David Grinspoon Quote
Titan’s upper atmosphere is a nonstop factory of complex organics, which both shroud this world in its permanent smoggy haze and snow down on the icy surface. There they gather in vast dune fields that blow around in the nitrogen winds and dissolve in the methane lakes. The presence of all these organics on Titan resembles our picture of the primordial Earth and the conditions that led to the origin of life. It seems to present a freeze-dried portrait of a crucial lost phase in our own biological origin story. This is one reason we astrobiologists are obsessed with Titan. Another is the fascinating and complex climate balance. Like
David Grinspoon
Titan’s upper atmosphere is a nonstop factory of complex organics, which both shroud this world in its permanent smoggy haze and snow down on the icy surface. There they gather in vast dune fields that blow around in the nitrogen winds and dissolve in the methane lakes. The presence of all these organics on Titan resembles our picture of the primordial Earth and the conditions that led to the origin of life. It seems to present a freeze-dried portrait of a crucial lost phase in our own biological origin story. This is one reason we astrobiologists are obsessed with Titan. Another is the fascinating and complex climate balance. Like