User:MoonstoneKnight/sandbox

Titan
Titan is the largest known satellite of Saturn and the second largest satellite in the Solar System after Ganymade. It was discovered by Christiaan Huygens in the year 1655. Titan is an extremely good attraction for scientists around the world and also has attracted me because it is the only known world besides our earth to have stable liquid bodies and a natural precipitation cycle like the Earth, and also a dense nitrogen-rich atmosphere. But, instead of having water in the liquid bodies, Titan has got lakes of hydrocarbons, especially methane and ethane. Titan arouses the curio of many scientists as it has got many processes similar like the Earth. A dense orange haze covers Titan fully, while clouds of hydrocarbons may appear at times. The rain and wind create surface features similar like our Earth; it is also dominated by seasonal changes. Titan's surface is frigid and its temperature is 176°K (-97°C). But, its interior may still be hot and there may be a liquid layer consisting of a "magma" of water and ammonia. The presence of ammonia allows water to remain a liquid at extremely low temperatures. Another interesting fact about Titan is the possibility of existence of life where organisms would live on the lakes of liquid methane instead of water. Such creatures would inhale hydrogen in place of oxygen, metabolise it with acetylene instead of glucose and exhale methane instead of carbon dioxide. Although all living beings on Earth use liquid water as a solvent, it is speculated that life on Titan might instead use liquid methane or ethane. Water is a much stronger solvent than methane. However, water is also more chemically reactive and can break down large organic molecules through hydrolysis. A life form whose solvent was a hydrocarbon would not face the risk of biomolecules being destroyed this way. Despite these biological possibilities, there are formidable obstacles to life on Titan, and any analogy to Earth is inexact. At a vast distance from the sun, Titan is frigid and its atmosphere lacks CO2. At Titan's surface, water exists only in a solid form. Because of such difficulties scientists have viewed Titan less likely habitat for life, than as an experiment for examining theories on the condition that prevailed prior to the appearance of life on Earth. But the existence of life may become favourable in the future. As the sun would become a red giant after five billion years from now, the frozen ice might melt to form water and then aquatic organisms may reside in it and later evolve to form terrestrial organisms. For such reasons Titan is an attraction to many scientists and thus has even attracted me. After all these years of research, Titan still remains to be a mystery.