The Titan Project is a new direction for our group which has involved the study of the organic chemistry of Saturn's large moon, Titan. Ion and photochemistry in the dense upper atmosphere of this object produces large quantities of organic aerosols, dubbed tholins. These tholins fall to the 100K surface and providing the organic feedstock for subsequent hydrolysis or oxidation chemistry. The development of this chemistry, its potential role in prebiological processes on Titan are of particular interest. The work in our group involves laboratory generation of tholin analogues and the determination of physical characteristics and chemical reactivity of this complex material. Short term goals are associated with providing interpretive insight into the Cassini-Huygens mission data coming back in early 2005 as well as to provide design input for a new Titan surface probe containing the instrumentation for a potential follow-on mission to probe directly the Titan surface chemistry. This work is in collaboration with scientists at the UA Planetary Science Department, Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

     The Smith group's Chimera project has been featured on the University of Arizona's website in UANEWS.ORG: 
"A Bit of Titan on Earth Helps in the Search for Life's Origins" by Lori Stiles and more recently, "Zapping Titan-Like Atmosphere with UV Creates Life Precursor" by Mari Jensen.

Recent papers from our Titan group

Complex Organic Carbon on Abiotic Solar System Bodies: Titan as a model (in window below)

Complex Organic Carbon on Abiotic Solar System Bodies: Titan as a model (as downloadable PDF)