http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/could-new-life-form-lurk-on-titan-saturns-biggest-moon/19506592

I thought aliens came from Mars..

Ha I read this In yahoo news but I did'nt think it be much to make a thread. I'm a huge fan of space so this is gotten my interest but they say it might have nothing to do with aliens. And should this be in the news thread?

it could be a news thread I guess... I'll move it there in a sec.

As for the story, this is interesting from a biological point of view. Something that might consume hydrogen instead of oxygen as fuel. Opens the possibilities for liveable planets in the universe. Maybe there is life out there that lives off of nitrogen too....

I agree, who says that life on other planets needs to use oxygen? There's a lot of life on THIS planet that doesn't need oxygen, though they are very small organisms. Come to think of it, even we can metabolize without oxygen, but it is a very inefficient process and we wouldn't live long on that alone. The oxygen is used as an electron acceptor in part of our metabolic process because it has a relatively strong affinity for them, but who's to say other molecules cant be used? And who says they even need water? Ammonia has many of the important properties of water. As for carbon, it's relatively stable and can bond with up to 4 other atoms at once, allowing for large, complex molecules to form. Silicon is larger, and thus a little less stable, but can also bond to 4 other atoms.

We keep looking for life assuming it's going to function exactly like us. Truth be told, they may be similar or very different.

It's actually a lot more likely that life from another planet would use another gas. The reason that oxygen is a vital part of earth's life is because the life on earth grew around the atmosphere. If there are other gases on other planets, the theoretical life on those planets will need those gas(es) to survive.

Theres only one way to find out..

Take a lightspeed spaceship and get to Titan.

I doubt this is real. No scientest with half a brain would release this information. It would cause mass chaos and stuff like that, just like if 2012 were to be real, wich is also fake cause people wouldn't relese our experation date.

megarevolution1 : says "No scientest with half a brain would release this information. It would cause mass chaos and stuff like that"
Well in alot of these cases the scientist writes a paper, they generally dont just go releasing information to the public.
What's more likely is some reporters friend told them about a research paper and so they made the article.
I also dont understand why it would cause choas, I suppose it might amongst people that think mankind is superior or something but I would welcome friendly alien visitors.
And hostile ones? I would probally sell you all out to join them if they were reasonable creatures and were more advanced (considering if they came here, that is probally a safe bet) lol

I'd be beyond surprised if Titan housed aliens with comparable intelligence to humans. I reckon since out of however many animals their were on this planet, and we are the only ones that I'm aware of that are capable of speech, and techonolgy and stuff, (I know parrots can say words, but they don't exactly have much depth to their thought processes) that I just figure that by law of averages we are a freak accident in this solar system.

I am not discounting the possibility of alien invader types from a distant galaxy however, as the Universe is too vast for us to be the only ones. Although I have a hard time believing that they are capable of deep space travel unless they are made up of something that wouldn't be destroyed after attaining light speed and beyond, unless they found a way to attain or just so happen to have an absurd life span.

Although 20 years ago I would have a hard time believing that us humans would be able to invent "This Internet thing", so I can't completely disregard it, my feeble human mind just can't comprehend matter being able to sustain itself in space for that length of time.

I'd have an easier time accepting "ghost" like lifeforms traveling through space, in that they would be more of a pure energy type of being, if that makes any sense.

I have all sorts of strange theories, so don't mind me.

Megarevolution, did you even bother to read the article? I ask the same of DH and MH.

As to the article, the idea of methane-based lifeforms is an interesting one, though I agree that there is probably a more likely non-biological explanation of the depletion of hydrogen on Titan, but is really neat to think about. But yeah, they have be theorizing about life on Titan for years now, and numerous papers and studies have been written about it. Not once has the idea of it caused a panic. Ever.

Elara : No I didnt read it, but then again all I was saying was that alot of news articles about things are not made by scientists and that scientists dont do things to make people panic.
Really, your post just backs up what I said in a way, there have been papers on this sorta stuff for years, so it's not like reporters dont do what I said