Life on Titan?
NASA scientists have discovered a potential building block for life in the nitrogenrich atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Using radio telescopes based in Chile, they identified millions of pounds of vinyl cyanide in the orange haze surrounding the moon. Scientists speculate this molecule may be “hitching a ride” on methane that rains down from clouds above Titan and accumulates in the liquid hydrocarbon lakes on the moon’s surface—similar to the water cycle on Earth. Titan’s atmosphere has only traces of oxygen, and its surface temperature is a chilly minus-290 degrees Fahrenheit. But laboratory simulations reveal that even under these harsh conditions, vinyl cyanide could self-assemble into stable, flexible cell membrane–like structures, dubbed azotosomes. “Titan has unique and weird chemistry,” planetary scientist Sarah Hörst tells NationalGeographic.com. “All the evidence we have so far suggests there’s a possibility for it to be doing a lot of things we think are necessary for life to exist.”
70,000 healthy Danish adults who were surveyed about their health and drinking habits between 2007 and 2012. During that period, nearly 1,750 of the participants developed diabetes. The people who drank alcohol at a moderate rate were significantly less likely to develop the disease: Men who consumed 14 drinks a week had a 43 percent lower risk than teetotalers; women who had nine drinks a week had a 58 percent reduced risk. How often the alcohol was consumed made a difference: Participants who drank three to four days a week were about 30 percent less likely to develop diabetes than those who drank less than once a week. And wine, which contains chemicals that help manage blood sugar, appeared to be more beneficial than beer. Lead author Janne Tolstrup cautioned that the possible benefits of moderate drinking may well be outweighed by the potential health risks. “Alcohol is associated with 50 different conditions,” she tells BBC.com. “We’re not saying, ‘Go ahead and drink.’”
winds consisting of gas particles from the supernova explosion, these atoms can travel across the universe at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per second to another galaxy— which can then “steal” the material. It was previously thought galactic winds weren’t powerful enough to transfer a significant amount of mass from one galaxy to another. But this new analysis finds that the Milky Way absorbs about one sun’s worth of “star stuff” each year. In a very real sense, says co-author Daniel Anglés-Alcázar, “we are extragalactic visitors or immigrants in what we think of as our galaxy.”