Quote:
Originally Posted by Thor
I think your facts are slightly old, but you might be right about hope for Titan. I'm pretty sure the one with the most hope now is Europa, I saw a discovery doc on the topic and it seemed to fit a number of key ingredients for some basic life, the most important it the ocean under the thick ice which would be a reasonable temperature and the friction from its orbit causing a warming in its core.
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Not to nitpick, (especially since I might be wrong) but aren't tidal forces from Saturn considered to be a more likely source of heating than friction from it's orbit? I'm not sure how closely Europa orbits Saturn or whether it 's orbit passes through the rings, but one would think you'd have to have a pretty serious density of material to create non-trivial heating of Europa's atmosphere via friction, let alone the sub-ice oceans.