Does a kraken live in the Kraken Sea? What life forms might we find on Titan? The giant kraken is a terrifying monster What a kraken looks like

In the dark uncharted sea waters at great depths live mysterious creatures, from ancient times terrifying seafarers. They are secretive and elusive, and are still poorly understood. In medieval legends, they are represented as monsters attacking ships and drowning them.

According to the sailors, they look like a floating island with huge tentacles that reach the peak of the mast, bloodthirsty and ferocious. In literary works, these creatures received the name "kraken".

The first information about them is found in the Viking chronicles, which speaks of huge sea monsters attacking ships. Also, there are references to the kraken in the works of Homer and Aristotle. On the walls of ancient temples you can find images of a monster that dominates the sea. Over time, references to these creatures have decreased. However, by the middle of the 18th century, the world again remembered the storm of the seas. In 1768, this monster attacked the English whaling ship "Arrow", the crew and the ship miraculously escaped death. According to the sailors, they encountered a "small living island."

In 1810, the British ship Celestina en route from Reykjavik to Oslo encountered something up to 50 meters in diameter. It was not possible to avoid the meeting, and the ship was badly damaged by the tentacles of an unknown monster, so they had to return back to the port.

In 1861, the Kraken attacked the French ship Adekton, and in 1874 sank the English Pearl. However, despite all these cases, the scientific world considered the giant monster to be nothing more than fiction. Until in 1873 he received material evidence of its existence.

On October 26, 1873, English fishermen in one of the bays discovered some huge and supposedly dead sea animal. Wanting to find out what it was, they swam up to it in a boat and poked it with a hook. In response to this, the creature suddenly came to life and grabbed the boat with tentacles, wanting to drag it to the bottom. The fishermen managed to fight back and get a trophy - one of the tentacles, which was transferred to the local museum.

A month later, another octopus 10 meters long was caught in the same area. This is how the myth became reality.
Previously, the likelihood of encounters with these deep-sea inhabitants was more real. However, in recent years, almost no one has heard about them. One of the latest events associated with these creatures dates back to 2011, when the American yacht Zvezda was attacked. Of the entire crew and people on board, only one person was able to survive. The tragic story of Zvezda is the last known incident of a collision with a giant octopus.

So what exactly is this mysterious ship hunter?

Until now, there is no clear idea to what species this animal is attributed, scientists consider it to be a squid, an octopus, and a cuttlefish. This deep-sea dweller reaches several meters in length, presumably some individuals can grow to gigantic sizes.

Its head has a cylindrical shape with a chitinous beak in the middle, with which it can bite into a steel cable. The eyes reach 25 cm in diameter.

The habitat of these creatures stretches across the entire World Ocean, starting its way from the deep waters of the Arctic and Antarctica. At one time it was believed that their habitat was the Bermuda Triangle, and it was they who were responsible for the mysterious disappearances of ships in this place.

Kraken hypothesis

Where this mysterious animal came from is still not known. There are several theories about its origin. That this is the only creature that survived the ecological catastrophe of the "times of the dinosaurs." That it was created during the experiments of the Nazis at the secret bases of Antarctica. That, perhaps, this is a mutation of an ordinary squid, or even an extraterrestrial intelligence in general.

Even in our time of advanced technology, little has been studied about the kraken. Since no one saw them alive, all individuals exceeding 20 m were found exclusively dead. In addition, despite their enormous size, these creatures successfully avoid taking photographs and videos. So the search for this deep-sea monster continues ...

Marine life is very diverse and at times frightening. The most bizarre forms of life can lurk in the abyss of the seas, because humanity has not yet been able to fully explore all the expanses of water. And sailors have long had legends about a mighty creature that is capable of flooding an entire fleet or convoy with just its appearance. About a creature whose appearance is terrifying, and the size makes you freeze in amazement. A creature like no other in history. And if the sky above the world belongs and, the earth under your feet belongs to the Tarascans, then the vastness of the seas belongs to only one creature - the kraken.

