Life on Titan?

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A_Wanderer

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Very interesting news
Evidence that life exists on Titan, one of Saturn’s biggest moons, appears to have been uncovered by Nasa scientists.

Researchers at the space agency believe they have discovered vital clues that appeared to indicate that primitive aliens could be living on the planet.

Data from Nasa's Cassini probe has analysed the complex chemistry on the surface of Titan, which experts say is the only moon around the planet to have a dense atmosphere.

They have discovered that life forms have been breathing in the planet’s atmosphere and also feeding on its surface’s fuel.
Astronomers claim the moon is generally too cold to support even liquid water on its surface. The research has been detailed in two separate studies.

The first paper, in the journal Icarus, shows that hydrogen gas flowing throughout the planet’s atmosphere disappeared at the surface. This suggested that alien forms could in fact breathe.

The second paper, in the Journal of Geophysical Research, concluded that there was lack of the chemical on the surface.

Scientists were then led to believe it had been possibly consumed by life.
Researchers had expected sunlight interacting with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce acetylene gas. But the Cassini probe did not detect any such gas.

Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at Nasa Ames Research Centre, at Moffett Field, California who led the research, said: “We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth.

"If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth.”

Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University, added: “We believe the chemistry is there for life to form. It just needs heat and warmth to kick-start the process
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“In four billion years’ time, when the Sun swells into a red giant, it could be paradise on Titan.”

They warned, however, that there could be other explanations for the findings.

But taken together, they two indicate two important conditions necessary for methane-based life to exist.
Titan: Nasa scientists discover evidence 'that alien life exists on Saturn's moon' - Telegraph

The article is sensationalist, but this could be the seed of something terrific.
 
“In four billion years’ time, when the Sun swells into a red giant, it could be paradise on Titan.”

BRB, investing in property on Titan.
 
I seem to remember Carl Sagan proposing decades ago just such finding in one of his books or his TV show. Anyway, NASA has long been interested in the moon.
 
I take your comment to mean that it is not intelligent life, beings as depicted in sci-fi movies

I tend to agree, not on religious grounds,
I just think any intelligent life is so random that it is hundreds of thousands of light years from us and we will never encounter it.
 
Venus also has a dense atmosphere, but that doesn't mean that there is life on that planet (since it is full of sulfur)

Did they actually measure the atmosphere of Titan or is it just speculations? :shrug:
 
Venus also has a dense atmosphere, but that doesn't mean that there is life on that planet (since it is full of sulfur)

Did they actually measure the atmosphere of Titan or is it just speculations? :shrug:

It's just speculations.

See this documentary when you have the time. Very interesting:

YouTube - Wonders Of The Solar System, Episode 5 (Part 1/6)

YouTube - Wonders Of The Solar System, Episode 5 (Part 2/6)

YouTube - Wonders Of The Solar System, Episode 5 (Part 3/6)

YouTube - Wonders Of The Solar System, Episode 5 (Part 4/6)

YouTube - Wonders Of The Solar System, Episode 5 (Part 5/6)

YouTube - Wonders Of The Solar System, Episode 5 (Part 6/6)
 
Yeah, there's life out there, but it's not the life form the atheists are looking for.

I dont think thats a fair comment. I'm sure there are religious people who also find this fascinating. There would be no reason to think that life on other planets would be intelligent in the way that we are intelligent. Even if they found a singled 'celled' organism on another planet, my mind would be blown
 
I think Life, by it's very nature, will always evolve, so a single cell organism will eventually become multicellular, that will become more complex, etc etc. Life wants to live and will always look for better ways to survive. Eventually, I believe all life becomes "intelligent".

I wonder what happens when two intelligences from different sources of life meet. I wonder if they would try to kill each other. Hopefully intelligent life can evolve to a point that it no longer sees another intelligence as a threat. Maybe that's why we're so far apart from any other intelligence (and getting farther), cause the universe is smarter than all of us. It knows we need A LOT of time to evolve.
 
I find the idea of life on other planets to be fascinating, and I hope that in my lifetime, we would actually find life somewhere else in the universe.
 
I have absolutely no problem believing that there are other life forms out there on other planets, moons, galaxies, in other universes, you name it. There's no way we're the only living species out there. What form the other life forms take, who knows? I don't see any other life form "invading" us anytime soon, so to speak, but us stumbling across it in our explorations? Sure. That could happen, definitely. I'd love to find out just who or what all's out there.

Very cool discovery there, thanks for sharing that. And ditto on the thanks for the links as well, I'll definitely check those out at some point.

Angela
 
I think Life, by it's very nature, will always evolve, so a single cell organism will eventually become multicellular, that will become more complex, etc etc. Life wants to live and will always look for better ways to survive. Eventually, I believe all life becomes "intelligent".
Bacteria have dominated the planet perfectly well for 3.5+ billion years, I don't see multicellularity or intelligence as imperatives.
 
