can "titan", biggest satellite of jupiter support any life ?

Question

heard that the conditions are similar to earth.

Answer 1

Europa is a much more likely candidate. It probably contains liquid water underneath the ice surface. If it has thermal activity, then life similiar to life found on earth in the deep oceans could exist there.

See...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_smoker

...for more information.

Answer 2

Titan doesn't orbit Jupiter, but Saturn. The conditions aren't similar to Earth, but it's atmosphere content may have been similar to early Earth - albeit much, much colder.

As for supporting life... I'm doubting it - I think a minimum temperature of 0 degrees centigrade would be necessary for life (although that could be wrong), and Titan is far colder than that.

Answer 3

Now that is the question... isn't it?

My personal guess would be that it won't. Cryogenic chemistry is very restricted in its reaction rates. The life you see here on Earth has only been able to evolve because it had enormous reaction rates for the relevant molecules, enzymes can do thousands of reaction steps a second, the whole DNA of a cell with billions of base pairs can be replicated in minutes to hours, AND because we had a giant volume of water in which the wet chemistry could happen AND because we have an enormous amount of energy from the sun coming in (1kW/m^2).

If you multiply two or even three large numbers, you get an even larger number and, as we have seen quite rapid chemical evolution.

On Titan reaction rates for the same molecules would be almost unmeasurable. In addition, the total amount of energy to make chemical reactions is much lower and the volume of solution is quite small. At least if you look at Titan's probably shallow lakes, you are missing three orders of magnitude of volume, if not more relative to Earth.

Now... having said that... we do know very little about Titan. It might have hotspots... it does have an atmosphere which can support liquid water that is trapped in geothermal settings and there could be all sorts of cryogenic chemistry going on that we have not seen, yet. I would expect that some chemists are having a field day exploring these issues. But none of that amounts to life as we know it.

But... and that is the really interesting thing, Titan could be a frozen chemistry laboratory for primordial Earth. If that turns out to be a valid scientific analogy, we will learn a lot about one stage of our roots which is almost completely inaccessible observationally here on Earth.

And that alone would make Titan a unique gift of the gods. It might turn out that we will find the icy moons with ice crust and probably liquid oceans below to be snapshots of slightly later stages of chemical evolution, maybe even early biological evolution. Who knows... maybe the answers are out there...

Answer 4

Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, not Jupiter, and even though it has a dense atmosphere -- that atmosphere is composed of way too much methane to support life. Plus, it is way too cold.

What you may have heard is; the Earth's atmosphere billions of years ago might have been very similar to what Titan's atmoshpere is like, now (except for the 'very cold' part).

The largest moons of Jupiter have no atmospheres to speak of, none like Titan anyway.

.

Answer 5

Titan is the largest satellite of Saturn.
It has a heavy atmosphere of methane, which may harbor organic molecules, but will not support life as we know it.

Answer 6

In theory yea but we havent been able to detect any as of yet. Its still much too cold for normal life like on Earth but they believe they found traces of water on the surface, or so ive heard.

Answer 7

I suppose that not since the temperature at the surface is about-200°C
and water is not liquid
If life exists it is completely different than on earth

Answer 8

well you heard wrong