What does a kraken look like

To say that the kraken is huge would be an understatement. For centuries, the kraken, resting in the abyss of waters, can reach simply unthinkable sizes of several tens of kilometers. He is truly huge and terrible. Outwardly, it is somewhat similar to a squid - the same oblong body, the same tentacles with suction cups, all the same eyes and a special organ for movement under water using air traction. But the size of a kraken and a regular squid is not even close to comparable. The ships that disturbed the Kraken's peace during the Renaissance were drowned by a single tentacle strike on the water.

The Kraken is referred to as one of the most terrifying sea monsters. But there is someone to whom even he is obliged to obey. In different nations, it is called differently. But all the legends say the same thing - this is the God of the seas and the lord of all sea creatures. And no matter what you call this super creature - one of his orders is enough for the kraken to throw off the shackles of a hundred-year dream and do what he was instructed to do.

In general, a certain artifact is often mentioned in the legends, which gave a person the ability to control the kraken. This creature is by no means lazy and absolutely harmless, unlike its owners. A kraken without an order can sleep for centuries, or even millennia, without disturbing anyone with its awakening. And it can change the appearance of an entire coast in a few days, if its peace is disturbed or if an order was given to it. Perhaps among all creatures, the kraken has the most power, but also the most peaceful character.

One or many

It is not uncommon to find mentions that many such creatures are in the service of the sea god. But to imagine that this is true is very difficult. The enormous size of the kraken and its strength make it possible to believe that this creature can be on different ends of the earth at the same time, but it is very difficult to imagine that there are two such creatures. How terrifying can be the battle of such creatures?

In some epics, there are references to battles between the krakens, which suggests that to this day, in these terrible battles, almost all krakens died, and the sea God commands the last survivors. A creature that does not produce offspring, free in nutrition and rest, has reached such enormous dimensions that one can only wonder how hunger has not yet driven it to land and why researchers have not yet met it. Perhaps the structure of the kraken's skin and tissues makes it impossible to detect it and the creature's hundred-year sleep hid it in the sands of the seabed? Or maybe there is a depression in the ocean where the researchers have not yet looked, but where this creature rests. We can only hope that even if it is found, the researchers are smart enough not to awaken the anger of the millennial monster and not try to destroy it with any weapon.

Perhaps the most famous sea \u200b\u200bmonster - kraken. According to legends, he lives off the coast of Norway and Iceland. There are different opinions about how he looks. Some describe it as a giant squid, others as an octopus. The first handwritten mentions of the kraken can be found in the Danish bishop Erik Pontoppidan, who in 1752 wrote down various oral legends about it. Initially, the word "kgake" was used to describe any deformed animal that was very different from their own kind. Later it passed into many languages \u200b\u200band began to mean precisely "the legendary sea monster."

In the writings of the bishop, the kraken appears as a crab fish, which is huge in size and is capable of dragging ships to the bottom of the sea. Its size was truly colossal; it was compared to a small island. Moreover, it was dangerous precisely for its size and the speed with which it sank to the bottom. From this, a strong whirlpool appeared, with which it destroyed ships. The kraken spent most of the time hibernating on the seabed, and then a huge number of fish swam around it. Some fishermen allegedly even took risks and threw nets right over the sleeping kraken. It is believed that the kraken is to blame for many sea disasters.
In the opinion of Pliny the Younger, the remora covered the ships of the fleet of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, which served to some extent to defeat him.
In the XVIII-XIX centuries. some zoologists have suggested that the kraken may be a giant octopus. The natural scientist Karl Linnaeus, in his book "The System of Nature", created a classification of real-life marine organisms, into which he also introduced the kraken, presenting it as a cephalopod. A little later, he struck it out.

