Titan and Exobiology: A Fiercely Frozen Echo of the Early Earth?

Details Titan and Exobiology: A Fiercely Frozen Echo of the Early Earth? Titan and Exobiology: A Fiercely Frozen Echo of the Early Earth?

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufm.p11a..06o&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #P11A-06

Physics

6281 Titan

Scientific paper

The results from the highly successful Huygens probe include the unexpected revelation that the sources of methane and nitrogen on Titan may be relevant to conditions on the early Earth. Titan's nitrogen appears to have originated from the degassing of condensable nitrogen compounds that were carried in the icy planetesimals that accreted to form the satellite. Subsequent atmospheric photochemistry produced the N2 we find today. In contrast, the methane could have been made in situ, from carbon compounds carried in those same planetesimals. Subcrustal hydrogenation of carbon and carbon compounds by a kind of Fisher-Tropsch process using hydrogen liberated from Titan's ice by water-rock reactions would produce the methane. This same methane generator has apparently been at work in relatively recent times on several of the larger Kuiper Belt objects, where huge deposits of clear methane ice have been discovered. Icy planetesimals (aka comets) striking the early Earth would have brought in similar raw materials to our planet that could have undergone the same transformations. The recent work of Tian et al. (Science, 308, 1014, 2006) demonstrating the long lifetime of hydrogen in the Earth's early atmosphere then opens the way to an enduring reducing environment in which the classic Miller (Science, 117, 528, 1953) synthesis of biogenic compounds could take place.

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