Watch NASA Life Conference Live | Discovery of Life on Saturn's Moon Titan?
NASA Headquarters Auditorium
Thursday December 2, 2010 2:00PM ET
Thursday December 2, 2010 2:00PM ET
NASA has set a press conference at 2:00PM ET on Thursday, December 2, 2010 live from the NASA Headquarters auditorium at 300 E St. SW in Washington to talk about a major astrobiology finding that will impact the quest for evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Participants in the said conference include:
1. Mary Voytek - Director, Astrobiology Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington
2. Felisa Wolfe-Simon - NASA astrobiology research fellow, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA
3. Pamela Conrad - Astrobiologist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
4. Steven Benner - Distinguished fellow, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Gainesville, FL
5. James Elser - Professor, Arizona State University, Tempe
Are they going to announce they've found evidence of extraterrestrial life?
Participants in the said conference include:
1. Mary Voytek - Director, Astrobiology Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington
2. Felisa Wolfe-Simon - NASA astrobiology research fellow, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA
3. Pamela Conrad - Astrobiologist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
4. Steven Benner - Distinguished fellow, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Gainesville, FL
5. James Elser - Professor, Arizona State University, Tempe
Are they going to announce they've found evidence of extraterrestrial life?
What's with Titan?
Titan is the second biggest moon in the solar system at 5150 km (3200 miles) in diameter, bigger than Mercury and Pluto. It would probably be considered a planet in its own right if it weren’t orbiting Saturn. Titan has a thick atmosphere, made up of nitrogen, methane, and other molecules. It’s very cold, but it’s known that lakes, probably of liquid methane, exist on the surface.
Analyzed data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggest a primitive, exotic form of life or precursor to life on Titan's surface breath with a dense atmosphere around the planet and feed with a complex chemistry on the surface of the moon.
According to Roger Clark, a Cassini team scientist based at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, "Titan's atmospheric chemistry is cranking out organic compounds that rain down on the surface so fast that even as streams of liquid methane and ethane at the surface wash the organics off, the ice gets quickly covered again. All that implies Titan is a dynamic place where organic chemistry is happening now."