In 1861, a piece of the body of a huge squid was found. Over the next two decades, many remains of similar creatures were also found on the northern coast of Europe. This was due to the fact that the temperature in the sea changed, which forced the creatures to rise to the surface. According to the stories of some fishermen, the carcasses of sperm whales caught by them also had marks that resemble giant tentacles.
Throughout the XX century. repeated attempts were made to catch the legendary kraken. But it was possible to catch only young individuals, whose growth in length was about 5 m, or only parts of the bodies of larger individuals came across. Only in 2004, Japanese oceanographers photographed a rather large individual. Before that, for 2 years they followed the routes of sperm whales that eat squid. Finally, they managed to bait a giant squid, whose length was 10 m. For four hours, the animal tried to escape
· 0 bait, and oceanographers made about several names of photographs, which show that the squid has very aggressive behavior.
Giant squids are called architeutis. To date, not a single live individual has been caught. In several museums, you can see the burial of the preserved remains of individuals that were found already dead. So, in the London Museum of Quality History, a nine-meter squid preserved in formalin is presented. A seven-meter squid is available to the general public in the Melbourne Aquarium, frozen in a piece of ice.
But could even such a giant squid harm ships? Its length can be more than 10 m.
Females are larger than males. Squid weight reaches several hundred kilograms. This is not enough to damage a large ship. But giant squids are predatory, so they can still harm swimmers or small boats.
In the movies, giant squids pierce the skin of ships with tentacles, but in reality this is impossible, since they are devoid of a skeleton, so they can only stretch and tear their prey. Outside aquatic environment they are very helpless, but in the water they have sufficient strength and can resist marine predators... Squids prefer to dwell on the bottom, rarely appear on the surface, but small individuals can jump out of the water to a sufficiently large height.
Giant squids have the largest eyes among living creatures. Their diameter reaches more than 30 cm. The tentacles are equipped with strong suction cups, the diameter of which is up to 5 cm. They help to firmly hold the prey. The bodies and Lu of the giant squid contain ammonium chloride (noshatyr alcohol), which preserves its zero honor. True, such a squid could not be eaten. All these features allow some scientists to believe that the legendary kraken may be just a giant squid.

On the left side of the image, you can see a mosaic of images taken by the Cassini spacecraft in the near infrared range. The picture shows the polar seas and reflected from their surface sunlight... Reflection is located in the southern part of the Kraken Sea, the largest body of water on Titan. This reservoir is not filled with water, but with liquid methane and a mixture of other hydrocarbons. On the right side of the image, you can see images of the Kraken Sea taken by Cassini's radar. The Kraken is the name of a mythical monster that lived in the northern seas. This name, as it were, hints at what hopes astrobiologists associate with this mysterious alien sea.

Could there be life on Saturn's great moon Titan? This question forces astrobiologists and chemists to be very careful and creative in understanding the chemistry of life and how it might differ on other planets from the chemistry of life on Earth. In February, a team of researchers from Cornell University, including chemical engineering graduate student James Stevenson, planetary scientist Jonathan Lunin, and chemical engineer Paulette Clancy, published a groundbreaking paper that suggests that living cell membranes can form in the exotic chemical environment present on this amazing satellite.

In many ways, Titan is Earth's twin. It is the second largest satellite in Solar system, he more planet Mercury. Like the Earth, it has a dense atmosphere, the pressure of which is slightly higher at the surface than on Earth. Apart from Earth, Titan is the only object in our solar system with accumulations of liquid on its surface. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered an abundance of lakes and even rivers in the polar regions of Titan. The largest lake or sea, called the Kraken Sea, is larger than the Caspian Sea on Earth. From observations made by the spacecraft and the results of laboratory experiments, scientists have established that many complex organic compounds are present in the atmosphere of Titan, from which life is built.

Looking at all this, one might get the impression that Titan is an extremely livable place. The name "Kraken", as the mythical sea monster was called, reflects the secret hopes of astrobiologists. But Titan is an alien twin of the Earth. It is almost 10 times farther from the sun than Earth, and its surface temperature is chilling -180 degrees Celsius. As we know, water is an integral part of life, but on the surface of Titan it is as hard as rock. The water ice is there, it's like the silicon rocks on Earth that form the outer layers of the earth's crust.

The liquid that fills the lakes and rivers of Titan is not water, but liquid methane, most likely mixed with other substances, such as liquid ethane, which are present on Earth in a gaseous state. If life is found in the seas of Titan, then it is not like our ideas about life. It will be a completely alien form of life for us, whose organic molecules are dissolved not in water, but in liquid methane. Is this possible in principle?

