The habitability of Titan’s subsurface water ocean
Meeting #2 – Bern – January 15-20, 2023
Sunday 15 January
7:30 pm : Dinner at Luce
Monday 16 January
9:30 am – 10:00 am Introduction (Christophe) – list of studies/papers
10h – 12h – Theme 1:
- Mike (inventory of organics)
- Klara (transport from melt pool to the ocean);
12:30 to 2:00 pm Lunch
2:00-2:15 Discussion about the abundances of ethane and also the organics
2:15 Brainstorming on terrestrial analogs (Conor) – Use the board to define the potential terrestrial analogs that mimic astrobiological region of interest on Titan (/process that we want to elucidate)
2:30 Catherine (transport from surface to the melt pool)
3:30 Break
3h45 Kendra (dissolution of tholins/organics in water) – role of ammonia in producing AAs from …
4:30 Audrey (composition and structure of laboratory tholins)
5:00 Theme 2 ‘from interior to the ocean’ (Kelly, Mohit, Christophe, Klara)
6:00 End of Day 1
7:30 pm: Dinner @ Restaurant Anker (https://restaurant-anker.ch/)
Tuesday 17 January
9-10:30 Theme 2 – list of questions and tasks to be performed
11-12:30 Theme 3
12:30-2:00 pm : Lunch
2:00-6:00 Breakout sessions / homework
- Catherine, Mike, Michel: concentration of organic material into the melt that gets entrained into the melt pool –
- Kendra and Audrey: solubility of tholins in water: SOM and IOM composition and structure
- Krista & Klara: circulation in the ocean
- Conor & Rosaly: terrestrial analogs
- Kelly, Mohit & Christophe: flux from the interior (cf list of questions that Kelly wrote down)
- Klara & Christophe: melt production rate at the RC/HPice interface
- Antonin, Pete, Charles: demand versus fluxes for the development of living organisms (rephrase the topic(s) after the morning presentations
6:30 Restaurant Beaulieu (https://www.restaurantbeaulieu.ch/)
Wednesday 18 January
9:00-10:30
- Mike Malaska: KISS workshop: life detection in planetary habitats
- Update on the 7 breakout sessions
11:00-12:30 Working time on papers
12:30-2:00 pm Lunch
Afternoon break
7:30 Dinner Roschtigrabe
Thursday 19 January
9:00-12:30 : Working time on papers
12:30-2:00 pm Lunch
2:00 pm Photography
2:15-5:00 pm List of papers
- Catherine
- Conor
- Antonin and Pete
- Kelly
- Christophe (synthesis for the fluxes into the ocean)
List of studies coming out from discussions during ISSI
- Circulation (Krista)
- Tholin reactions in water (Kendra)
- Lifetime and evolution of impact induced melt pool on Titan (Klara)
- Effect of pressure on the conditions of an hydrothermal vent / subduction zones for the circulation of water
Discussion on journals – Astrobiology, Space Science Review, Icarus, PSJ, JGR
19h15: Restaurant Kornhauskeller (https://kornhaus-bern.ch/)
Friday 20 January
9:00-10:30 working time on papers
10:30-11:00 Break
11:00-12:30 Plans for telecons, completion of the papers, meeting at conferences
Open access journal – Astrobiology is preferred, PSJ is an option
ISSI web site to collect the papers
Conferences
DPS-EPSC
Cryobiology conference – Minneapolis, July – https://cryo2023.com/
Highlights: sedimentary, impact melts, glycine metabolism, it is challenging, Titan’s ocean is sterile – calculate the concentration if all the Titan organic aerosols go into the ocean, application to exoplanets that have an atmosphere similar to Earth.
Overview paper: Application to early earth? What should be the conditions that could take advantage of the organics produced in the atmosphere.
Ethane-clathrate production to produce subduction and plate tectonics – application to exoTitans –
Goal of the overview paper – only surface or go deeper –
12:30-1:00 pm conclusions C. Sotin
1:00 pm – End of meeting #2