Since the very beginning of time, humankind has been obsessed with the idea of life on other planets. We have spent unimaginable sums of money trying to find out what else lies beyond our planet and trying to make contact with other forms of intelligent life. The answers we’ve got have been few and slow coming, but we have made some remarkable discoveries along the way.
One of the most exciting discoveries made in our quest to find alien life is the discovery of some of the first building blocks of life as we know it. These building blocks were found on two different moons that revolve around the planet Saturn. Titan and Enceladus both show the potential for producing life if only they were a little warmer for life to survive.
Enceladus was first discovered in 1789 by Frederick William Herschel. Since then no a lot of information about this moon has been uncovered until recently. We know that it is one of only three moons in the solar system to produce observed active eruptions of gases. The exciting thing about this little moon is the presence of ice formed by water. Spacecrafts have observed that Enceladus reflects almost 100% of the sunlight that hits it because of the ice and there are even little water geysers and fountains in various places on the moons surface.
Even more promising than the water found on Enceladus is the materials found on the larger of Saturn’s moons, Titan. Scientists believe that the atmosphere surrounding Titan is very similar to the atmosphere of Earth before life put oxygen into the air. The atmospheric pressure near the surface is almost 60 times greater than that of Earth today. The air on Titan is made up of hydrocarbons and nitrogen which give the planet it’s pretty orange hue and are the building blocks for most amino acids that are needed to form life.
Another fascinating aspect of the planet Titan is the disputed existence of rivers on the moons surface containing methane and ethane. Scientists are all in agreement that the moon does have rivers and lakes running on it very similar to those on earth which contain water, but there is some disagreement to what Titan’s rivers actually contain. It is in general agreement that the contents consist of more hydrocarbons, such as methane and ethane, which are used to make natural gas on Earth, but some scientists do not believe that there is actually methane in liquid form included in this mix. Either way its still an intriguing thought that the first pieces of life all seem to be present somewhere other than our planet. Of course we probably won’t be seeing any big-eyed green creatures any time soon. The temperature on both planets is still far too cold for any life to grow or survive.