A team from Cornell University explored one key part of this tricky question by considering the possibility of cell membranes in liquid methane. All living cells, in fact, are a system of self-sustaining chemical reactionsenclosed in a membrane. Scientists believe that cell membranes appeared at the very beginning of the history of the emergence of life on Earth, and their formation, perhaps, was the first step towards the origin of life.

Here on Earth, everyone knows about cell membranes from the school course in biology. These membranes are made up of large molecules called phospholipids. All phospholipid molecules have a head and a tail. The head is a phosphate group, where a phosphorus atom is bonded to several oxygen atoms. The tail, on the other hand, consists of one or more strands of carbon atoms 15 to 20 atoms long, to which hydrogen atoms are attached on each side. The head, due to the negative charge of the phosphate group, has an uneven distribution of electrical charge, therefore it is called polar. The tail, on the other hand, is electrically neutral.

On Earth, cell membranes are composed of phospholipid molecules dissolved in water. Phospholipids are based on carbon atoms (gray), plus they also include hydrogen (sky blue), phosphorus (yellow), oxygen (red), and nitrogen (blue) atoms. Due to the positive charge given by the choline group containing the nitrogen atom and the negative charge of the phosphate group, the head of the phospholipids is polar and attracts water molecules. Thus, it is hydrophilic. The hydrocarbon tail is electrically neutral and therefore hydrophobic. The structure of the cell membrane depends on the electrical properties of phospholipids and water. Phospholipid molecules form a double layer - hydrophilic heads in contact with water from the outside, and hydrophobic tails look inward, connecting with each other.

These electrical properties of phospholipid molecules determine how they behave in aqueous solution. If we talk about the electrical properties of water, then its molecule is polar. Electrons in a water molecule are more attracted to an oxygen atom than to two hydrogen atoms. Therefore, on the side of the two hydrogen atoms, the water molecule has a small positive charge, and on the side of the oxygen atom, it has a small negative charge. Such polar properties of water force it to be attracted to the polar head of the phospholipid molecule, which is hydrophilic, and at the same time to repel from non-polar tails, which are hydrophobic.

When phospholipid molecules dissolve in water, the combination of the electrical properties of both substances causes the phospholipid molecules to form a membrane. The membrane encloses itself in a small sphere called a liposome. Phospholipid molecules form a bilayer two molecules thick. Polar hydrophilic molecules form the outer part of the membrane bilayer, which contacts water on the inner and outer membrane surfaces. The hydrophobic tails are connected to each other in the inner part of the membrane. Although the phospholipid molecules remain stationary relative to their layer, while their heads look outward and their tails inward, the layers can still move relative to each other, giving the membrane the sufficient mobility that life needs.

The bilayer phospholipid membranes are the basis of all cell membranes on earth. Even by itself, a liposome can grow, reproduce itself and facilitate certain chemical reactions necessary for the existence of living organisms. This is why some biochemists believe that liposome formation was the first step towards the emergence of life. In any case, the formation of cell membranes should have occurred at an early stage of the origin of life on Earth.

On the left is water, a polar solvent made up of hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) atoms. Oxygen attracts electrons more strongly than hydrogen, so the molecule on the hydrogen side has a positive net charge, and the oxygen side has a negative net charge. Delta (δ) denotes a partial charge, that is, less than a whole positive or negative charge. On the right is methane, the symmetrical arrangement of hydrogen atoms (H) around the central carbon atom (C) makes it a non-polar solvent.

If life on Titan exists in one form or another, be it a sea monster or (most likely) microbes, then they will not do without cell membranes, like all life on Earth. Can double-layer phospholipid membranes form in liquid methane on Titan? The answer is no. Unlike water, the electric charge of a methane molecule is evenly distributed. Methane does not have the polar properties of water, so it cannot attract the heads of phospholipid molecules. Phospholipids need this opportunity to form the earth's cell membrane.

Experiments were carried out during which phospholipids were dissolved in non-polar liquids near the earth room temperature... Under these conditions, phospholipids form a "reverse" bilayer membrane. The polar heads of phospholipid molecules connect to each other in the center, being attracted by their charges. The non-polar tails form the outer surface of the “reverse” membrane in contact with the non-polar solvent.

