Titan, largest moon of Saturn, has always fascinated scientists regarding the chances of existence of extra-terristrial life due to its remarkable similarities with that of the Earth.
Data collected by Cassini spacecraft on its expedition to Titan has further delighted the scientist community across the world as it reveals existing conditions on this moon of Saturn remarkably coincide to the conditions that existed on earth when first ever microscopic life forms appeared on our planet.
Scientists analyzing the data have conformed existence of heavy negative ions in the upper regions of Titan’s atmosphere. These particles can act as building blocks for more complicated organic molecules that could be basis of earliest life forms. This is a totally unexpected discovery as the Titan’s atmosphere has dominant composition of methane and nitrogen and negligible percentage of oxygen.
The observation has now been verified on 16 different parameters and the concerned reports will be published in Geophysical Research Letters on November 28.
Prof. Andrew Coates, researcher at UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory and main author of the paper, says,
Cassini’s electron spectrometer has helped us detect the presence of heavy negative ions that are 10000 times the mass of hydrogen. Additional rings of carbon based molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons can be built up on these ions that could lead to birth of earliest life forms on Titan.
The new paper is based on a report published in Science (May 11), when team had discovered slightly smaller ‘tholins’, which are 8000 times the mass of hydrogen away from the surface of Titan.
Dr Hunter Waite of the South West Research Institute in Texas and author of the earlier study, said,
Tholins are large, complex, organic molecules that are perhaps the chemical precursors of early life. This could lead to a valuable insight into origin of life on our planet.
Source: Scienceblog
