Last week we examined the possibility of life on Neptune, and it didn’t look like a good candidate; despite having considerable amounts of frozen water under the surface (and the valuable biosignature methane), it’s still a frozen, ammonia-seeping gas giant on the far edge of the solar system. But what about its largest moon, Triton?
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wriUZ8J0Ofw[/embed]
There are several factors that make Triton a better candidate for life than Neptune:
- It’s a rocky moon, not a gas giant.
- It’s geologically active, which means that it could contain a liquid underground ocean.
- We already know that the surface of Triton is coated, in part, with frozen water.
- We also know that the surface of Triton is partially coated in frozen methane, which can be evidence of life.
Triton, the seventh-largest moon in the solar system, is about twice the diameter of Pluto. Exploring it for subsurface water is a difficult task for many reasons—one of them being that we need to devise a way to look for life without potentially destroying it—but before we give up on the possibility of extraterrestrial life in our solar system, Triton belongs on the shortlist.