such deep intellect you possess.

you have no clue how life arose.

none.

Ithink thatcould apply to all theplanets if its not what you call a planet full stop.

A planet goes round a star ie. our Sun, a moon goes round a planet -or insomecases an asteroid or planetoid.

I’d call Titan a world – or a large moon. In fact, it is the largest moon beating Ganymede and Callisto for that honour. Its nearly as big asMars and bigger than Mercury -and yes its a very cool place.

The finding of lakes may be old news now but its still marvellous.

As for Phil Plait helping creationists by his “no clue how life sparked” line those excremental so-and-sos would twistsanyone’s words given thechance -bestthingany of us can do is take whatever they say with a shaker-full of salt. In truth though, we _do_ have quite a few clues on how life started just no certainities. Which puts us a considerable few steps ahead of those who claim to know with utter certainty but resort to the “God said so” fallacy of authority as their only evidence.

See an example at http://www.smccabe.net/titan_lake1.jpg

“5. Body with no atmosphere”

How do you define “atmosphere”? Even the moon has an ambient pressure higher than that in interplanetary space. And the entire solar system has a pressure higher than that of interstellar space, which has pressure higher than that of intergalactic space, and so on. You must set some sort of arbitrary cut-off in terms of ambient pressure in order to define “presence” or “absence” of an atmosphere. Also, how do you define a “climate”? Does Mars have a climate? It certainly has weather and changing local atmospheric conditions. But then again, so would any body with any gas at all, since the body would not be recieving uniform energy at all points. Even interplanetary space has “weather” from particles streaming away from the sun and the passage of bodies like comets.

“The probability of life on Titan–and subsequent evolution that may have occurred–pivots on the time frame in which Titan has maintained a climate near the state it is currently at or at a more life-friendly state (if there ever was one). The other main variable in the Titan-life equation would be how likely life came from outside the planet or was induced upon the planet (if that is at all possible under any conditions that ever existed on the planet).”

It also requires a chemical environment in which life can develop. This is not by no means given. Simply having a planet stable long enough will not allow life to develop if the local environment prohibits the evolution life. Simply having solid liquid and gas does not mean life can necessary develop in that solid, liquid, and gas. It doesn’t mean it can’t, either, but it is simply not a given.

The genetic code of an important group of methane-producing microbes has been sequenced by German scientists.

The archaea are probably the major source of methane emanating from rice fields, contributing up to a quarter of global emissions of the gas.

The article goes on to say that an archaea group called Rice Cluster I (RC-I) is probably responsible and then ends:

Some researchers hold out hope that some of the methane traces observed on Mars, for example, may be coming from organisms like RC-I.

John Latter / Jorolat

Evolution Research

And then you could also classify them by other means (e.g. what they orbit). I would say any body class 4 or above would be a planet–no atmosphere, not a planet. Sorry Mecury, you’re only the sun’s moon–an honorary planet at best. Maybe I’m missing the reason they have such a hard time defining planets. Titan would be a class 2

Moving on to life . . .
With the myriad of locations single-cell organisms can be found living on Earth, it would not surprise me if they found some way to adopt to Titan, even if it’s at the warmest point at the bottom of the methane lakes. It’s likely they have some form of underwater vents similar to that of our oceans where we have found life flourishing. Granted, it may be very very slow moving organisms, making evolutionary processes drawn out greatly.

The probability of life on Titan–and subsequent evolution that may have occurred–pivots on the time frame in which Titan has maintained a climate near the state it is currently at or at a more life-friendly state (if there ever was one). The other main variable in the Titan-life equation would be how likely life came from outside the planet or was induced upon the planet (if that is at all possible under any conditions that ever existed on the planet).

That said, it would be nearly as exciting to find out that Titan at least hosted life (possibly at some more hospitable point in its history) at some point in time as finding that it currently has life.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/SEM3SP5DIAE_0.html

The images received may have been taken at a moment of low tide. Then again the depth of that lake in particular may only be measured in meters or less, even millimeters. I would doubt there would be the scale of depths we here on Earth are familar with. Can anybody shed some light on these musings?

Anyway, what a cool place!

I shall wait on the disciplines of each specialized science for their professional official reports.

In the meantime: those pics are neat.

Entropy is proportional to the number of discrete states. Because each water molecule can potentially bind to dozens, maybe even hundreds of water molecules, and these bonds are broken and re-formed extremely rapidly, there is a massive number of possible discrete states. However, because the hydrocarbons do not have such hydrogen bonding, the number of discrete states they can exist in is very small. In entropy, according to my professor, continuous states such as are present in hydrocarbons do not contribute to energy, only discrete states do. Because hydrocarbons have nothing locking them into a finite number of orientations and positions but instead exist in a infinitely divisible continuum of orientations and positions they have very low entropy.

Jess Tauber

any biologists or archaeologists wanna enlighten us physical scientist-types about this?

Ahhh Phil … archaeologists studying past HUMAN life, so this is some what (~4 billion, give or take) out of their league. I think you were thinking of paleontologist, but they aren’t much help.

liquid methane and ethane absorb radar

Actually, they reflect, not absorb. The flat surface results in specular reflection, so they look dark unless viewed from directly above. Nick Matzke sums it up nicely at Panda’s Thumb.

Boy it’d sure be nice if we had some preview buttons, don’tcha think?

with so many oddball worlds in the solar system its too bad all the on site photos we have are of boring rocky places with features consistent with an earth desert.

If those are lakes, what are they lakes of? water? acid? chocolate milk??

Would there be any tides? Or is the system far too small to have any noticeable effect on the level of the liquid lake?

And just which fly should the angler be best advised using?

Ivan?