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NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI
This infrared image from the Cassini orbiter shows the hydrocarbon lake known as Kraken Mare toward the northern edge of the disk. The dark Senkyo sand sea dominates the central area of the image.
A fresh photo from the Cassini orbiter shows the hydrocarbon-rich seas and dunes of Titan, a Saturnian moon that might be capable of sustaining life as we don't know it.
The picture, published today on the websites of NASA's Saturn mission and Cassini's imaging team, shows the huge sea known as Kraken Mare as a dark spot on the northern edge of Titan's disk. The dark Senkyo dune field is front and center. Cassini's narrow-angle camera captured the view in near-infrared wavelengths from a distance of 1.2 million miles (1.9 million kilometers) on Sept. 14.
Titan is totally shrouded in smog, but Cassini's camera filters are set up to pierce through the haze and spot details on the surface below. The cold condtions on the moon are such that hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane can exist in liquid form. This rare picture from Cassini shows the glint of sunlight off the sheen of Kraken Mare, which is larger than the Caspian Sea on Earth. (And yes, Kraken is named after the mythical sea creature. "Mare" is Latin for "sea.")
NASA / JPL
This image, obtained using Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, shows the first observed flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's Titan moon.
Titan's seas, lakes and rivers of hydrocarbons are among the reasons why the murky Saturnian moon ranks higher than Mars on a recently published list assessing planetary habitability. That may sound strange, considering that the typical temperature on Titan is 289 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-178 degrees Celsius). But Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Washington State University who helped put together the list, told me that it makes sense to rank Titan as the top prospect for extraterrestrial habitability.
"If you think about it, Titan has a thick protective atmosphere like Earth's, similar to the early Earth atmosphere," he said. "It has a lot of nitrogen and methane in it, and Titan has hydrocarbon lakes, energy sources. There's a lot of possibility on Titan — if you objectively evaluate the possibility of life on Titan, I would agree."
He cautioned, however, that life on Titan may not take the form of life on Earth. Titanian life would have to thrive on methane rather than oxygen or carbon dioxide. Last year, some researchers were wound up by reports that hydrogen was flowing down through the moon's atmosphere and disappearing at the surface, and that acetylene was less abundant than expected. That could be consistent with the behavior of methane-based life forms. There are other possible explanations, however. It'll be another decade at least before another probe can go to Titan to sort out the truth.
Schulze-Makuch cautioned that comparing Titan with Mars and Earth "is a little like comparing apples and oranges."
"Current Titan seems to be more favorable to life than current Mars, but it's 'life as we don't know it,'" he said. "It would have to be different. For Mars, though, the thing is, early Mars and current Mars are very different. Early Mars was more favorable to life. Early Mars comes out better than Titan."
That's the main point of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, which was launched over the weekend. The mission's Curiosity rover isn't suited for detecting present-day life on the Red Planet, but it should give scientists a far better idea of what conditions on early Mars were like and whether life could have gained a foothold billions of years ago.
The real value of the Planetary Habitability Index developed by Schulze-Makuch and his colleagues would be to help scientists focus on potentially livable planets beyond our solar system. "Right now we have more than 700 exoplanets," he said. "In a few years, we'll have several thousand. You'll need to have something that you can use to prioritize. ... We have to have some way to assess what is the likelihood of life on them."
Schulze-Makuch acknowledged that the index as currently devised has lots of question marks attached to it. "One of the major points of the paper was that this classification system can always be updated, and it should be as more information becomes available," he said.
Where do you think we should focus our attention? On Titan? Mars? Ice-covered Europa? Ice-spewing Enceladus? Or on the hundreds of planets beyond the solar system? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
More about the search for alien life:
- Mars life? New rover may uncover clues
- Liquid water on Enceladus could support life
- Life-bearing lake possible on icy Europa
- Alien Earths: 2 billion of them are out there
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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I would say lets focus slightly more on our own solar system just because of the fact that we can go to the potential life inhabited worlds here. Exoplanets, not so much. At least not for a long time. This doesn't mean we should stop studying them all together, but lets work in our own neighborhood until such a time comes as traversing to alien worlds becomes.... a little less insurmountable
We are concentrating on the system. That's why you see probes being sent to solar bodies instead of extra-solar ones, Eric.
Eric, Titan IS in our solor system. It is a moon of Saturn.
One theory that has never been delved into deeply enough is that we as a species came from Mars and as the Sun cooled and thus Mars as well we "jumped" to Earth as the next planet to be warm enough to survive as a species. The logical next step would be to concentrate on the next planet in the line....Venus. Maybe in a million years or so we will begin the migration to our new "home".
I'm with Eric. We need to focus on our own solar system to learn what we may or may not be looking for outside our system. However, I do believe we should work on sending a deep space probe toward our nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri. No matter how long it takes to get there, if ever, we need to learn to build interstellar technology that is fast and lasts.
As far as the best place to look for possible life, past or present, I believe Mars and Enceladus are both good candidates. We have proven that water are on both. Mars' surface is conducive and Enceladus' thermal vents are conducive to possibly supporting life. During summer in the southern hemisphere on Mars, temperatures can reach as high as 86 degrees fahrenheit.
