“Titan: Possibility of Life” is an engaging 2017 documentary
(43 minutes) by Aerospace Engineering.
The film shows the internal structure of Titan which, like
Europa, has am underwater ocean. But the now famous thick atmosphere, with a
surface of lakes and mountains that can erupt with ammonia water, is explained
by violence in the Solar System about 4 billion years as outer planet orbits
expanded, throwing a lot of objects into the atmosphere of Titan (as well as
Earth).
The chemistry of the atmosphere is explained, as an organic
chemistry lesson. A post-doc fellow
proposes how protein chains could develop and organize themselves into a helix
similar to DNA.
Then a proposal for
metabolism is suggested, where energy is released by hydrogen reacting with
acetylene. Indeed, there are studies suggest this chemistry might enclose a
cellular structure. One scientist suggests
that life forms on Titan might be like large sheets of paper with little
suckers to get food from the environment, maybe analogous a little bit to
jellyfish on Earth (not exactly “Free Fish).
The film presents a lake of host asphalt in Trinidad that
may
NASA picture of Titan's structure, Wikipedia link.
No comments:
Post a Comment