Big craters are the best for life on Titan, according to a study

According to a study, large craters on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, are the prime locations for searching the bricks of life. With the help of images and data from the Cbadini spacecraft and the Huygens spacecraft, scientists led by Catherine Neish of the University of Western Ontario in Canada focused on the best places to look for biological molecules on the surface of Titan. Abundant carbon-rich molecules (hydrocarbons) that have been shown to form amino acids, the building blocks of proteins necessary for life, when exposed to liquid water in laboratory simulations. However, Titan is far too cold for liquid water to be present on the surface. Cbadini's radar measurements, which orbited Saturn for 13 years, were able to scrutinize Titan's optically thick atmosphere, revealing the terrain of this enigmatic world.

The Cbadini radar instrument unveiled lakes, dunes, mountains, river valleys and few craters, indicating that there are processes that resurface Titan and either fill or erode older craters. The discovery of a world similar to Earth more than nine times its distance from the Sun was monumental, researchers said.

Although methane lakes appeared to be the obvious choice for finding signs of life, researchers found craters and cryovolcans (areas where liquid water gushes under Titan's icy surface) to be the two most attractive places. Both features are promising for melting Titan's ice crust in liquid water, a necessary step to form complex biomolecules.

"When we mix tholins (organic products when simple gas mixtures are subjected to cosmic radiation) fast," said Morgan Cable from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the United States. "So anyway where there is liquid water on or near the surface of Titan could generate the precursors of life – biomolecules – that would be important to life as we know it, "said Cable