With the Cassini-Huygens Mission in orbit around Saturn, the large moon Titan, with its reducing atmosphere, rich organic chemistry, and heterogeneous surface, moves into the astrobiological spotlight. Environmental conditions on Titan and Earth were similar in many respects 4 billion years ago, the approximate time when life originated on Earth. Life may have originated on Titan during its warmer early history and then developed adaptation strategies to cope with the increasingly cold conditions. If organisms originated and persisted, metabolic strategies could exist that would provide sufficient energy for life to persist, even today. Metabolic reactions might include the catalytic hydrogenation of photochemically produced acetylene, or involve the recombination of radicals created in the atmosphere by ultraviolet radiation. Metabolic activity may even contribute to the apparent youth, smoothness, and high activity of Titan's surface via biothermal energy.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 24. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 15 December 2022.
All research outputs
#1,905,194
of 32,013,898 outputs
Outputs from Astrobiology
#374
of 1,525 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#3,198
of 92,028 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Astrobiology
#2
of 6 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 32,013,898 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 94th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,525 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 41.5. This one has done well, scoring higher than 75% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 92,028 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 6 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 4 of them.
