Titan’s Potential for Life Was Nipped by the Cold

Data from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft suggest that Titan, a moon of Saturn, is a world with the potential for life that was frozen in its youth, prevented by deep cold from developing into a livelier place.

“Titan is the Peter Pan of our solar system. It’s a little world that never grew up,” said Tobias Owen of the University of Hawaii, a member of an international team monitoring the findings of the Huygens spacecraft sitting on Titan’s surface.

Titan’s temperature of minus 290 Fahrenheit prevented the chemical reactions that are thought to have occurred on Earth, possibly leading to the development of life, said Owen, one of a group of researchers presenting papers on Titan at the national meeting of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science.

“All of the elements that we are made of are there,” Owen said Friday, “but all of the water is frozen solid. There’s no oxygen available. If it could warm up, it would be beautiful.”

Ice appears to form the bedrock of Titan, he said, and there is some suggestion of cryovolcanoes, vents that spew forth ice instead of lava. Owen said features detected by the Cassini spacecraft, orbiting Titan, show channels resembling volcanic features on Earth, but they may have been carved by creeping ice, not molten rock.

Owen said the evidence for ice volcanoes on Titan was shaky, but it was the leading theory to explain some of the features.

“We’re not expecting to find life on Titan. It’s just too cold,” Owen said. “But we expect to find the primordial ice cream” -- the complex of chemicals that could be the precursors to life.

Cassini-Huygens is a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency. The combined craft was launched in 1997 and began orbiting Saturn last year. The Huygens portion of the craft, a lander developed and controlled by the European agency, touched down last month.

Early studies show that Titan is covered with pools of methane, an organic chemical.

Owen said that Huygens apparently landed in a “mud” formed by methane, and that heat from the craft created a cloud of the gas that instruments quickly analyzed and identified.

Titan’s intense cold and atmospheric pressure -- about 1 1/2 times that of Earth -- keep methane in a liquid state. Researchers said last month that data indicated methane showers on Titan, and a methane fog.

Methane is a highly flammable gas, but there is no free oxygen available on Titan to support combustion. Instead, methane flows and showers and pools.