NASA finds Titan's lakes may be creating vesicles with primitive cell walls

I like the "vesicle first" theory because planar sheets of reaction can form perturbations, so getting from two surfaces mixing to complex shapes and enclosures feels plausible given any significant vibration or wave.

Once you have an enclosure you have potential for osmosis and other differentials across the boundary. It's not life Jim, but it's one hell of a building block/precursor.

The linked paper is open access: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journa...

Among other things, it contains details on what amphiphiles might actually be present on Titan, a very nice set of diagrams explaining their proposed process, and proposals for lab experiments to verify whether the process is possible. I've had a soft spot for the vesicle-first theory of abiogenesis since I first heard of it, so I hope someone runs the experiments. But as far as I can tell, this is all theoretical so far.

We finally founds aliens and it's boring AF.