Year: 2018-19
Siba Prasad Gouda
School: Atomic Energy Central School, OSCOM
Grade: 7
"Titan, the largest moon of Saturn and the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere. It is the second largest moon in our solar system. Other than Earth it is the only known object in space where clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid have been found. Its atmosphere is largely nitrogen, which the plants need to make proteins. There are surface features similar to Earth.
There is Methane in Titan’s atmosphere which is a greenhouse gas, which we can use to raise the temperature from much lower like -179.2°C to nearly about -169.2°C. We the humans are expert in increasing the global temperature and we can use the methane to run rovers, fuel rockets, jets, airplanes and can make the atmosphere warm enough for us to live in just 200 years.
Its composition is half ice and half rocky material. There are mineral containing rocks on Earth as well as on Titan there must be minerals. It contains 97% nitrogen, methane 2.7±0.1% and hydrogen 0.1-0.2%. There is ice, hydrogen and liquids on surface and subsurface which means there must be oxygen on Titan which is a good sign. We can plant more and more plants so that there will be plenty of oxygen for us. It also has anti-green house effect which will make it sustainable for life for many years. The problem which we face on Earth i.e. global rise in temperature will not be faced by us on Titan.
Acrylonitrile or vinyl cyanide is present there which is possibly essential for life by being related to cell membrane. For reaching Titan as early as possible we can use the rockets with speed of 40,000 km/h, a little more than the speed of NASA’s Apollo 10 mission capsule.
“We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening. Some of us let great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them, nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which always comes to those who sincerely hope their dreams will come true.” - Woodrow Wilson.
This idea of the presence of life on Titan struck my mind when I knew that there is ice, methane, hydrogen and liquid on Titan. When I saw Marvel Avengers: Infinity War (2018), I thought that there must be some form of life which we don’t even know about. That life can be in form of bacteria or protozoa or amoeba or some other new type of living organism which we have never seen on our very own planet Earth."
