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Project Progress

Deputy Principal Investigator Jonathan Lunine has explored the question of whether life is a common outcome of physical and chemical processes in the universe. Within our own solar system, a successful search for even primitive life, were it to have an origin independent from life on Earth, would dramatically advance a positive answer. The most stringent test for a second independent origin of life would come from examination of either the most physically remote from Earth, or the most exotic type, of planetary environments in which one might plausibly imagine a form of life could exist. Based on work by Co-Investigator Steven Benner, Lunine has advanced the idea that Saturn’s moon Titan is the best such target in our solar system. He calculated the regions around stars of different spectral types where objects like Titan might exist (the equivalent of the habitable zone, but for liquid methane). He went on to argue that the higher abundance of cool M dwarfs relative to stars like the Sun, and the quiescence of the 1 AU region around main sequence stars, makes Titan-like environments of keen interest in the characterization of extrasolar planets.