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NASA’s Dragonfly Mission is Not Likely to Find Life on Saturn’s Largest Moon, Titan

Posted by Guy Pirro 02/24/2024 03:36AM

NASA’s Dragonfly Mission is Not Likely to Find Life on Saturn’s Largest Moon, Titan

A new study led by a team at Western University in Ontario, Canada finds that the subsurface ocean of Titan – the largest moon of Saturn – is most likely a non-habitable environment, meaning that any hope of finding life in this icy world is dead in the water. This is discouraging since Titan is the most organic-rich icy moon in the Solar System, so if its subsurface ocean turns out to be not habitable for life, it does not bode well for the habitability of other known icy worlds like Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede and Saturn’s moon Enceladus. This finding, if proven correct, means it is far less likely that space scientists will ever find life in the outer Solar System planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.


Comments:

  • eranbob [Robert Campbell]
  • 02/25/2024 07:02AM
She is basing her conclusion on one mechanism of getting hydrocarbons into the oceans through comet impact and diffusion through the ice. But there are hydrocarbon lakes (methane) on the surface of Titan. Why could that not be an ultimate source of carbon compounds that seep into the oceans? (would need a reaction chain to convert methane into suitable amino acids, so its not a slam dunk, but definitely something to pursue.

Bob

Finally some reality seeping into the hype pushed by scientists and private companies promoting their ventures to Mars and other elsewhere.
Still no real evidence of an actual fossil of life on Mars despite numerous probes on its surface intended to find it.
These people need to get off their high horses, interject some common sense, and look at their data that does not support their conclusions of life elsewhere, including Mars, and stop misinforming the world that it does...