Methane clouds scud over an icy landscape that barely registers a temperature above -180 °C. If life exists on Titan, surely it has to be about as otherworldly as any our solar system could support?
Perhaps not: a simulation of conditions on Saturn's giant frigid moon shows that some of the key molecular precursors of life as we know it are likely to have formed there. The results raise the odds that Titans, if they do exist, might be less alien than we imagine.
There is good reason to hope that a search for life on Titan will prove fruitful. The moon is swathed in a thick, protective, nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Beneath that is evidence of surface liquid - albeit in the form of hydrocarbon lakes.
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