{"id":116002,"date":"2020-11-18T08:24:18","date_gmt":"2020-11-18T16:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/weird-molecule-detected-on-titan-has-never-been-found-in-any-atmosphere"},"modified":"2020-11-18T08:24:18","modified_gmt":"2020-11-18T16:24:18","slug":"weird-molecule-detected-on-titan-has-never-been-found-in-any-atmosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/weird-molecule-detected-on-titan-has-never-been-found-in-any-atmosphere","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Weird\u2019 Molecule Detected on Titan Has Never Been Found in Any Atmosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/weird-molecule-detected-on-titan-has-never-been-found-in-any-atmosphere.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/titan\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Titan\">Titan<\/a>, the already pretty weird moon of Saturn, just got a little bit weirder. Astronomers have detected cyclopropenylidene (C3H2) in its atmosphere \u2014 an extremely rare carbon-based molecule that\u2019s so reactive, it can only exist on Earth in laboratory conditions.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, it\u2019s so rare that it has never before been detected in an atmosphere, in the Solar System or elsewhere. The only other place it can remain stable is the cold void of interstellar space. But it may be a building block for more complex organic molecules that could one day lead to life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe think of Titan as a real-life laboratory where we can see similar chemistry to that of ancient Earth when life was taking hold here,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/feature\/goddard\/2020\/nasa-scientists-discover-a-weird-molecule-in-titan-s-atmosphere\">said astrobiologist Melissa Trainer<\/a> of NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center, one of the chief scientists set to investigate the moon in the upcoming Dragonfly mission launching in 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Titan, the already pretty weird moon of Saturn, just got a little bit weirder. Astronomers have detected cyclopropenylidene (C3H2) in its atmosphere \u2014 an extremely rare carbon-based molecule that\u2019s so reactive, it can only exist on Earth in laboratory conditions. In fact, it\u2019s so rare that it has never before been detected in an atmosphere, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}