New Evidence that Methane-Based Life Forms Could Exist on Titan

Scientists at Cornell University have engineered a workable prototype for an oxygen free membrane that would allow a methane based life form to exist on Saturn's moon Titan:

The team, led by Dr Paulette Clancy of the Cornell University’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, modeled an azotosome – a new type of cell membrane composed of small organic nitrogen compounds and capable of functioning in liquid methane at temperatures of minus 292 degrees Celsius

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More evidence that the narrow "circumstellar habitable zone" is too narrow (minded), and we should be looking at more of our planets here in our own solar system for the existence of life.

a reply to: Chronon

Is it too soon for fart jokes? 💨

👣

a reply to: Chronon

Fascinating!


I can imagine life being like atoms. With more energy comes more vibration, activity, and heat. Too much and the object or life form will be destroyed. Perhaps our life is so advanced because of our "perfect" location, but it doesnt mean that slower evolving or less evolved life forms arent on some of these other celestial bodies in our solar system. In fact it would be surprising if they didnt.

I know a couple of people who could probably live on Titan. They have such bad gas all the time.

Didn't Carl Sagan call this back some 30 odd years ago?

Ever since I read the his version of the Cosmos it opened my mind up so much to how life can happen in all sorts of ways other than ours. But it also made me think, will we as humans be able to even travel to other planets other than ours?

I would be very surprised if life on other planets wasn't based on different compounds to ours!
This would naturally effect the shape and nature of that life.
So we would have as diverse life forms - dare I say it - like on Star Trek!
This would also explain the different visitation experiences folk have had.

originally posted by: strongfp
Didn't Carl Sagan call this back some 30 odd years ago?

Ever since I read the his version of the Cosmos it opened my mind up so much to how life can happen in all sorts of ways other than ours. But it also made me think, will we as humans be able to even travel to other planets other than ours?

Isaac Asimov wrote about non-water based life forms in an essay entitled “Not as We Know It" first published in September, 1961.

Life may be stranger than fiction, but when it comes to Asimov, fiction arrives first.

There seems to be some kind of bacteria called the methanogenic bacteria that could live in such environments.

The methanogenic bacteria and their metabolic end-products found in the Earth’s permafrost provide a range of analogues that could be used in the search for possible ecosystems and potential inhabitants on extraterrestrial cryogenic bodies free of oxygen

a reply to: Chronon

I bet life exists on other planets and moons in our own solar system. I'll put my money on at least two others.