Potentially Habitable World Exists Near Saturn

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, may harbor life. Scientists have found out what it might look like, where it is most likely to be found, and in what quantities. The study was published in The Planetary Science Journal, reports Phys.

Saturn’s moon Titan is a unique world. It is the only satellite of a planet in the solar system that has a thick atmosphere and liquid on the surface.

However, it is not water, but liquid methane, and it is found in lakes and rivers that are located in the middle of a surface covered with ice rocks and sand. It is believed that Titan’s crust consists of ice, and underneath it there may be an underground ocean of liquid water, the depth of which is estimated at 500 km.

Previous studies have shown that Titan has many organic molecules, and new modeling by scientists suggests that the moon’s subsurface ocean could support life that consumes organic materials. Even if microbial life does exist, it would be in very small numbers.

According to scientists, it was thought that due to the large amount of organic material on Titan, there would be no shortage of food sources for potential living organisms.

But the authors of the study concluded that not all organic molecules can be food sources, because the exchange of matter between the underground ocean and the surface where all this organic matter is located is limited.

At the heart of a new study that reveals a potential scenario for life on Titan is one of the simplest of all biological metabolic processes: fermentation. The process is used to make bread and beer. Fermentation requires only organic molecules, not oxidizers like oxygen.

Fermentation may have developed early in the history of life on Earth. Therefore, scientists suggest that microbes that absorb organic molecules may exist on Titan. In this case, these organics must enter the ocean from the surface.

The scientists focused on one organic molecule, glycine, the simplest of all known amino acids. Glycine was relatively common in all primordial matter in the solar system.

But modeling has shown that only a small fraction of Titan’s organic material could be suitable for microbial consumption.

Microbes that consume glycine in Titan’s ocean would depend on a constant supply of the amino acid from the surface through the thick ice layer. Scientists believe that asteroid and meteorite impacts could help move organics from the surface into the ocean, but only in small quantities.

According to scientists, this amount of organic molecules may only be enough to support a very small population of microbes. The total weight of such a population may be only a few kilograms. That is, in one liter of water in the vast ocean on Titan, there may be less than one living cell.

Therefore, finding life on Titan, if it exists in its ocean, will be incredibly difficult. But scientists believe that there may be another mechanism for feeding living organisms on Titan, which means there may be many more of them.