Has Huygens found life on Titan?

IF LIFE exists on Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, we could soon know about it - as long as it's the methane-spewing variety. The chemical signature of microbial life could be hidden in readings taken by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe when it landed on Titan in January.

Titan's atmosphere is about 5 per cent methane, and Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, California, thinks that some of it could be coming from methanogens, or methane-producing microbes. Now he and Heather Smith of the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, have worked out the likely diet of such organisms on Titan.

They think the microbes would breathe hydrogen rather than oxygen, and eat organic molecules drifting down from the upper atmosphere. They considered three available substances: acetylene, ethane and more complex organic gunk known as tholins. Ethane and tholins turn out to provide little more than the minimum energy requirements of methanogenic bacteria on Earth. The more tempting high-calorie option is acetylene, yielding six times as much energy per mole as either ethane or tholins.


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well if mars is not giving evidence of life it will be titan.
those scientist which claims that mars has been cold for 4 billion years and there for isnt full of life. are going to be in a shock if life is on both mars and titan:p

Actually, Mars already has evidence of life. I think I recently read a thread in ATS that 'Ammonia' was discovered? They say that Ammonia is nitrogen and hydrogen, and it feeds on living organisms (if my memory serves me correctly) So...it was confirmed that there was life on Mars.

Now on Titan? That's pretty interesting, we are advancing more and more and it is amazing how we are coming across evidence of life in other worlds.

yes but were I am speaking about is the fact of scientist saying that mars was to freezy for life

www.newscientistspace.com...

thats pretty interesting, I gotta say. life on titan.... there's gotta be more than one rock in this solar system thats useful!

there is life out there.mars had some type of water and now titan has life on it.without the normal thinking of where to find life there it is. in another form we just cant see it with our eyes up close.funny will the people of earth accept these findings or again deny life out there lol......

Ammonia's only a gas, NH3, but it can combine with halogen fatty acids to form amino acids.

Ammonia has only been tentatively discovered on mars. There are other explanations for its existence other than life. Its not quite proof yet, but we're getting close.

No life has been found...

I don't think people doubt that there's other life forms out there...I think they doubt that there's other life in this solar system. I am one in that crowd.

i believe there could be life out there on other planets but not life like us. The most i think there could be is some bacteria or microscopic organisms at most.

i thought they had rocks from Mars with an extra terrestrial bacteria on them?

They think it could be a "fossil" of bacteria...but it's clearly debatable.