Davey: Makes sense, especially during the early bombardment phase.
Another idea is that earth was further away from the sun 3 to 4 billion years ago and only entered the habitable region about 3 to 2 billion years ago. The earth is slowly moving toward the sun by about 25 feet a year, so life never really had a chance earlier partly because it was not in the right region for it to take off.
Actually, I don't think the sun cooled; instead, Mars lost most of its early atmosphere into space. Making Venus habitable would require removing most of its very dense carbon dioxide atmosphere ... a formidable task. Like you say, maybe in a million years.
This article strikes me of being a booty call. Life on titan? Really? I can think of thousands of better uses of public money than that. Life at -289 Degrees? No, you're right. This is just how we should spend our time and money. Finding life in a way that we have no example of here on earth. After all, we have hundreds of potential life forms too. Give me a break. How about you put your money where this story is and we will give you a cut. Just a few hundred Billion Dollars. Oh, that's right. This is for humanity, and the hundreds of paid scientists who will benefit from this aren't really the point. I call your bluff. They are the only people who will find any benefit in this (other than the stool pigeon who ran this silly article).
Your guys' Astronomy is almost offensive, @ Prospect; how would one go about sending anything but best wishes to Alpha Centauri within 1,000,000 years let alone back? @ Davey We must have had really strong legs 2 million years ago to Jump that far and I guess we looked very similar to the ape family before we met them here, or did they have interplanetary hops as well? We all must have hit our heads and got amnesia upon hitting the Earths atmosphere at 20,000 mph as well to forget that we "jumped" here eh?
@Glen,
Sure, let's just spend another couple of hundred millions on the next stadium for football or baseball. Or a trillion on the next useless war. How much do you spend yearly on entertainment?
Space exploration provides tangible benefits to human-kind. NASA, JPL, and other agencies are forced to think "outside the box" to come up with innovative solutions that have real world applications. Smoke-detectors, water filtration systems, aviation safety, cordless powertools, advanced insulation, personal protection (helmets, chest and shin protectors), even that GPS use use to pick up your beer in a new city, just to name a few, all come in one form or another from the space program. NASA has probably made more changes in your daily life than any other government sponsored organization.
-- J
Please check out:
If only our government would apply the "let's start in our own back yard" line of thinking in all of our endevours.
@ Alan,
While I think Titan is a very good potential candidate, I am more inclined to place my money on Europa. We have clear evidence that the interior is being heated by the alternating fields of gravity exerted on it, and it is covered in a thick blanket of ice - perfect for sheilding in terms of gamma radiation, something I'm not so sure Titan is (albeit, it's much further than say Mars, so Im sure its not that big of a determining factor).
d.man
"all these worlds are yours except europa. attempt no landing there."
lol, I forget, is that the actual planet/moon they said in the movie?
How weird would that be if he was right?
It is.
In the Epilogue of the book in 20,001 he talks of sentient life that evolved there after Jupiter was turned into a star and melted the frozen ocean there.
All this in 1982. Just another fun example of Science-fiction not being that far off.
There are very strange bacteria that live on the bottom of the sea floor in volcanic hydrothemal vents. They can live on Methane. But they like temps up to 250 degrees F, so not likely the type to be on Titan.
But there are other life forms that can take the cold.
The Water Bear is a microscopic animal. It is called a Tardigrade.
Tardigrades are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures of close to absolute zero (−273 °C (−459 °F)),[6] temperatures as high as 151 °C (304 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals,[7] and almost a decade without water.[8]Since 2007, tardigrades have also returned alive from studies in which they have been exposed to the vacuum of outer space in low earth orbit.
But they don't eat methane.
My question would be, if life ate the methane, what would be the waste product, and then what would convert it back to methane? Otherwise, in the vast amount of time, wouldn't it consume all the methane?
Either way, we should explore this moon. The robotics needed are also the technology of future industry and warfare. Plus, we keep our space engineers employed here instead of doing consulting work for China.
Right now, they are trying to move them into the petroleum industry. Not a perfect fit, but there are similar engineering requirements. One way or another, we have to keep them employed here.
And who didn't love the shots from the Mars rovers?
@Eric, terra-forming Venus could be done via a few different ideas and are readily available on the interweb.
What a dramatic undertaking that will be! The real question, do we pollute another planet with the virus of humanity?
I should add that water bears do not crawl around at temps like on Titan (-290 F). The can survive those low temps in suspended animation. They become dessicated when the do this, so there is almost no water in them to freeze.
If we do find life at -290 F, I expect it will not move. Probably single celled. But then again, who knows.
Thats the beauty of it Matt, for all we know it could be a Silicon based lifeform that eats methane and expells argon. We just know that if life is found there, it will likely be unlike anything on earth.
