A NASA planetary scientist tasked with discovering life in our solar system’s ‘Ocean Worlds’ has put forward the idea that a strange form of alien life lives on Titan, the Earth-like moon that revolves around Saturn.
Dr Amanda Hendrix, the co-lead of the NASA Roadmaps to Oceans World Group, said her program may represent the greatest chance of discovering alien life in our solar system, and she believes Titan could be their best shot.
“We need to understand whether these oceans are habitable and, if so, whether these oceans actually host life,” she told the Express.
Saturn’s moon is the second largest in the entire solar system and is home to surface liquid and dust storms. Hendrix claims that Titan’s conditions make it a strong contender for hosting life and, while she doesn’t believe there are “aliens with green heads swimming around in there,” the scientist said she does think the ocean worlds could harbor some “simple lifeforms.”
“Titan is a very unique ocean world because it has both an ocean at the subsurface and it also has liquid hydrocarbon lakes on the surface,” the scientist explained.
“So there could be some crazy form of methane-based life right there on Titan’s surface.”
Aside from Titan, there are at least two more worlds that could play host to a form of life. These other contenders are Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, and Europa, the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter.