Space Time Stories

Space and Time Travel Stories. A Science Fiction Blog By Sean O'Brien

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  • Too cold for life

    May 22nd, 2010 · No Comments

    Speculation about life on Titan or other cold worlds is misguided because the chemical reaction rates are simply too slow.

    All chemical reactions have a rate.  That rate has an exponential dependence on temperature as described by the Arrhenius equation.

    rate = A exp (-Ea/kT)

    Ea is the activation energy, k is Boltzmann’s constant, T is the temperature, A is the pre-exponential factor

    Chemical activation energies are best measured in electron-volts or eV.  Typical values are between 1 and 3 eV, usually closer to 2.0.  The ground temperature on Titan is around 94 oK or -179 oC.

    Thus a chemical reaction on Titan would be roughly 73 orders of magnitude slower than the same reaction on Earth (298 oK).  So a reaction which takes a microsecond on Earth would require 10^60 years on Titan. (That’s 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years).

    Pre-exponential factors for chemical reactions have a certain value which represents steric  effects.  They cannot be 60 orders of magnitude larger because molecular geometry is not that pliable.

    Traditional chemical reaction based life is impossible on Titan or any other location where the temperature is so far below 298 oK.

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