Friday, June 11th, 2010

Titan's Chemistry and the Search for Life

The moon Titan approaches Saturn, as seen by the Cassini spacecraft in 2008. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

Two recent papers involving the amounts of certain hydrocarbons on Saturn's moon Titan had some media outlets abuzz with talk of extraterrestrial life. One paper, to be published in the journal Icarus, looked at the amounts of molecular hydrogen in Titan’s atmosphere, while the other paper, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, examined acetylene levels on the distant moon. Some analysts say those measurements could be consistent with -- but not clear evidence of -- the presence of some sort of methane-based life. We'll talk about what the researchers observed, and what those findings might mean.