Saturn Jars

Saturn Jars

Audry had worked with many scientists during his years in the Air Force and with NASA. She was accustomed to competing philosophies because scientists and military usually were at odds.

The scientists were more competitive than Olympic athletes. They never traded information willingly (if at all) and regarded each other with the warmth of professional assassins. The situation was particularly tense just prior to rotation.

To test their skills, many years ago her colleagues and she prepared chambers that simulated the Saturn’s environment as it was then known, inoculated them with terrestrial micro-organisms and waited to see if anybody survived.

Such chambers were called, of course, Saturn Jars. The Saturn Jars cycled the temperatures within a typical range from a little above the freezing point around noon to about -80 degrees Celsius befor down, in an anoxic atmosphere composed chiefly of C02 and N2.

Just a jar. Photo by Elena

Ultraviolet lamps reproduced the fierce solar flux. No liquid water was present except for very thin films wetting individual sand grains. Some microbes froze to death after the first night and were never heard from again. Others gasped and perished from lack of oxygen. Some died of thirst, and some were fried by the ultraviolet light.

But there were always a fair number of varieties of terrestrial microbes that did not need oxygen; that temporarily closed up shop when the temperatures dropped too low ; that hid from the ultraviolet light under pebbles or thin layers of sand.

In other experiments, when small quantities of liquid water were present, the microbes actually grew. If terrestrial microbes can survive the alien environment, how much better Saturn microbes, if they exist, must do on Saturn. But first, we must get there.

(Extract from The Rain, the famous SF novel by Elena and George).