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rfmcdonaldWill Baird reports that both Titan and Enceladus are worlds of note for astrobiologists. He wonders if "the most common life bearing world might be the ice encrusted moon rather than the terrestrial world. Maybe I shouldn't joke. It might be true. Makes for an interesting change to the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox."
Myself, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the Solar System is full of life, with organisms floating in Venus' upper atmosphere, remnant life on Mars buried deep in that world's warm crust, other ecologies in the water and ammonia-water subsurface oceans of the larger gas giant moons, and who knows what else elsewhere (life in the atmospheres of gas giants, in asteroidal crusts, in Kuiper belt objects and comets?). The discovery of extremophile organisms on Earth--microbes capable of tolerating extremes of temperature and pressure--suggests that if life can get started in a reasonably clement environment it will find a way to persist.
None of these worlds, of course, are as hospitable as Earth. Life might be everywhere, but when we begin pointing our telescopes out to peer at terrestrial planets in other planetary systems in a decade's time we'll find that Earth is unique. Only here, perhaps, would our ancestors have had access to the resources--abundant water, a dense atmosphere, a warm climate--that let them evolve into more complex organisms, like human beings.
Myself, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the Solar System is full of life, with organisms floating in Venus' upper atmosphere, remnant life on Mars buried deep in that world's warm crust, other ecologies in the water and ammonia-water subsurface oceans of the larger gas giant moons, and who knows what else elsewhere (life in the atmospheres of gas giants, in asteroidal crusts, in Kuiper belt objects and comets?). The discovery of extremophile organisms on Earth--microbes capable of tolerating extremes of temperature and pressure--suggests that if life can get started in a reasonably clement environment it will find a way to persist.
None of these worlds, of course, are as hospitable as Earth. Life might be everywhere, but when we begin pointing our telescopes out to peer at terrestrial planets in other planetary systems in a decade's time we'll find that Earth is unique. Only here, perhaps, would our ancestors have had access to the resources--abundant water, a dense atmosphere, a warm climate--that let them evolve into more complex organisms, like human beings.
