Titan's Seas May Hide a Strange Form of Nitrogen-Based Life

Researchers at Cornell have theorized a life form that could withstand the freezing temperatures on Saturn's moon

Saturn's moon Titan has a thick atmosphere, lakes on its surface, and many ingredients that might make it a great place to find life The problem is, it's frigid there: Temperatures reach nearly -200 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, and its seas are all liquid methane. 

That means that life as we know it probably can't live there. But Cornell University researchers are proposing something else: that the moon could have nitrogen-based life living on the surface, feasting on the vast methane seas. 

The researchers are calling these hypothetical organisms azotosomes. Their cell membranes would be made of nitrogen, which could also enable them to survive frigid temperatures. They would represent a whole new range of extremophile (the term for microorganisms that can survive temperature and other environmental extremes).

This is just an idea that the Cornell scientists proposed in Science Advances. But it's an idea that could be tested—imagine a Titan submarine, like that proposed to NASA by a joint team from Penn State and Johns Hopkins, examining the moon's weird lakes for weird life. If nitrogen-based life were found on Titan, it would revolutionize the search for life out there in the cosmos—it would show that living creatures don't need water to prosper. 

Source: Atlantic Journal Constitution

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