Possible Niches For Extant Life On Titan In Light Of The First Six Years Of Cassini/Huygens Results

Details Possible Niches For Extant Life On Titan In Light Of The First Six Years Of Cassini/Huygens Results Possible Niches For Extant Life On Titan In Light Of The First Six Years Of Cassini/Huygens Results

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.6109g&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #61.09; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1089

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At the 2005 DPS meeting we presented an assessment of the possibility of extant life on Titan after the first year of the Cassini mission at Saturn. We suggested then that hydrogenation of photochemically produced acetylene could provide metabolic energy for near-surface organisms and also replenish atmospheric methane (Schulze-Makuch and Grinspoon, 2005). In this talk we will offer a brief reassessment of the possibility of extant life in light of five more years of the Cassini/Huygens results, including the recent reports suggesting a lack of acetylene on the surface (Clark et al., 2010) and a possible sink of H2 at the surface (Strobel, 2010). Both results are consistent with earlier predictions for the existence of an acetylene-powered biosphere on Titan (Schulze-Makuch and Grinspoon, 2005; McKay and Smith, 2005), but can potentially be explained by more prosaic phenomena.
D. Schulze-Makuch and D. H. Grinspoon(2005), Biologically Enhanced Energy and Carbon Cycling on Titan? Astrobiology 5, 560-567; Clarke, R.N. et al. (2020), Detection and Mapping of Hydrocarbon Deposits on Titan, JGR-Planets; Strobel, D.F(2010) Molecular hydrogen in Titan's atmosphere: Implications of the measured tropospheric and thermospheric mole fractions. Icarus; McKay, C.P., Smith, H.D.( 2005) Possibilities for methanogenic life in liquid methane on the surface of Titan. Icarus 178, 274-276.

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