Was just
selling some exploration data to Universal Cartographics over the
weekend when a large score for a system caught my eye. I checked back
on the map and found that I had received 17750 credits for finding
Ammonia-based life.
I've
been wondering since then what this life could be like. I read
theories about ammonia seas on Titan quite a few years ago, but this
planet is in the Goldilocks Zone, albeit it is a bit cold with a surface
temperature of 235k or -38 Celsius, which translates to Antarctica or a
Martian Summer, but this is the temperature at which ammonia behaves
like a liquid.
I
do not believe that any ammonia based life could evolve past simple
cellular organsims. The heat of vaporization of ammonia is only half
that of water and its surface tension only one third as much.
Consequently, the hydrogen bonds that exist between ammonia molecule are
much weaker than those in water so questions hang over how well ammonia
could hold pre-biotic molecules together sufficiently well to allow the
formation of a self-reproducing system like DNA. I could see perhaps
seas of floating masses of the ammonian equivalent of algae - but not
much more than that.
Still life is life, and it paid me 17k :-)
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