"Saturn: Some Essential Ingredients for Life"
by Sarah Kaplan
If you were going to cook up life on another world, Titan is the place to do it.
Saturn’s largest moon is rich with carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen - elements required by all living organisms on Earth. It has two types of wet ingredients - an ocean of water underground and lakes of liquid methane on the surface. And it’s flush with energy - just one of those methane lakes could power every U.S. home for 300 years.
Researchers have now detected two more potentially important ingredients for making aliens: a compound that can form a membrane like the kind that envelops cells, and long chains of carbon atoms that may be “universal drivers” for the chemistry that precedes life.
It’s as though scientists have walked into a cosmic kitchen and found the oven has been preheated to 350 degrees and the flour and eggs are mixed together, said Sarah Hörst, a professor of planetary science at Johns Hopkins University. “But you weren’t there when they got mixed, so you don’t know what they got mixed up to do. You don’t know what will happen when you bake it,” she said.
1 of 2
Question
Use the passage to answer the question.
Analyze the use of the word Titan in the passage. In 3–5 sentences, explain its denotation and connotation and tell why the name is appropriate for Saturn’s moon.
(4 points)