Has Huygens found life on Titan?

[Dover]

Has Huygens found life on Titan?
09:45 23 July 2005
NewScientist.com news service

IF LIFE exists on Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, we could soon know about it - as long as it's the methane-spewing variety. The chemical signature of microbial life could be hidden in readings taken by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe when it landed on Titan in January.

Titan's atmosphere is about 5 per cent methane, and Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, California, thinks that some of it could be coming from methanogens, or methane-producing microbes. Now he and Heather Smith of the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, have worked out the likely diet of such organisms on Titan.

They think the microbes would breathe hydrogen rather than oxygen, and eat organic molecules drifting down from the upper atmosphere. They considered three available substances: acetylene, ethane and more complex organic gunk known as tholins. Ethane and tholins turn out to provide little more than the minimum energy requirements of methanogenic bacteria on Earth. The more tempting high-calorie option is acetylene, yielding six times as much energy per mole as either ethane or tholins...cont'd

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7716

[leveymg]

1. Bartender, set me up. Acetylene cocktail with ethane on the side.

I wish they'd open the doors and let some hydrogen in here. Darned methogens and their stinking cigars.:beer:

[Dover]

3. lol!

Now that's enough acetylene for you! Gonna have to join AA if you keep this up.

[leveymg]

5. Give me my keys. I wanna drive back to Earth.

[greyl]

2. No it hasn't. What a shitty title newscientist gave that article.

Not to mention that the article contradicts one that they published on July 9th with an equally misleading/sensationalistic title "Has NASA struck oil on Titan?" http://www.newscientistspace.com/unpwlogin.ns

Here's an alternative site to check in on the mission:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/SEM696HHZTD_0.html

[greyl]

4. Plus, for newscientist to tout that headline as BREAKING NEWS

is particularly unfortunate. Not to mention disrespectful of authentic inquiry; scientific or merely curious.

[Ian David]

8. Well, it's really a science "Infotainment" publication, isn't it?

Not a peer-reviewed journal.

Sort of like Popular Science but smarter?

[dwckabal]

6. Where's the data?

I am a taxpayer, and I want ALL of the data not only from the Huygens probe but from Cassini, released to the public! NOW!!

What are they trying to hide? It's been SEVEN MONTHS and all we have are a couple of blurry pictures (from Huygens) and some colorful (but rather boring) pictures from Cassini! They (NASA) are covering up that fact that the Huygens probe survived impact and is still streaming data back to Earth. Why hide this information?

Release it to the public!!

[beam me up scottie]

7. .

:rofl:

[htuttle]

9. Anyone have any thoughts on how they are doing their experiment?

They plan to examine the acetylene levels near the surface of Titan to see if they are depleted. The thinking is that if something is living on the acetylene, the levels would be lower near the ground than they are elsewhere in the atmosphere.

Didn't I read that Titan has something like 200 mph winds? Would a differentiation of acetylene levels due to something eating it survive in 200 mph winds? I'd think that with that much atmosphereic circulation, any difference would be lost due to the wind currents.

I'm sure they've probably thought about that, but it seems unlikely to me to show any difference in a wind like that.

I would imagine that the levels of CO2 and O2 in Earth's atmosphere are different near the surface, but I'm not sure they'd remain different in a hurricane-force wind.

:shrug: