Microbial Life on Saturn's moon Titan?

I started to go with the title "Who cares if there is microbial life on Titan?," but I didn't want to sound too negative; ha! Anyway, Titan is the largest of Saturn's many moons. What makes Titan unique, is that it is the only moon in our Solar System that has an atmosphere. It is not a good place for life as we know it, since the surface temperature is known to only warm up to -290 degrees Fahrenheit! Dang, here I was thinking that zero degrees was cold on Earth. When I hear stuff like that, it makes places like Greenland and Antarctica not sound quite as bad... Yikes!

So what is all the hoopla and ballyhoo about? Well, Titan's atmosphere is rich in some chemicals that are part of the equation that formulates life on Earth, but that isn't saying a whole hell of a lot. They say that this particular moon has the materials needed for the formation of living cells, yet the debate still rages on whether or not Titan could support life. That is where I lose interest, as wondering if some tiny speck on some distant moon or planet could possibly have a few batches of bacteria running loose or a small gathering of microbial life beneath the surface, doesn't interest me in the slightest. Who cares, right? I think I'd be more interested in just talking about the, uh, planet Saturn or perhaps about the amazing rings that surround it?

Other moons that have been mulled over, when concerning the possibility of microbial life via geothermal means, underground lakes, etc., are a couple of Jupiter's moons called Europa and Io. Anyway, unless they spot a couple space monkeys or some weird creatures running around, I couldn't care less! LOL!

Update: Well, it has been over 6 years since I originally posted this so I'm about to check for any new developments about microbial life or any type of lifeforms for that matter, on Titan. Let's see if Saturn's most famous moon has been busy lately, uh... Well, space.com says "no" and phys.org says "if there is life there, it is not life as we know it." Several other websites all seem to say the same thing. Good grief, do all of these websites just plagiarize each other to death? Anyway... 

There is a section on "Life on Titan - Wikipedia" under the 'surface temperature' heading that says that Titan may become warmer in the future. Except for what is in parenthesis, it says: "5 to 6 billion years from now, as the Sun becomes a red giant (how convenient), surface temperatures could rise to -70 Celsius (which would equal -94 degrees Fahrenheit - which is still way below zero), high enough for stable oceans of a water-ammonia mixture to exist on its surface. As the Sun's ultraviolet output decreases, the haze in Titan's upper atmosphere will be depleted, lessening the anti-greenhouse effect on its surface and enabling the greenhouse effect created by atmospheric methane to play a far greater role. These conditions together could create an environment agreeable to exotic forms of life, and will persist for several hundred million years. (It then begins to compare Earth as having a similar time frame to start life during its ancient past.) Although the presence of ammonia on Titan could cause the same chemical reactions to proceed more slowly." 

Yep. I'm done with this microbial life conversation... Ha-ha! If it ever is possible from that place, it sounds like the lifeforms would be so bizarre when compared to our carbon-based life we are familiar with on Earth. Hell, you'd be better off reading my post "Is Silicon-based life possible?" from another blog. At any biological rate, adios amigos!

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Image Credit: It is in the Public Domain because it was solely created by NASA.

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