Bacteria have dominated the planet perfectly well for 3.5+ billion years, I don't see multicellularity or intelligence as imperatives.

I think some bacteria will remain bacteria, and some bacteria will evolve into something more complex. If you follow it back far enough, it all comes from the same "life source". I believe life as a whole will always head towards a more efficient way to live. It may be random, driven by mutations, I don't know, but I don't believe you will find a planet that has nothing but bacteria for billions of years.
 
Even if some sort of intelligence evolves, theres no reason to assume that we'd be able to communicate in any meaningful way. Think about all the species on earth. How many are we able to communicate with? Even if a chimp just happened to be an alien on another planet, we'd still have to find it before it found us. Or insects; They're the most successful animals on the planet and have been evolving for millions of years, yet intelligence as we see it is not necessary for them. Even an octopus, that displays a high level of intelligence, but has evolved under much different conditions that humans, will probably never evolve into a creature that we can communicate with in a meaningful way. A human level of intelligence is only one of many evolutionary solutions to make a species successful. Its not an endpoint or inevitability
 
That's very true. And quite interesting. I've never really thought about it, but blue whales can't communicate with humpback whales. Chimps can't communicate with orangutans. Or rather, their communications between each other are at a base level, like, "Back off or I will attack". Weird. Now I'm intrigued and want to know why.

If we do come across some species that shares an intelligence level as we have, perhaps we can figure out a way to communicate.
 
If we ever managed to invent technology in the future to go to another inhabited planet we would have to worry about our diseases and viruses and theirs wiping each other out.
 
I find it funny that for all our common fears about "alien invasions" and that sort of thing happening on Earth, we see no issue with the idea of going to other planets (or moons, or whatever). I'm all for investigating space and seeing what's out there and even communicating with whatever we find if we're able to, but we always eventually wind up talking about it in terms of perhaps living in other parts of space someday. Wouldn't that be an "alien invasion", too?

Colonization knows no bounds, though, I guess.

Angela
 
I find it funny that for all our common fears about "alien invasions" and that sort of thing happening on Earth, we see no issue with the idea of going to other planets (or moons, or whatever). I'm all for investigating space and seeing what's out there and even communicating with whatever we find if we're able to, but we always eventually wind up talking about it in terms of perhaps living in other parts of space someday. Wouldn't that be an "alien invasion", too?

Not if we only send rich, white, English speaking folk. Then it's just Incoming Freedom.
 
I think some bacteria will remain bacteria, and some bacteria will evolve into something more complex. If you follow it back far enough, it all comes from the same "life source". I believe life as a whole will always head towards a more efficient way to live. It may be random, driven by mutations, I don't know, but I don't believe you will find a planet that has nothing but bacteria for billions of years.
Multicellularity is quite a big leap, and if you looked at earth for the first 3 billion years all that you'd find would be unicellular.

Evolution doesn't play a long game - all that matters is the survival of genes into the next generation - it isn't directed towards any goal.
 
Multicellularity is quite a big leap, and if you looked at earth for the first 3 billion years all that you'd find would be unicellular.

Evolution doesn't play a long game - all that matters is the survival of genes into the next generation - it isn't directed towards any goal.

I would say life has a goal, and that's to live. Evolution is a tool it uses.

I'm not sure, but I believe the unicellular life forms were varied. Is that correct? In so far as bacteria, algae, amoebas, paramecium, etc are all unicellular - but different types. That's some sort of evolution right there, no?
 
Evolution is a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, and it happens in any system where there is replication, heritable variation, and differential survival.

Any system that satisfies those criteria will demonstrate evolution, and it definitely took place on Earth when it was dominated by unicellular forms. But the myriad variation of single celled organisms shows that there is no intrinsic drive towards multicellularity.

I agree that multicellularity is great, and it's opened up a lot of potential, but I doubt that it is an inevitability. In the same way I doubt that sentience is an inevitability, we have vast numbers of planetary systems to play with, but I think the biggest unknown in the Drake equation concern chance in evolution (we simply don't know enough to put any number on it).

To say that life has a goal of living sounds like a truism, and I can think of at least one exception to it (the evolution of aging, or death).
 
To say that life has a goal of living sounds like a truism, and I can think of at least one exception to it (the evolution of aging, or death).


I think by 'life', Beav was referring to it more in broad terms rather than at an individual level (ie, the goal for genes replicate perpetually).
That said, I'm interested in what you mean by this. There would be no reason for an organism to evolve traits that would take effect after the breeding age. That would be like putting the cart before the horse
 
Interesting link, AW. Its not something I though there was much debate on. I had always assumed that aging was a result of the accumulation of random defects in cell replication. Is that not a reasonable conclusion? (Its its covered in the link, I apologize. I'm still making my way through it)
 
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