@Toasty, yes I know, but it was a response to the opinion oriented question, as to which we would prefer. There is my answer. Altough, outside of the launch of JWST, I would prefer an increasingly larger portion of the NASA budget be focused on exploring our solar system than what is currently allocated(alought a significant increase in said budget would be great as well. You know maybe double it. Really is that too much to ask?)
@rednawt, I never said Titan wasn't a part of our solart system, I mearly stated that we should focus more on our own solar system rather than increase our search for life efforts on exoplanets due to the current impracticality to travel to those planets. We can travel within our own solar system quite easily, relativily speaking, and find out what is going on, on those planets and moons.
@Ryan
You raised the question of what life on Titan would convert the methane into, whether its waste would later be converted back into methane, and if not why doesn't it run out of stuff to eat...
Actually, the hypothesis about Titan organisms (developed by scientists including David Grinspoon and Chris McKay), is that they would be methanogens – producers, not consumers of methane. They'd consume hydrogen gas, and also hydrocarbons more complex than methane, e.g. ethane, acetylene. And yes, their waste is eventually converted back into their food, because solar radiation on Titan's upper atmosphere does convert methane into a range of substances, among them ethane, acetylene and hydrogen.
So the overall picture is of cycle of compounds getting built up and broken down, similar in principle to the carbon cycle here on Earth.
I'll tell you, if there is something alive in the seas of Titan, we will be looking at something *very* alien indeed. That place is *cold*. Where is the energy to support biology? You can have all the raw chemicals you want, but you still need an energy source. My money is on Titan being sterile.
Europa is much more promising, but it, but it seems to be chemically less rich than Titan. The fact that the ocean is warm is a *big* plus. If there isn't at least pond scum there, I'll be at least a little surprised.
Enceladus has about a lake's worth of warm water. I don't know if it's a big enough playing field and I have no idea how long it has persisted. Low probability.
Mars. Sterile, and I stand by that. No life now, none in the past, none in the future. It's just too dry. Yes, on Earth we have extremophiles who live under very barren conditions, but they adapted from when things were better. Mars used to be wet, but it wasn't wet very long. Nix on Martians.
At minus 289 degrees, Titan is far too cold for most of the chemical processes essential to life to take place. Amino acids would not form, water ice is hard as rock and unsuitable for supporting life, and radiation from Saturn and the Sun continually sterilizes the surface. I think Europa is a much better candidate for life.
If there is "life" on Titan it will be so different that what we are accustomed to that we will not even recognize that "it" is alive. With those low temps. there "life" would have to be based on something weird like electro-chemo energy cycles............or some such outlandish form of "existence"
Mars most likely has no life today (although there are places that appear to still have liquid water), in its past it was far wetter, and I have little doubt that life could very well have appeared there in the past.
I think that Mars is begging to be settled and terraformed. Surely it will take a century or so but I believe that it is possible to terraform Mars.
Surprised to see Toasty on a science article. Not much politics here. At least I found something that I can agree on.
Extraterrestrial life forms are delicious with a little tartar sauce and lemon. Worth the trip.
Actually, a common form of energy found in many moons of gas giants comes from tidal heating. Basically tidal forces distort the moon enough provide energy to the system. We see a similar effect with tides on Earth and the gravitational attraction of the moon. Now imagine the moon has the gravitational pull of gas giant. I don't know how much energy would be imparted to Titan from this type of distortion. But, it's something to consider when trying to determine the temperature of internal "Lakes/Oceans".
If I missed someone's post, apologies in advance, but wasn't there something in the recent research about how Mars may have had a moon at an early stage in its evolution that ultimately crashed back into Mars - thus the northern lowlands and southern highlands of Mars, suggesting that the former moon crashed into the northern half of the planet, creating its currently misshapen form?
Prior to the martian moon crashing into Mars, the planet may have been creating life, just as on earth. This suggests that some pre-life (amino acids, etc.) was floating around in abundance in the early solar system's formation and may have landed on places such as Venus, Earth, Mars, maybe even Encladus, Europa, and Titan.
Now we find ourselves on the Goldilocks planet - the one that survived the "storming" phase? Did others hear or read about this?
Personally a little nervous that America's and the World's spending on other concerns will take precendence over further exploration and research, and all of us may not live long enough to find out about any of this.
Would it be possible to use a gravity tractor affect similar to the idea of moving asteroids to pull mars closer in to the Green zone. Then subjecting it to a simple form of global warming by producing a cloud layer atmosphere to help trap in the heat?
Vegarot: Global warming? How outlandish. There's no such thing as global warming.
Asteroid flybys can in theory be used to change the orbits of planets, but you better know what you're doing if you move Mars closer to Earth than it already is. There would be a risk of perturbations to the Earth's orbit, increased risk of asteroid impacts, maybe even a risk of an Earth-Mars collision. It might make more sense to slowly move both planets away from the sun as the sun slowly warms over the next 5 billion years as predicted by astrophysics.
@Kasey
Hey Kasey
I haven't heard about an early Mars moon crashing into Mars, but I do know that Mars does have two moons currently (maybe you already knew this). The Roman God of war, Mars, had two horses that pulled his war chariot through the heavens, named Fear and Dread (fitting companions for the God of war, no?). Their names in Greek were Phobos and Deimos, which of course, are now the names of the two moons of Mars. Astronomers are great at naming things.
