Scientists have found something even stranger in the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan. It’s not aliens, but it’s a bit like them.
There is a very rare carbon-based molecule that can only live on Earth in a lab because it reacts so quickly. It has only ever been found in the vastness of space, floating in clouds of dust and gas where the particles are too far apart for it to react with anything.
NASA researchers have found the elusive C3H2 molecule, also called cyclopropenylidene, in the atmosphere of Titan. This is the first time that C3H2 has been found in the atmosphere of a planet. It is also the kind of molecule that can make up the backbone of DNA. So, it’s not aliens, but it might be.
Researchers found C3H2 by using a radio telescope in northern Chile called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). They found C3H2 by filtering through the telescope’s spectrum of unique light signatures. The energy that molecules in Titan’s atmosphere gave off or took in showed what chemicals were in its atmosphere.
The article about the research has been put out in The Astronomical Journal. You can learn more about this find here.
