Just a general note, every time I use "Moon," I am referring to Saturn's Moon, Titan, and not Earth's Moon.
Scientists have been exploring space for centuries, making discoveries that have helped us immensely. Some of them left us amazed, as their creations like the James Webb Telescope discovered galaxies that have helped scientists better understand how the universe formed. The big question regarding space exploration is, is there life beyond Earth? The short answer is, who knows? The universe is so vast that it seems impossible to find life beyond Earth.
There is a celestial body showing promising signs of supporting life and it's not a planet but a Moon called Titan. Titan has been of great interest to scientists throughout the years because of its atmospheric composition and the oceans detected on the Moon’s surface. Its atmosphere is comprised of nitrogen, methane and a few other organic compounds. The thing is, organic compounds form when sunlight destroys methane. So how can both methane and organic compounds coexist? On Earth methane exists because of the living organisms, so could there be life on Titan then?
Before we answer this question, we should learn more about Titan. Titan is Saturn’s Moon and given that Saturn doesn’t receive a lot of the Sun’s heat because of its distance, the planet is quite cold, making Titan reach temperatures as low as -180 degrees Celsius. It’s the only celestial body other than Earth with records of lakes and seas on its surface. Its oceans primarily consist of water rather than methane. Its subsurface shows signs of harbouring life but its surface, with its vast lakes, may have life that uses a different chemistry to survive.
Luckily for us pioneers, we can potentially travel to Titan to explore for life. Its atmosphere is so dense that we don’t need air pressure suits, however, we will need oxygen masks as its atmosphere is primarily nitrogen and we’ll also need something to protect us against the cold because temperatures like -180 degrees Celsius aren’t favourable! Our solar system has over 150 Moons but Titan is the only one with a thick atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure at its surface is around 60 per cent that of Earth (sort of what it might feel like when swimming deep in a swimming pool). To make things even more weirder, it even rains on Titan! The methane forms methane clouds which eventually condense to make methane rain.
So if there is life on Titan, what might it look like? Obviously, it’s hard to make accurate guesses but we can try to make a few theories. We know that it’s very cold on Titan and that its atmosphere is composed of nitrogen and methane, so these organisms must rely on these factors for survival. Its seas and lakes consist of water, methane, and ethane. If you consider all these factors, you might be able to speculate what type of life form exists on the planet and what it may look like.
The high nitrogen concentration shows promising signs as nitrogen on Earth is the building block for all life. Nitrogen makes up proteins, DNA, and nucleic acid, the basic things that allow organisms to be formed. One of the main reasons scientists can’t use this knowledge to predict life forms on Titan is that there is a lot of nitrogen on Titan. On Earth, too much nitrogen causes the death of many organisms and in plants, it decreases the rate of photosynthesis, causing them to yield unusable crops and die more rapidly. It’s unclear if this is the case for Titan especially given that other resources are available on the planet, like methane, and the temperatures are much colder.
These sort of factors makes it even more difficult to predict what these organisms may look like. The only living things on the Moon are probably bacteria or small organisms that may not be easily detectable.
I’ll stop here because this is beyond the scope of my abilities as I’m not trained in this field, but we definitely will not leave this topic here. Stay tuned for future blogs where we look more into life forms on Titan!
Works Cited
Why I didn't know about this before when Saturn is in our own solar system and not some light years away galaxy. This sounds cool
cool