Lots or organic molecules floating around out there, including the building-blocks for amino-acids, but any DNA analogue in a Titan life-form would involve chemistry quite a bit different than ours. Lots of tidal action for mixing in those methane seas though, and a nice dense atmosphere. Sounds like the best possibility for some complex chemistry to me.
Another thought. It's so cold there that water ice behaves just like rock does here. Perhaps the methane waves in the methane seas crash against their ice-rocky shores and pound some down to ice-sand beaches.
Does Titan have a Magnetic field? If not, what's the rad count on the surface?
i like the exploits, but since the scientist dont belive what the ALMIGHTY GOD created and how he created it this our planeth earth,they have been wandering in the space looking for what is not looking for them, the earlier the better
My feeling is that being chemically rich is most important. Even if temperatures are very low on the surface of Titan we may find that there are somthing like thermal vents there. And even if there aren't any hot spots life will still find a way.
Dude, Den, I'm a total science geek. I've been salivating over the MSL for months, ever since I first learned about it. It's gonna be a long wait for this puppy to set down on the Red Planet.
@K. Kammeyer
"At minus 289 degrees, Titan is far too cold for most of the chemical processes essential to life to take place. Amino acids would not form, water ice is hard as rock and unsuitable for supporting life..."
You may be right so far, but...
"...and radiation from Saturn and the Sun continually sterilizes the surface. I think Europa is a much better candidate for life."
Wait. 'Radiation from the Sun and Saturn?'
Aside from the fact that Titan has an atmosphere that's dense enough to have a surface pressure of 1.5 Earth atmospheres at its surface, which will provide significant protection from the Sun and galactic cosmic rays...
Aside from the fact that Saturn and Titan are farther from the Sun than Jupiter and Europa are anyway, and Solar radiation will be less intense...
Saturn has very little in terms of a VanAllen radiation belt (how else is there radiation from Saturn?), and Titan is outside of it, in any case.
Whereas Europa orbits well inside the intense Jovian VanAllen zone, and while life could exist under the ice there, the outside of it faces vacuum, and is completely exposed to that radiation, galactic cosmic rays, and anything from the Sun...
Yet you think Europa is a better bet?
Again, under that ice interesting stuff may be waiting, but operating a fully automated device landed on its surface to get at it, will still be a serious technological challenge. Solid-state electronics don't like ionizing radiation much more than biology does, and the faster and lower-powered those electronics, the more serious that is.
The surface of Titan, at least, is just cold. Seriously cold, yes. And you're completely enveloped in that cold atmosphere, as opposed to merely standing on an equally cold surface with vacuum insulation everywhere else around you, but still just cold. There are no radiation issues there...
"Could Titan's seas harbor life"
Now this is a very good question, one that needs some Attention, it may even be a form of life that we are unaware of, or would not know existed in such a cold place, but as we look at the Earth, life is living almost everywhere, to extremely hot, to extremely cold, and in extreme amounts of pressure, we see life living on a scale we would have never believed before until we seen it with our own eyes, so to me it would not surprise me or be impossible to think life mite be there at Titan at 289 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, we only need to look at the Earth and ask the question, how and why, and scratch our heads and wonder how it got there in the first place.
Have a good day Tom And Lyn
Best Destiny
Thanks for your comment and your understanding. here is a comment I made below and why I feel this way.
I know that it may seem very far out there to suggest what I said in my last comment above, all or most of us as we go about our daily lives don’t see that we are made of trillions of blood cells and many other life forms that keep us alive.
With that said, if you were to look at the Earth from a distance you would only see a pale blue globe and nothing more, but until you look under the atmosphere or under our skin you would not know there is a hole new world teaming with life right in front of us.
The same goes with Titan, we see it from a distance with our crud instruments, satellites, and telescopes, but until we look closely at Titan and truly understand what life is then we should not make the assumption that life is not there in some form or the other.
Another point I would like to make, I have been looking for years at some of the photos that the Hubble Space Telescope has been taking and to me the universe is so very large and vast an unknown that we as humanity would be very arrogant to assume and say life is not out there in some form.
The universe has made it possible for us to look at far away galaxies and ask these questions, so who is to say there is not another life form out there looking back at us asking these same questions, the universe has made it possible for us so why would the universe not make it possible for them.
Sorry guys about my bad spelling my eyes are not so good anymore lol.
Have a good day, Tom And Lyn
What we need to concentrate on is a self sustaining and growing outpost on the moon. Not near as sexy, but in the long run, infinitely more valuable.
It's not either/or. It never has been.
>Could Titan's seas harbor life?
No.
Life requires, at a minimum, two things: Energy and liquid water. Titan has no water. Methane(CH4) is not a substitute for H2O. The complexity of molecularbiologic reactions require a polar solvent. CH4 and other hydrocarbons (CnH2n+2) are non-polar.
