Prebiotic Environment on Titan!

Excellent science news today! Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is known to be almost entirely made of ice - much of it water. Comets bring tholins, which are simple organic molecules. Now, with some new science done by a grad student somewhere, it has been shown that tholins and nearly frozen water can interact, albeit slowly, to create larger organic molecules. These molecules form the basis for life.

While Neish’s work is not a perfect representation of chemistry on Saturn’s largest moon, it nonetheless suggests that similar processes could produce organic compounds in significant quantities during periods when liquid water is available.

On Titan, this suggests that prebiotic molecules might exist in melt water from impact craters and ice volcanoes. And similar processes might have occurred on the early Earth, before our atmosphere contained significant quantities of free oxygen.

Hooray! Let's say hello to our bacterial cousins!