Imagining Titan: creating an otherworldly molecular mineral on Earth

December 19, 2019 7:10 AM

Morgan Cable crafts alien environments in miniature. She can stir up a shot-glass-size lake, unleash gentle spritzes of rain, and whip up other wonders to mimic the bizarre surface of Saturn’s moon Titan. In this far-flung world, temperatures plunge hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit below zero, and rivers of liquid methane and ethane sculpt valleys into a frozen landscape of water ice. “We can, in a way, touch Titan here in the lab—even though it’s millions of miles away,” says Cable, who is a scientist in the Astrobiology and Oceans Worlds Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. New kind of alien 'mineral' created on Earth (National Geographic, with a spiffy virtual sphere of Titan)

The full report: A Co-Crystal between Acetylene and Butane: A Potentially Ubiquitous Molecular Mineral on Titan (ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, November 15, 2019)

More on Titan's mineralogy, petrology, and exobiology:
Titan mineralogy: A window on organic mineral evolution (embedded preview/pre-publication article/PDF on Researchgate)

Every planet and moon experiences mineral evolution—a change in the diversity and distribution of minerals through bil-lions of years of physical, chemical, and (in the case of Earth) biological processes (Zhabin 1981; Hazen et al. 2008; Hazen and Ferry 2010). A question often pondered in this context is whether minerals exist somewhere in the cosmos that are not found on Earth? As Maynard-Casely et al. (2018) have elegantly shown, one needs look no farther than Saturn’s moon Titan for the answer—a resounding “Yes!”
...
As Maynard-Casely et al. emphasize, the study of organic crystal chemistry and phase equilbria at modest pressures and cryogenic conditions—the experimental petrology of Titan—is in its infancy. Consequently, we can anticipate the discovery of many new plausible Titan minerals—as yet unknown carbon-bearing crystalline phases that must surely occur on countless cold, carbon-rich worlds throughout the cosmos—and possibly life.

#LPSC2018: Titan Is Terrific!

The Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) is always madness. Once upon a time, I was able to dash off numerous blog posts in teeny bits of time snatched between sessions, but that was a younger me. I think it was also a less busy time in planetary science, with fewer missions. Now there’s an embarrassment of riches and I hardly know where to begin. So I’ll spin the wheel of possible LPSC session topics, and: Titan! I’ll talk about Saturn’s moon Titan.

posted by filthy light thief (12 comments total)

Not to derail the mineralogy news too much with the prospect of life on Titan, but there is a very, very high chance of life in the oceans of Europa. All the ingredients are there: liquid-phase water in abundance, favorable chemistry, and plenty of nice, tidal-churned heat energy. I would be more than mildly surprised if there were no life around the (very likely) deep-sea vents on Europa. It may be little more than unicellular, but I'd put money on something being there...

And so Titan is the place we just might find something alive that's far more alien and un-Earthlike. Liquid-phase methane and ethane, plenty of ammonia and acetylene type compounds, an underground liquid-phase water ocean? A lot less energy, but the chemistry is quite favorable, and what kind of slow life, living in a wholly different thermo-chemical regime from Earth, just might live there?

I think the prospect of new and strange mineralogy is very likely (virtually assured based on this new research), and new and completely alien life is... plausible. Though I'd rank this as sort of the opposite of Europa in the very, very unlikely range, plausibility is not trivial.

Life not existing anywhere on Europa would surprise me. Life existing on Titan would definitely surprise me, but it would also mean life will be almost literally everywhere in the universe that has even the most marginally favorable conditions.
posted by tclark at 7:46 AM on December 19, 2019 [4 favorites]

> the eventual launch of NASA’s Dragonfly mission, a dual-quadcopter

God dammit. Can I have my English language back please?
posted by 7segment at 8:15 AM on December 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

Right, because "rotary-wing autonomous flying machine with four rotary wings where each rotary wing consists of two propellers" is just so pithy.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:20 AM on December 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

Renderings on Astonomy.com make it look like the term isn't incorrectly used. It looks to me like the quadcopter has an upper and lower layer of propellers.

But otherworldly mineralogy -- awesome, right? /underail?
posted by filthy light thief at 8:22 AM on December 19, 2019

Octocopter just sounds scary.
posted by Mogur at 8:25 AM on December 19, 2019 [7 favorites]

I think we all know what the real question is here: can we set Titan on fire?
posted by aramaic at 8:47 AM on December 19, 2019 [2 favorites]

I hope, I believe, that in the next ten years one of these probes will discover life elsewhere. Even just little unicellular things. I feel like that will mark a significant philosophical shift in a significant portion of humanity. (Not everyone, of course.) But I think the knowledge will accelerate the shift towards a better society. Put paid to the idea that all of this shit is here for us, rather than we're all just meaningless lucky fucks that exist just because of an energy gradient. I'm okay with that. It confirms that there is no such thing as moral superiority. We're all in it together. And reducing the suffering of other beings is the highest purpose we can achieve.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:16 AM on December 19, 2019

"hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit below zero". Seeing real scientists quoted in archaic units still makes me chuckle. You know, Titan is 242,880,000 rods away from Earth.
posted by mdoar at 9:27 AM on December 19, 2019 [3 favorites]

I hope, I believe, that in the next ten years one of these probes will discover life elsewhere. Even just little unicellular things. I feel like that will mark a significant philosophical shift in a significant portion of humanity. (Not everyone, of course.) But I think the knowledge will accelerate the shift towards a better society.

I like your optimism.

Failing that, we could just rain baby squid down around the world, and unite people against an uncertain extraterrestrial threat.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:02 AM on December 19, 2019

I'm sad that interplanetary space travel will not happen in my lifetime, but grateful that other scientists and engineers work so hard to bring all of us little glimpses of what things might be like on these fascinating worlds.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:52 AM on December 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is interesting! I have picked up just enough about mineralogy to know that I know just about squat about it, but I'm curious how established the idea of deliberately exploring specific extraterrestrial conditions for mineral growth and formation is. Like, certainly folks have been manipulating crystal growth conditions for scientific and commercial purposes for a long time, but it does seem the parameter space to work in must be pretty huge once you combine temperature, pressure, seed elements, chemical context. I wonder if the idea of starting with "let's simulate this alien environment for its own sake", rather than "lets try and produce/refine this specific product", is relatively unexplored territory or if the news here is more that Titan-like conditions just hadn't gotten much attention yet.

I found this line from the National Geographic article a little confusing:

The new substance doesn’t precisely fall under the common definition of an earthly mineral, since it still requires confirmation that it can form in nature. Instead, it is technically known as a co-crystal.

Just so far as that "Instead" seems to imply that it would not be called a co-crystal if/when it were shown to be producible under terran conditions. Which, odds are good I'm not understanding the terminology correctly and maybe there is e.g. a specific distinction between naturally occurring mineral compounds and synthetically produced two-substance co-crystals? Or maybe it's just a little messy or the writing there is a little dodgy. I don't know enough to know.
posted by cortex at 1:50 PM on December 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

Not about the minerals, but watching Huygens' view of its descent and landing on Titan (SLYT, best with sound off for me) always gives me a thrill of wonder at what humans can do.
posted by anadem at 8:50 PM on December 19, 2019 [1 favorite]