Saturn Moon Titan Has Molecules That Could Help Make Cell Membranes

[Disir]

Saturn's huge moon Titan harbors yet another possible key ingredient for life, a new study reports.

Titan's thick atmosphere contains large quantities of vinyl cyanide molecules, which could conceivably form membranes around cells in the liquid-hydrocarbon seas that dot the frigid moon's surface, according to the study.

Many astrobiologists regard these seas of methane as possibly habitable environments, especially considering that a variety of complex, carbon-containing organic compounds are known to exist on Titan. However, any life the moon's seas may support would have to be very different from Earth's organisms, which depend heavily on liquid water. [Amazing Photos: Titan, Saturn's Largest Moon]

Cell membranes are a case in point. Here on Earth, membranes consist of fatty molecules called lipids. But lipids cannot survive in the otherworldly Titan environment, which features a hydrocarbon-based weather system and average surface temperatures of around minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 180 degrees Celsius), study team members said.
Saturn Moon Titan Has Molecules That Could Help Make Cell Membranes

I have never heard of vinyl cyanide.

 

[Sunni Man]

Scientist have zero evidence of how life started on earth. ......

 

[Old Rocks]

Saturn's huge moon Titan harbors yet another possible key ingredient for life, a new study reports.

Titan's thick atmosphere contains large quantities of vinyl cyanide molecules, which could conceivably form membranes around cells in the liquid-hydrocarbon seas that dot the frigid moon's surface, according to the study.

Many astrobiologists regard these seas of methane as possibly habitable environments, especially considering that a variety of complex, carbon-containing organic compounds are known to exist on Titan. However, any life the moon's seas may support would have to be very different from Earth's organisms, which depend heavily on liquid water. [Amazing Photos: Titan, Saturn's Largest Moon]

Cell membranes are a case in point. Here on Earth, membranes consist of fatty molecules called lipids. But lipids cannot survive in the otherworldly Titan environment, which features a hydrocarbon-based weather system and average surface temperatures of around minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 180 degrees Celsius), study team members said.
Saturn Moon Titan Has Molecules That Could Help Make Cell Membranes

I have never heard of vinyl cyanide.

For me, this is one of the great questions. And I would like to see the various moons of the Jovian planets explored, as well as the atmospheres of the planets themselves. I think finding life not as we know it would be one of the greatest things I can imagine.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Scientist have zero evidence of how life started on earth. ......

They have tons..Of course, you don't wish to consider that evidence as you're dumber then a box of shit.

 

[Sunni Man]

Scientist have zero evidence of how life started on earth. ......

They have tons..Of course, you don't wish to consider that evidence as you're dumber then a box of shit.

Please to that evidence.

As I am only here to learn. ....

 

[SixFoot]

I highly doubt there's life on Titan. Methane is a terrible solvent.

 

[Old Rocks]

Scientist have zero evidence of how life started on earth. ......

They have tons..Of course, you don't wish to consider that evidence as you're dumber then a box of shit.

Please to that evidence.

As I am only here to learn. ....

For their current study, Sutherland and his colleagues set out to work backward from those chemicals to see if they could find a route to RNA from even simpler starting materials. They succeeded. In the current issue of Nature Chemistry, Sutherland’s team reports that it created nucleic acid precursors starting with just hydrogen cyanide (HCN), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and ultraviolet (UV) light. What is more, Sutherland says, the conditions that produce nucleic acid precursors also create the starting materials needed to make natural amino acids and lipids. That suggests a single set of reactions could have given rise to most of life’s building blocks simultaneously.

Sutherland’s team argues that early Earth was a favorable setting for those reactions. HCN is abundant in comets, which rained down steadily for nearly the first several hundred million years of Earth’s history. The impacts would also have produced enough energy to synthesize HCN from hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. Likewise, Sutherland says, H2S was thought to have been common on early Earth, as was the UV radiation that could drive the reactions and metal-containing minerals that could have catalyzed them.

That said, Sutherland cautions that the reactions that would have made each of the sets of building blocks are different enough from one another—requiring different metal catalysts, for example—that they likely would not have all occurred in the same location. Rather, he says, slight variations in chemistry and energy could have favored the creation of one set of building blocks over another, such as amino acids or lipids, in different places. “Rainwater would then wash these compounds into a common pool,” says Dave Deamer, an origin-of-life researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who wasn’t affiliated with the research.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/03/researchers-may-have-solved-origin-life-conundrum

Sunni, I don't believe you for a minute. Like the Christian Fundamentalists I was raised around, no matter how solid the evidence, you will not accept it. How ever, here is one of many possible paths.

 

[Old Rocks]

I highly doubt there's life on Titan. Methane is a terrible solvent.

I can clearly remember the first time we explored the rift zones, and discovered life that we would have considered impossible prior to that exploration.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

We should send probes to Europa, for starters. There's not a doubt in my mind that we'll find jellyfish like creatures swimming in the oceans there

 

[Sunni Man]

Sunni, I don't believe you for a minute. Like the Christian Fundamentalists I was raised around, no matter how solid the evidence, you will not accept it. How ever, here is one of many possible paths.

A half baked theory about inorganic chemicals washing together after a heavy rain into a deep pool and creating life isn't solid evidence. More like wishful thinking.

Science doesn't have a clue how life started. .....

 

[SixFoot]

I highly doubt there's life on Titan. Methane is a terrible solvent.

I can clearly remember the first time we explored the rift zones, and discovered life that we would have considered impossible prior to that exploration.

