Titan – Earth’s twin is of interest to new life-hunters

Saturn’s moon Titan – three different views

Courtesy NASA

Titan, one of Saturn’s moons is like a genetic twin to Earth.  It enjoys many of the geological features of the Earth – volcanism, tectonics, erosion, deposition and atmosphere.  The rivers flowing across these plains are formed of a hydrocarbon soup with methane as its main ingredient.

However the one main difference is that it is so cold so most of the water is solid.

The true nature of this once mysterious world is now finally emerging, courtesy largely of the Cassini-Huygens mission, a joint US-European venture, which deposited a landing craft on Titan, and continues to send back data and pictures of Saturn, its rings and its 60-odd moons.

The data coming back from the mission shows that on Titan it rains methane onto the surface, which then collects into lakes.  There are also equatorial storms in the tropical regions.  So alike do the lakes appear to those on Earth that the cosmological “nomenclature police”, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), have decreed that they can be named after those on our planet.  Titan now features a Lake Abeya, a Lake Mackay and a Lake Ontario, named because their shapes resemble their terrestrial equivalents in Ethiopia, Australia and Canada.

The atmosphere of Titan has also turned out to be reminiscent of Earth’s, possessing layers that mimic the troposphere, stratosphere and ionosphere above our heads.

There may be 1,000 times more liquid hydrocarbons in Titan’s lakes than in all the oil wells on Earth. Its dunes may hold hundreds of times the content of Earth’s coal reserves.

It makes an enticing prospect for the would-be life-hunter in space.

“This combination of liquid water in the interior plus complex organic molecules composes two big ingredients for life – certainly life as we know it – and that makes Titan a very attractive body for future exploration,” says Ralph Lorenz from the project.

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com