You make a big assumption about the need for liquid water. One of the things that has hampered the discovery of life even right here on our own planet is the presumption of necessary requirements for life to exist.
RokAl, I would suggest you re-read the story. It clearly states that it would be "life as we don't know it" open your mind a little my friend.
That is life as YOU know it, RokAl. The idea of life on other worlds must be met with the thought that other life may not appear to be life to us at all. Rethinking the whole 'basis' for life is necessary.
They have no grounds to dismiss your comment. Really they know as much as you and are just speculating on the possibility that they may be right.
Vegarot
Let's see, there are 2 different possibilities.
1) Life definately requires liquid water.
2) Life can find a way, and exist in habitats without liquid water, using a different set of chemical reactions as a basis.
There is no absolute proof of either. Number 1 sounds very arrogant. I'd bet on number 2. There are an unending list of ideas once thought scientific, that we know today are false. Quintessence and phlogiston come to mind. The idea that life can only exist in the presence of water seems primed to join that list.
This is the wonderful thing about science, you can be wrong!
Only a few hundred years ago, the "flat Earth" theory was a fact, and the Sun (and stars) revolved around the Earth. Both theories are obviously wrong, but it took examination and exploration to prove (and fighting through some religious dogma on the second one).
It was believed that there was no possibility of life existed near undersea volcanoes and other geothermal vents, yet life not only exists but thrives down there.
It has yet to be proven, either way, whether life exists outside of our own Earth, but I'd sure like to find out.
And yet sometimes all the proof in the world staring you in the face isnt enough for some people, like the Flat Earth Society. Yes, some people still belive the earth to be flat.
http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/
have a good laugh or two.
"All these worlds are yours, except Europa- attempt no landings there. Use them together. Use them in peace."
Guess we better go to Titan, then. lol
nice reference!
haha, nice.
Glad to see this one.
Is that you Hal?
I think we should concentrate on planets/moons that have some potential for human colonization in the future when the Earth either becomes uninhabitable or can no longer supoort our ever growing population.
It would take thousands of rockets every day for another planet to be the "solution" to earth's (current) population increase. That's a very non-viable proposal.
Once in space you can use nuclear energy to power massive colony ships to their destination and I'm sure there wont be to much trouble dumping waste in space. Plus you can use the moon as a staging ground where the ships are made. You can also use mass drivers (which by that time should perfected) to send supplies to distant colonies. All theoretical but isn't that what science is based on.
I know a few senators that I would like to volunteer for the mission.
Focus? Mars, for the obvious reasons: proximity and relative habitability. They keep saying we have to wait more decades to visit Mars due to the challenges involved. So? At least try. Until Earth gets its stuff together and sees the importance of Space exploration, we will never even make it to Mars, but Mars will serve as a springboard in ways the Moon has, sadly, not.
Actually, we don't need to "go" there. The logistics of sending man on such a long journey is so very much more complex and involved, not to mention risky, I really don't see the reason to do it any time soon. We can learn much more with what we can afford with unmanned missions. Unmanned capabilities have and are growing by leaps and bounds. We need to keep our eye on the ball of what it is we want to learn first and stick to it by the best means possible. Sending humans on a long range mission is a whole different ball of wax with problems that are not yet worked out. Some of those problems may not even be able to be worked out sufficiently. In particular. some of the biological problems concern me as being more then just "bumps in the road". It all seems to me to be a diversion and a distraction from attaining the knowledge we want to attain.
@ Blasthoff:
"It all seems to me to be a diversion and a distraction from attaining the knowledge we want to attain."
You operate on the assumption that pure knowledge and science (important as those are) are the only reasons we do anything in space. They aren't. Never have been. And will be less of the total reasons in the future. What you consider a diversion, for many of us is the Main Event that that knowledge enables.
All very exciting but there is still the glitch of... when? When do we go look? Or maybe more to the point, how do we go look when our economy has been wrecked and the current administration has shown a decided appetite for gutting this nation's space endeavors?
It's really not that far to Mars or Europa or Titan. We have the technology. We just lack the foresight and political will.
It's all Obama's fault eh? Guess there's no intelligent life on Newsvine.
I just can't believe someone would bash Obama on an article like this one. Oh yeah I can. Go watch more fox propaganda news channel in a darkened room MFranklin.
I am not so sure any one President could be credited or blamed for an "economic winter" like this one. I thought the current line of thought was to allow the private sector to take over the "easy stuff" like low earth orbit, and leave the longer range stuff to the government? Isn't this how air travel was born?
I imagined that the folks who are interested in further research in life here and beyond earth would leave the politics aside, which are temporary at best, and help to lead the conversation back to a new frontier of research for future generations.
If in the next decade, we figure out the "energy" and "velocity" issues, then our children and their children can look forward to an exciting vista with new challenges, versus fighting and refighting the old wars of past generations...?
Not to mention the decision to de-commission the shuttle fleet was made UNDER BUSH.
So it takes a real moron to blame it on Obama.
There I feel better.
@ MFranklin
Go to Titan!