Well, luckily for me, I'm one of those people that likes to be proven wrong. lol

I am curious to know what people think about methane that it would be the catalyst for life on a frozen solar gas station, though.

 

[SixFoot]

We should send probes to Europa, for starters. There's not a doubt in my mind that we'll find jellyfish like creatures swimming in the oceans there

I think we'd find something a lot more complex there, too!

 

[sealybobo]

Scientist have zero evidence of how life started on earth. ......

But still life got started on earth. That's all the evidence I need that life exists all over the universe. If it could happen here it can happen elsewhere. What reason would you think we are unique?

That's why it's so important to find any life in Europa or fossils on Mars. Then for sure the universe is a giant zoo full of different creatures depending on the different conditions. A different planet with life might not have a moon so temperatures aren't stable. Life on earth would have evolved much differently if we didn't have a moon. Or other planets like ours still have dinosaurs. Or just tardigrades type creatures. Or dolphins. Or worms and clams.

 

[Old Rocks]

Sunni, I don't believe you for a minute. Like the Christian Fundamentalists I was raised around, no matter how solid the evidence, you will not accept it. How ever, here is one of many possible paths.

A half baked theory about inorganic chemicals washing together after a heavy rain into a deep pool and creating life isn't solid evidence. More like wishful thinking.

Science doesn't have a clue how life started. .....

That is not what the article stated. Quite obviously you did not read it. People like you are afraid to read anything that might show your favorite mythology to be just that.

 

[Carl in Michigan]

Scientist have zero evidence of how life started on earth. ......

Without God, the atheists need FAITH.

Sorry, but at 300 below zero, there ain't gonna be no life on Titan.

 

[Sunni Man]

 

[Carl in Michigan]

If it could happen here it can happen elsewhere. What reason would you think we are unique?

You seem to have no idea how unique this planet is. We have found ZERO with the conditions that allow life to EXIST, let alone FLOURISH.

Wen you ignore the evidence of a Creator, you grasp for imaginary straws.

Earth May Be a 1-in-700-Quintillion Kind of Place - D-brief

 

[Vastator]

I highly doubt there's life on Titan. Methane is a terrible solvent.

I can clearly remember the first time we explored the rift zones, and discovered life that we would have considered impossible prior to that exploration.

Well, luckily for me, I'm one of those people that likes to be proven wrong. lol

I am curious to know what people think about methane that it would be the catalyst for life on a frozen solar gas station, though.

I hear ya. If you dumped sugar into liquid methane it wouldn't disolve. It would simply settle out. That's what makes water so clutch as a solvent. A great many elements and compounds can be dissolved in it, and remain in solution. One of sciences key factors for life to happen.

However, I do think far too much import is given to the idea that it must be a planet, where we will find life... The numbers are against such a theory (Earth not withstanding) with moons being more prevalant, while offering extreme variety.

 

[sealybobo]

If it could happen here it can happen elsewhere. What reason would you think we are unique?

You seem to have no idea how unique this planet is. We have found ZERO with the conditions that allow life to EXIST, let alone FLOURISH.

Wen you ignore the evidence of a Creator, you grasp for imaginary straws.

Earth May Be a 1-in-700-Quintillion Kind of Place - D-brief

What planets around another star have you looked at close enough that you could even say? Zero?

You seem to not realize how many stars planets and moons there are in the universe.

As far as we know we are all alone. That doesn't mean we are alone.

And I don't ignore the arguments for a creator. It's just that they all have fatal flaws. There may be a creator. We've been wondering that ever since we started wondering. I'm constantly looking for signs of a creator. Have you seen any? A beautiful planet that suits you is not evidence.

But it is amazing. We are in the sweet spot now. That doesn't mean it will always be right for human life. There will come a time humans will no longer be able to live on this planet but tardigrades will survive. And there was a time when trilobites lived here long before us or dinosaurs.

So here's what you don't realize. You are not central to the universe. We are not central to the universe. You thinking we are makes you arrogant. So there might be a creator and he has living things around every star. Maybe 5 billion years ago, maybe now, maybe 5 billion years from now.

Lastly, we've located how many planets and stars in the Goldilocks zone? 50? How do you know there isn't life on those planets?

 

[SixFoot]

I highly doubt there's life on Titan. Methane is a terrible solvent.

I can clearly remember the first time we explored the rift zones, and discovered life that we would have considered impossible prior to that exploration.

Well, luckily for me, I'm one of those people that likes to be proven wrong. lol

I am curious to know what people think about methane that it would be the catalyst for life on a frozen solar gas station, though.

I hear ya. If you dumped sugar into liquid methane it wouldn't disolve. It would simply settle out. That's what makes water so clutch as a solvent. A great many elements and compounds can be dissolved in it, and remain in solution. One of sciences key factors for life to happen.

However, I do think far too much import is given to the idea that it must be a planet, where we will find life... The numbers are against such a theory (Earth not withstanding) with moons being more prevalant, while offering extreme variety.

Actually, I'm with you on the habitable moon part. There are trillions of stars with even trillions more moons.

1.) Jupiter's gravitational effects are enough to keep the cores of its moons hot at half a billion miles away from the sun. If Jupiter were as close as we are to the Sun (or even as far away as Mars), Europa would be a giant ball of liquid water.

2.) While there are more rocky worlds in the Milky Way than gas giants, rocky worlds don't tend to have nearly as many moons as a gas giant.

3.) Could you imagine THIS view in the sky 24/7?? Holy crap!

The Milky Way's 100 Billion Planets