I've read a few articles like this one speculating about the possibility of some type of life (albeit, not as we know it) on Titan. I'd just love to think this is possible but I''m not convinced that the odds are very good. What does everyone think about this?

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I think there's a fairly good chance of microbial life (1% maybe), but the chances of intelligent life, I would say, are close to zero.

Well, it would be nice if there's some form of life there... (It would most likely be microbial, as Brady pointed out.)

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Could Titan develop some kind of life when it warms up when the sun turns into a red giant?

Brendan

Intelligent life on Titan is unlikely even if the planet warms up. There is no oxygen on Titan so there will be no fire and hence no civilization.

Titan will not be suitably warm for long because it becomes too hot as the Sun expands. And the atmosphere probably won't survive.

Either life has already formed on Titan, or it never will. That's my opinion.

Isn't there a lifeform on Earth that lives in petroleum deposits? I'd imagine a similar lifeform could from on Titan. Of course, it'd so cold there, it raises doubts. Perhaps Titan is warmer on the surface, or has internal heat. Bacteria on Earth has been found underground, so the same case may be on Titan (and other places). I think for further clues to how sturdy life is, we look at Antartica (aside from the penguins and seals). I know the amount of bacteria there is minimal, so if we look at what's there, it could help us understand what to look for else where.

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A small nit: intelligent life does not require oxygen. A technological civilization almost certainly does though. If dolphins were super geniuses they would be intelligent, but unable to make technology due to lack of hands and living in water. (Of course they could handle technology of some sort if we uplifted them a la David Brin's uplift novels.)

Not a convincing example Dolphins DO require oxygen, and so do cephalopods (the most intelligent invertebrates), even though the latter absorb it from water. And cephalopods HAVE hands of sorts, as do many other aquatic invertebrates, but lack of fire under water would be a major barrier to technology.

Anaerobic respiration produces about 20 times less energy than aerobic one, so any macroscopic anaerobe would move very very slowly. That in itself does not preclude intelligence, just ensures a teatime conversation will last from late March until mid-April.

Here is a topic for a SF story - anaerobic land-based intelligent alien. Although Frederick Pohl already did that, in one of the Heechee books.

You are more likely to find The Weekly World News or The National Enquirer, instead.

Just a speculation here: How hot would it get on Titan when the sun becomes a red giant? How about, for fun, say Triton and the other moons of Neptune?

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The main snag, as I understand it, with Titan is that it's too cold for liquid water to exist. And as far as I am aware all carbon-based life requires liquid water as a solvent agent (even the life inside the antarctic rocks is based round residual moisture.)

Stephen Baxter in his sci-fi novel 'Titan' postulated a kind of life where the water chemistry is systemattically replaced with ammonia. So a guanine molecule would, on Titan, be ammono-guanine, and you then have the start of an ammonia-based amino acid chain. However, sci fi is one thing.... I haven't the biochemistry knowledge to know if that's at all feasible in reality. Does anyone here on the board?

Rob.

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The problem with any "is there life on" question is we only have one frame of reference which is our own. This get's even more suspect whe nwe say "intelligent life must have"

Basicly the only way to know is to go there and see if anythings growing or moving.

DNA might not be the only way to sequence for the next generation.

After we have done a full audit of our solar system we will be able to compare enviroments more. We have quite a varied range of enviroments in our system so we could use these as a model to applie to the rest of the universe.

Basicly lets just keep an open mind until we know more. :wink:

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Well, if the Sun becomes 3000 times as luminous, the comfort zone moves out to 50 au; beyond Neptune and Pluto.
So Neptune, at 30AU, will recieve about 2.5 times the radiation we recieve on Earth; if you managed the albedo and the greenhouse effect carefully, you could possibly maintain a habitable temperature on Triton, Proteus and Nereid. Probably need an orbiting mirror swarm to reflect some of the heat.

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Living in water prevents a species from producing fire, which is needed to transform raw material. Without it you can´t have technology. The steadiness of a liquid medium also should play a role in slowing the development of intelligence. Intelligence would require a higher level of disturbance; it would need challenges.

As to the need of Oxygen and stuff, Arthur Clarke once decribed a cold world in the deep space. It harbored a global intelligence consisting of the crystals and metals spread all over the planet. The cold superconducting materials conveyed electric pulses across the planet, making a big planet-size brain. I don´t remember that short-story title.

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Bio-tech! *Starts typing*

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Asimov wrote an article about it called something like The Thassoleans, in it, he basically shoots down any possibility of life evolving on a planet with a non-oxygen atmosphere. Mind you, this article was written before the discovery of deep sea life at the cold seeps, so it might not be accurate, and I haven't reread it recently enough to remember the details.

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You missed the point of the example: intelligence does not
mean technological civilization. One does not imply the other.
(Indeed technological civilization has existed less then ten percent
for the lifetime of our species.)

Imagine a dolphin-like creature that does not use oxygen.

You have forgotten that life on Earth has evolved to adopt to conditions which exists here on Earth. Life outside of Earth is not limited by the solutions found by lifeforms on Earth. If you want to say that no form of metabolism can exist in un-Earth like enviroments that is suffient for large "animals" then you are going to have to provide strong evidence for that claim. I will not accept it on faith. ("Animals" is in quotes since any alien "animal" will not be a member of the animal clade for obvious reasons.)

I have not read that one. Though the kind of aliens imagined by SF authors seems endless.

Here's my question. If it turns out Titan is tectonically active, could it be that there are thermal hotspots where life might be triggered?

If it turns out that these are hot vents and not like the ice geyers of Triton.