Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Is there life on [rolls dice] Titan?

Is NASA going to announce that they've found evidence of extraterrestrial life on Titan? 

That's what a lot of people are beginning to think.  NASA has been touting "an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life" (astrobiology, besides being a cool word, is "the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe").  Supposedly, this evidence has been gathered/analyzed by the following individuals:
  • A geobiologist who's written about "geology and life on Mars";
  • an oceanographer who's done extensive work on arsenic-based photosynthesis;
  • a biologist examining Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, and its similarities to early Earth;
  • and an ecologist investigating the "chemistry of environments where life evolves."
Now, yes, obviously, throw in a grizzled marine and you've got the making of an awesome movie about discovering aliens.  Of course, the announcement could be something totally different! Or, it could be that NASA has been contacted by a warlike race of space aliens and a certain-to-fail mission carried out by a ragtag bunch of scientists is our only hope of survival.  (The picture, by the way, is an artist's concept of a lake on Titan, "the only place in our solar system beyond Earth known to have liquid on its surface." HOW COOL IS THAT?!

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