Re: OOL might have occurred on Titan

"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dbsj1d$2qdh$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "Peter F" <notdisclosed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dbr3q9$2aki$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Has Huygens found life on Titan? *
> > The chemical signature of microbial life could be hidden in readings
> > taken by the Huygens probe on Saturn's giant moon, researchers
> > suggest
> > http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg18725094.100
>
> I am reminded of some lottery junk-mail I have received.
>
> "You may have already won!"
>
> But to find out, I have to buy a magazine subscription.
>

This is how far I got - for free - into the article:

"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
...."

P



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