have myself a time!
Friendly microbes everywhere, humble cells without temptation!
Whee!!!
The real question I guess would be: Can life survive such a cold environment
and lack of free oxygen? Perhaps life could survive but not really live and
evolve. Are there anarobic thermophobic microbes on Earth?
My guess is: yes, it can. I don’t think we’ll find puppies and kittens swimming through the methane slush, but there could be anaerobic microbes there. The big question being whether they could live without a lot of water.
Life is durable. It can handle hot and cold environments, inhospitable environments, far better than one would think. We find life everywhere on earth, even places where by all rights it just shouldn’t thrive.
If the conditions on Titan were ever capable of producing life, chances are that it’s still there, somewhere. Unless it needs water. Most life on earth needs water (or water ice). Without water, or if there was water and now there’s not, then the moon may be devoid of life.
Though it probably won’t be for long. There’s a very non-zero chance that earth microbes hitched a ride on Cassini-Huygens, and that the probe will bringing some earth germs to Titan. Whether they survive or not would be an interesting question, too. Same for the microbes that were certainly on the two Mars rovers.
Well they know that there is water vapor. And suspect that there is water ice. And organic compounds of variuos sorts. Unclear if it has had liquid water at points or not. It currently has an “anti-greenhouse effect” going on, in which its atmosphere reflects enough energy out that it cool it down further. But this does not rule out that a green house effect was extant in its past. Or that geothermic activity could have raised surface temps in the past either. And if it did exist, then it is indeed possible that it could adapt to conditions including the lack of liquid water or suriving as airborne organisms in the vapor. Who knows?
The surface temperature of Titan is around -178°C (-289°F). You’ll be needing a good stable heat source if you want to keep water based lifeforms alive out there.
Not quite everywhere. For instance, there is practically no life in Antarctica. Life can thrive in the supercooled waters of the Arctic Ocean, but not on the mile-thick ice shield that covers most of Antarctica. There are some birds living on the Antarctic coasts – they live entirely on fish, and they can never venture very far from the water. Inland – nothing. There is air, there is sunlight, and there is (in solid form) water, but apparently these are not enough to support life. With all its diversity and ingenuity and astonishing adaptability, Earth’s biosphere has never produced a plant that can grow on water ice. No plants means no herbivorous animals, which means no carnivorous animals. I would not be surprised – though I do not know this for a fact – if the air over most of the continent is entirely devoid of airborne bacteria.
The point: To our knowledge, there are some environments where life simply cannot exist. When I think about the possibility of life on Mars in the distant past, I am always brought up short by considering that Mars probably has never been much warmer than it is now. Antarctic temperatures, practically no water or air – what are the chances for life?
So is Titan, so much, much further out from the sun, really a likelier prospect? Even for supporting a biosphere of microbes? What is the average temperature on Titan, anyway?
Is it really possible for earth microbes to survive, clinging to a surface of cold metal in hard vacuum, with no food source, for the many months it takes a space probe to reach another planet?
One of the Apollo lunar missions (Apollo 12, IIRC) went to the site of an unmanned lander that had been previously sent to the moon, some years before. They found Earth bacteria on the lander: not exactly thriving, but enough “alive” (as much as that means anything in microbiology) that the bacteria could be successfully cultured. They’d been in hard vacuum and hard radiation, and suffering a two-weeks-in-sunlight, two-weeks-in-darkness cycle, for years, and they were essentially fine.
Don’t underestimate our microscopic cousins. If they had cell phones, they’d take over the world.
Re the OP, I think the chances of finding life on Titan are remote, though I won’t try to put an exact number on it. However, they’re nonzero. That’s why we have to go look.
And the more you know about astronomical exploration, the more you recognize how rarely we’re perfectly right when we make predictions and then go look to see what’s there. Initially, we thought our own solar system was typical. But the more we look at other stars, the rarer our arrangement seems to be. Similarly, when we went to Jupiter, we didn’t know what the Red Spot was, and we figured the moons would be cold balls of rock; it was truly shocking to find out that many of Jupiter’s moons are themselves much more interesting than the planet they orbit. And so on, and so forth. That’s why we do science: to see whether the world actually behaves according to our beliefs (and to see whether, as responsible science-minded people, we can change our beliefs when the evidence doesn’t add up as expected).
In light of that, the only responsible position toward the Cassini-Huygens mission is that no matter what the result is, it’s going to be very interesting. Life? Very interesting. No life? Very interesting, for other reasons. (Compare the chemical reactions in the Martian soil during the Viking mission.) Methane seas? Very interesting. Bare rock like Venus? Very interesting.
Me, I can’t wait. I have no solid expectations, and I’m still predicting big surprises.
Found a cite for the bacteria-on-the-lander story. It was Apollo 12, the unmanned probe was Surveyor 3, and it had been on the moon two and a half years when the astronauts landed at the site.
Yes, but I was under the impression that NASA heavily sterilizes their probes in cases such as these. I think it may, however, just be a lower bacteria count allowance, though I’m not sure…
I think the key thing I was asking (which I miss-typed) was thermophilic
anaerobic (which I mispelled) bacteria. I know of the regular guys, but what about
the super cold on Titan? Can life sustain there?
I have higher hopes of life in Jupiter and Saturn’s atmosphere than I do on Titan.
But I still have hope. I am certainly not a chemist or biologist, but in a class I took
on Life on Other Worlds the biology professor who taught part of the class
was pretty much convinced that water was 99.99% (as he put it) necessary for
life, and in liquid form to boot.
And if life did start up there in a warmer time, did it have enough evolution time
to adapt to the change in temperatures? I hope so. Even if we find some spores
that have been sitting around for millions of years, I would like to find even that.
But with the probe’s limited lifespan, I doubt it.
I seriously doubt that we’re going to find any life on Titan, whatsoever. It is a cold and inhospitable place, so live as we know it, certainly couldn’t exist. Life as we don’t know it, might exist, but I seriously doubt that the Huygens Probe has the necessary gear to detect it. I’d be happier than hell if we found it, but I’ll lay money that we don’t.
I dang well hope so, I need a new desktop.
The pictures they got from Mars were great. I think not having pictures is not so
good for public relations and stuff.
I am reminded of the triops that my kids get at the toy store. These are actually acquatic crustaceans that live in desert environments. They survive as dessicated fertized eggs for dozens of years, until a rainstorm occurs and creates shortlived pools of water. In short order they hatch, breed, and lay the next generation of eggs which lay dessicated and dormant for however long it takes for liquid water to again occur. And so an acquatic species survives in the desert.
Life can very creative. And that is just on Earth.
Well yes but note that it requires liquid water at some point and temperatures that never get less than -50C.
Titan, though, is a haze shrouded moon with surface temperatures that average -178C. Now seeing how tidal forces can drive heating (i.e. Europa) it may not be wildly impossible for “warm” areas of Titan to exist, but I doubt we’re going to see swaying “vegetation” at the landing site.
Is it really possible for earth microbes to survive, clinging to a surface of cold metal in hard vacuum, with no food source, for the many months it takes a space probe to reach another planet?