Dangerous Mind
Obama de-commissioned the shuttle fleet to the moon scheduled for 2020 because of bad investment into the right technologies. So it is Obama's fault.
@ googlesmart
There is no 'shuttle fleet to the Moon.'
The President did cancel the slow, over-budget (and requiring more of an increase in the NASA budget than was ever likely to happen) Constellation Program, which would not have put the first Orion spacecraft in LEO until 2017, and maybe get a crew of three to the Moon, for not that much longer than Apollo did, once or twice a year. (And increased the NASA budget at the same time, but all government agencies are likely to take a hit, very soon now) That's all Obama did.
And he was right to cancel it. There are faster, cheaper, more efficient ways to reach the Moon, but first we have to let go of the idea that it has to look anything like the Apollo architecture. We did it that way because it was the best way to reach it in the 'end of the decade'/beat the Soviets constraint. That's not the case now. Existing launchers, orbital assembly and refueling is the way to go.
But as the SLS mess proves, there are too many people with a vested interest in doing things the old, hard, expensive way...as long as big pieces of it happen in their states and/or with certain contractors...
Life anywhere else is speculation only until we actually find it,,, or it finds us.
There's a difference between speculation and informed estimation.
It may be speculation, but given the size of our galaxy alone and the billions upon billions of planets in it, it's infinitely more probable than not. Our planet orbits a very common type of star and the conditions that our own planet exist in are more than likely common too. And as we've witnessed here on earth, life can thrive in the most extreme conditions.
Toasty for the first time we agree on something!
Toasty,,, that's true but neither is fact until we find it or it finds us.
Well, it's true that life somewhere else is "speculation" on our part, but think of it this way, if the chances of life are one in a Billion or one in a hundred Billion, then in all probability life almost certainly does exist and in many places.
The problem is, if we do not detect some form of life existing or having existed somewhere in our solar system then no matter how certain our speculation becomes it may well remain speculation beyond the existence of man. We are neither immortal nor is our existence infinite. Distances in space outstrip our ability to even fathom them. I am not being pessimistic. I am simply in awe at the vastness of the universe we live in.
Best Destiny...That is one of the most closed minded things I've ever heard. Science today in the relm of physics is totally into what could be the very basic mechanics of God. To blow off the idea of creation as silly is as ignorant as can be.
you don't know what life requires, you've only been to earth.
I'd vote Europa. With the promise of an ocean under the ice sheet along with tidal heating from Jupiter's gravitational pull, I wouldn't be surprised if we found complex life in that ocean.
I would go one step ahead and say I would be surprised if I didn't find life on Europa. It has got water, energy source and hundreds of millions of years in time. Don't we have the same conditions near the hydrothermal vents on Earth? Look at the abundance of life near those vents and the conclusion doesn't escape you.
Mars isn't giving up its secrets so easily and I don't know if it is dead. I am eagerly waiting the verdict on the methane gas mystery - is the origin geochemical or biological?
There a lot of other very interesting places we can look like Titan and Encaledus but I guess we'll be guided by our budget. If life does exist on Titan, we'll know that life arose at least twice with very different chemistry.
What you two have said!! I agree, Europa has the best chance of water-based life that's at least recognizable as such.
Someone send a probe with a hook and a corndog.
Maybe we will catch a "Europa Dorkfish".
Viewer...I can always count on you for a chuckle.
I try to be sirius (sp intended) but I also have a sense of humor too.
Eric-2189088
I think that is a very good thing to do, to focus on our Solar System for life first, if life is on another world or body in our Solar System, you can bet on it, that it will be everywhere in the universe, I also think that in the near future we will be able to come up with the technologies to detect life on other planets around other stars, it is just a mater of time before we find out how to do it.
Skdeitch
If we do detect life on Titan or another world it will be completely alien indeed as you say, it will be like nothing we have ever seen before.
Softdude and Nubby
That is very correct, we do need to plan for the human race to live on other worlds as you say, the problem humanity is facing now is over population growth and there are about 7 billion of us trying to live on this small planet, I believe soon if it is not already, it will become unsustainable for the Earth to provide the Room and resources for all of us.
Robert P.
You are also correct, it is sad to say but I like to speak the truth here, if we as humanity don’t find ways to control our population or find other ways to live on mars, the moon, or other worlds, you and I and all of us here will see wars over resources we have never seen before, and it will turn out to be catastrophic for our planet and humanity.
Mfranklin
We start looking now !!!! There is no time to waist, and you are correct We just lack the foresight and political will, and that Attitude my friend will be our undoing if we don’t correct it now. This is also why I support spending as much money as we can on our space program!!! To find ways to put people back to work and to find new technologies to bring us one more step closer to living in space.
Have a good day, Tom And Lyn
Here on Earth we keep something sterile by making it extremely hot or extremely cold or put it in a vacuum or submerse it in a liquid that prevents life or subject it to radiation. Every place in the solar system but Earth has at least one or a combination of the above. I have a hard time visualizing life other than "as we know it" that could still be defined as life. Crystals can grow from a lot of substances but we don't call that life. I know the science community desperately wants to discover "life" on another world but first you have to find an "Earth like" planet the right distance from it's Sun where it could take place. (This also assumes it doesn't require God to create it.)
