A study led by Western astrobiologist Catherine Neish shows the subsurface ocean of Titan—the largest moon of Saturn—is most likely a non-habitable environment, meaning any hope of finding life in the icy world is dead in the water.
This discovery means it is far less likely that space scientists and astronauts will ever find life in the outer solar system, home to the four 'giant' planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
The identification of life in the outer solar system is a significant area of interest for planetary scientists, astronomers and government space agencies like NASA, largely because many icy moons of the giant planets are thought to have large subsurface oceans of liquid water. Titan, for example, is thought to have an ocean beneath its icy surface that is more than 12 times the volume of Earth's ocean.
Source: https://phys.org
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