If Titan has an ocean, couldnt we send a probe that would break the surface ice and listen for life?

Question

Kind of like how we listen for whale and dolphin calls?..

Well, I would hope they'd include a simple microphone on any probe going to a planet that has an ocean or an atmosphere... Just because... I mean, I know about the testing for the chemistry of life, but we've done that in the past.. ie: mars, and people argue over how accurate it is. I mean, if we sent something to titan, and by chance, heard.. say.. something that sounds like a whale.. I think that would be a pretty good sign of something alive. Or even, perhaps, if we heard something.. mechanical, artificial.. etc. Just seems like a good test to include on a probe. But just my opinion

Also, you wouldn't have to sledge hammer you way through right? You could... melt your way through? ... Of course, it might have to be slow melting since I'm assuming the device would have to be solar powered, and there's not as much sunlight at that distance..

anyways, just curious about other opinions

well, Im talking about more advanced life.. Im overly optimistic I guess.

Answer 1

Titan's ocean is liquid methane, not water. And it is not frozen. And we DID send a probe, the Huygens probe on the Cassini space craft. There was great expectation that it might land in a liquid methane ocean and it was designed to float. But it didn't land in the ocean, it landed on land. That is because we didn't know where on Titan the ocean was until AFTER the probe landed. The probe just landed in a random place that happened to be dry. See the 1st source.

By the way, Cassini is nuclear powered, there is 100 times less sunlight at Saturn than on Earth, because Earth is 10 times closer to the Sun and light intensity falls off as the square of the distance. And the Huygens probe was powered by regular batteries that went dead in a few hours after landing.

You may be thinking of Jupiter's Moon Europa, that may or may not have liquid water deep below a frozen surface many miles thick. See the second source.

Oh, and Huygens DID have a microphone. It recorded sounds as the probe drifted down in the atmosphere. See the 3rd source. I just listened to it. It is just some whooshing sounds, like you might expect.

Answer 2

Stuff we send into space is quite light and basically wrapped in tin foil. You want to send a lead brick to hammer its way (a number of whomps to break thru) and still have the capability to transmit information (after the timex torture test). Yeah, that is gonna happen soon. And why are we looking for life that is not as advanced as ours?

Answer 3

Well, that's exactly what the plan is. but not to listen, they are assuming that the life will be very undeveloped. It will look for chemicals that would only be there as a result of metabolism.

Answer 4

1) The "surface ice" is a few kilometers thick, at least

2) What sounds do algae make? Plankton? Bacteria, viruses? Tuna? Eels? Sea cucumbers, nudibranchae, shellfish, octopi, squid?