Thermophiles thrive in waters well above the boiling point. Fungi grow in nuclear reactor cooling tanks and thrive around Chernobyl's melted highly radioactive core. You base too much on your limited experience and your likely to overlook most of the life we could come across. Alien life, I'm sure, will seem foreign to us. But the whole process of alien life may be much more alien than it's appearance.
The discovery of tidal heating (such as on Europa) means that being the "right distance" from a star may no longer be necessary for life. Just be the right distance from a gas giant planet instead.
But it has to be a somewhat elliptical orbit, so that the tidal stresses change over every orbit. This is what generates the heat for Io, and to a lesser extent Europa, as the crust is forced to flex somewhat, not unlike bending a piece of metal back and forth will (until it breaks) make that bending point hot...
these are requirements for life to survive on EARTH! we need to get out of the habit of assuming that life can only be if it meets our standards, or laws of physics, or that is has to be an exact duplicate of earth when it comes to temps... for all you know there are animals that survive in the ultra cold temps of titan having stronger more resistent cells... a fish lives in the waters and adapts to that environment... just like birds defy the laws of gravity by having wings... etc etc... there is life on Titan, it just breathes differently than we do, if that is, it breathes... but we dont know! thats what so great about it.
Even if so, SO WHAT? I just can't believe with America in our current economic straits we are still funding these mlti-million/billion boondogles. To what purpose: Maybe we can one day bring back an et that will cure cancer; we find water on Mars and can spend billions transporting supplies there to grow crops; we can find a place to turn into a penal colony for our career criminals and incorrigibles? Please--let's spend our money on helping those in America, the good old USA on the planet earth!
You really don't see any value in understanding the origins of life throughout the universe?
Holy @!$%#, you are a @!$%#ing idiot, please don't breed.
Hey drushalli, guess what? ALL that money is being spent right here! On Earth! In the USA! It's not always the destination that is important, but the journey. You need to consider the technological advances that have been made as a result of these projects before putting them down.
With visionaries like you they'd still be treating cancer with leeches.
If you took only the money nations have spent militarizing themselves cancer would already have been cured.
Drushalli:
In agreement with wasting money on wars and expensive DOD coffee pots and wrenches, why do you see all this exo-planet research as a waste of time? If it were up to me, I would reduce our military spending budget by half and move 75% of the remainder to the Asian Pacific, as a new "Cold War" is about to begin there.
Alternatively, if we knew we had to leave Planet Earth due to some unforseen collision with a newly discovered comet, we would search for a planet just like the one we inhabit, a planet that makes "life as we know it," 24/7 regardless.
As an example, leave your half empty coffee cup over the weekend at your office, and see how "life" grows in it.
Forget your political affiliation, let's protect our beautiful planet as best we can. Whatever we can do in our current situations, given our short life spans.
I see a way forward for all of us.
All we have to do about our "dire economic straits" is to quit giving tax cuts to the billionaires and ask them for a rebate for the last 20 years-then we'd be rolling in scientific funding. I hated that they made all these cuts to scientific/Nasa related programs and have only kept it to the Mars mission-to keep understanding the universe and possible solutions and answered questions for the future, we cannot limit it to one planet for rovers to collect data! We need to expand our research, again.
"Please--let's spend our money on helping those in America, the good old USA on the planet earth!"
Um, how? Providing employment? Hey, we could pay some of them to build space probes...
Oh, wait. That's exactly what's happening.
Just because the end product leaves Earth (and sends back information), doesn't mean the money isn't spent on Earth, in the USA.
about 2 days ago a Saturiun probe circled over Washington DC and returned home to report that there was no form of intelligent life to be found anywhere; they were reported to be amazed since the "city" had rivers monuments and white stonelike structures all over the place
I am glad to see that I am not the only one with a "sirius" sense of humor.
RokAl
No disrespect here if I may.
You maybe correct in your assessment for life to exist, but to me life is very very hardy as we have seen here on Earth, until there is solid proof that life can only exist under these conditions as you have laid out, then I have to believe there maybe other ways for life to exist. There have been so many of us say that life can only do this or do that, only to find out in the end that we were wrong.
Have a good day, Tom And Lyn
Many continue thinking about life in terms of aminoacids, proteins, water, etc... that's just what we learned here, in Earth. I would like to think about life as a very organized form of matter, able to multiply, able to consume and generate energy in order to replicate, able to store information (e.g. DNA in our case), etc.
So, why not Titan? .. methane instead of water? ..why not? Extreme temperatures and pressure are not a limitation, we have seen that here in our planet. Earthly cellular membranes are built of Phospholipids, organized in a particular way, "non-polar chains inside" (e.g. fatty acids) and "polar-groups outside" (e.g. phosphate group), that's how cell membranes are stable in water. But, why can not be different in methane? I mean, cell membranes organized "polar-inside" and "non-polar outside"? It is a bi-layer membrane after all. And, why carbon-based proteins and aminoacids? Why not Silicone-based? ... and why DNA, it could be some other polymer like molecule ... etc .etc ..etc... Now, intelligence, that's another deal.
I definitively believe in other life forms out there, but the odds to be exactly the same kind of life as in earth ... do not think so. Life in earth is so "obvious", so "naturally logic" for us, that it is hard to believe or imaging a completely radical alternative form. I think that's the mistake in our approach. I wonder sometimes, why are we searching for radio signals from outer space? Why we assume that advance intelligent life forms will use radio as we do?
In other words, if we find water out there, there is a good chance to find life, or at least,k if life is there would be more familiar-like, as long as the right chemicals are available. But, if no water is found, and instead liquid methane is found, well, that's and Alien, almost unrecognizable!
ChalecoNet
I like the way you put it into terms I can understand, I believe the same way if you look at some of my Comments.
I think the problem here is our human arrogance !!! it stands in our way of truly understanding the way life truly is.
Have a good day, Tom And Lyn
ChalecoNet
Here is another way of looking at it LOL
Look at it this way, it takes billions if not trillions of life forms in our own bodies to make us who we are, to keep us alive and thinking, if there were other life forms out there in space with the capacity to see the earth, would they think the earth was a separate life form on its own??? or would they look at the Earth being comprised of trillions of life forms like us????
Hummm?? I wonder.
Have a good day, Tom And Lyn
I suspect highly intelligent forms of life around distant stars might use methods of communication beyond our technology. Neutrinos, cosmic rays, or black energy we haven't even discovered yet because we don't value pure research anymore. Only R&D on stuff we can have the Chinese slave labor make into cheap consumer products. And weapons. We still make new weapons.
If there is intelligent life within our solar system, and if it knows we are coming, it should keep quiet and hide. We are killers.
I know that it may seem very far out there to suggest what I said in my last comment above, all or most of us as we go about our daily lives don’t see that we are made of trillions of blood cells and many other life forms that keep us alive.
With that said, if you were to look at the Earth from a distance you would only see a pale blue globe and nothing more, but until you look under the atmosphere or under our skin you would not know there is a hole new world teaming with life right in front of us.
The same goes with Titan, we see it from a distance with our crud instruments, satellites, and telescopes, but until we look closely at Titan and truly understand what life is then we should not make the assumption that life is not there in some form or the other.
Another point I would like to make, I have been looking for years at some of the photos that the Hubble Space Telescope has been taking and to me the universe is so very large and vast an unknown that we as humanity would be very arrogant to assume and say life is not out there in some form.
The universe has made is possible for us to look at far away galaxies and ask these questions, so who is to say there is not another life form out there looking back at us asking these same questions, the universe has made it possible for us so why would the universe not make it possible for them.
Sorry guys about my bad spelling my eyes are not so good anymore lol.
Have a good day, Tom And Lyn
It is worth looking at. But it seems way to cold for me. However you never know.
I am wondering why on earth it matters whether or not Mars would be favorable to life a million years ago??? (or mor!!!) I want to know about planets that are currently favorable to life. Why waste the money searching for planets that may have been favorable a million or more years ago, when we could certainly be spending the money on finding planets that can have life on them NOW. Ok, great science lesson, but at what cost? Let's use the wonderful scientific brains and technology we have to find a way to save ourselves before this planet we live on poops out. (Which I believe is not to long in coming.)
Knowing if and how life may have formed on an alien world would expand our knowledge on what to look for to find it elsewhere. We would most likely look right over most life to be found if our search parameters were limited to just the conditions we're familiar with here on earth. We've been surprised over and over again, right here in earth, at the extreme conditions where life is not just found, but thrives.
I told my wife "I will focus my efforts on Uranus"
I sure a well populated Titan would be awe inspiring for her though.
Isnt that illegal in Texas and Utah?
Ok, that one got me!!lol!!
As the spaceship approached Titan and slipped into orbit a faint voice came across the radio. It said, "Go away."
The Bible only refers as life man, animals and plants and, of course, an emphasis on spiritual life. It does not mention germs, DNA-containing structures, etc., as life. When science mentions life, does it also attempts to include biblical life in its definition of life?
aren't you late for bible study? The bible actually mentions Aliens, both illegals and space aliens. hurry up and donate some coin to your local perish (sic)
If you consider angels and the such as aliens that's OK. You didn't address the question of the definition of life. By-the-way, would ICE arrest martians with disintegrating guns and impenetrable shields if they came accross them in the U.S.?
The Bible was written thousands of years ago by confused and frightened people. I suppose you still believe the Earth is flat too?
That's What's Up & Liam-3517370...truely intelligent people do not dismiss the possibility of creation, that would be ignorant. That possition would be like wearing blinders. Wake up to the very real possibility that there is a creator who is infinitly more intelligent than we are! Disregarding that as you discover and learn is major distorting filter.
Please excuse my spelling mistakes.