Left - phospholipids are dissolved in water, in a polar solvent. They form a bilayer membrane, where the polar, hydrophilic heads face the water, and the hydrophobic tails face each other. Right - phospholipids are dissolved in a non-polar solvent at earth's room temperature, under such conditions they form a reverse membrane when the polar heads are facing each other and the non-polar tails are facing outward towards the non-polar solvent.

Could living organisms on Titan have a reverse phospholipid membrane? The Cornell team concluded that such a membrane is not habitable for two reasons. First, at cryogenic temperatures of liquid methane, phospholipid tails become rigid, thereby depriving the formed reverse membrane of any mobility necessary for the existence of life. Second, two key constituents of phospholipids, phosphorus and oxygen, are most likely absent from Titan's methane lakes. In their search for cell membranes that might exist on Titan, the Cornell team needed to go beyond their familiar high school biology course.

Although phospholipid membranes have been ruled out, scientists believe any cell membrane on Titan will still look like a reverse phospholipid membrane obtained in a laboratory. Such a membrane will consist of polar molecules connected to each other due to the difference in charges dissolved in non-polar liquid methane. What kind of molecules could they be? For answers, the researchers turned to data obtained from Cassini and from laboratory experiments, during which the chemical composition of Titan's atmosphere was recreated.

It is known that Titan's atmosphere has a very complex chemical composition. It mainly consists of nitrogen and methane in a gaseous state. When the Cassini spacecraft analyzed the composition of the atmosphere using spectroscopy, it was discovered that traces of a wide variety of compounds of carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen, called nitriles and amines, were present in the atmosphere. The researchers simulated the chemical composition of Titan's atmosphere in a laboratory setting by exposing a mixture of nitrogen and methane to energy sources that mimic Titan's sunlight. The result is a broth of organic molecules called tholins. They are composed of hydrogen and carbon compounds, that is, hydrocarbons, as well as nitriles and amines.

Researchers at Cornell University have identified nitriles and amines as potential candidates for the basis for the formation of titanium cell membranes. Both groups of molecules are polar, which allows them to combine, thereby forming a membrane in non-polar liquid methane due to the polarity of the nitrogen groups that make up these molecules. They concluded that suitable molecules must be much smaller than phospholipids in order for them to form mobile membranes at the temperatures of liquid methane. They looked at nitriles and amines containing chains of 3 to 6 carbon atoms. The groups that contain nitrogen are called nitrogen groups, which is why the team called the titanian analog of liposome "nitrogenosome."
It is expensive and difficult to synthesize nitrogenosomes for experimental purposes, since experiments must be performed at cryogenic temperatures of liquid methane. However, since the proposed molecules have already been well studied in other studies, the Cornell University team felt it warranted to turn to computational chemistry to determine if the proposed molecules could form a movable membrane in liquid methane. Computer models have already been successfully used to study our familiar cell membranes from phospholipids.

It was found that acrylonitrile could become a possible basis for the formation of cell membranes in liquid methane on Titan. It is known to be present in the atmosphere of Titan at a concentration of 10 ppm, plus it was synthesized in the laboratory while simulating the effect of energy sources on Titan's nitrogen-methane atmosphere. Since this small, polar molecule is capable of dissolving in liquid methane, it is a candidate for a compound that can form cell membranes under the conditions of alternative biochemistry on Titan. Blue - carbon atoms, blue - nitrogen atoms, white - hydrogen atoms.

Polar acrylonitrile molecules line up heads to tails, forming membranes in non-polar liquid methane. Blue - carbon atoms, blue - nitrogen atoms, white - hydrogen atoms.

Computer simulations carried out by our team of researchers have shown that some substances can be excluded because they will not form a membrane, be too rigid, or form solids. However, modeling has shown that some substances can form membranes with suitable properties. One such substance was acrylonitrile, the presence of which in the atmosphere of Titan at a concentration of 10 ppm was discovered by Cassini. Despite the huge difference in temperature between cryogenic nitrogenosomes and liposomes at room temperature, simulations have shown that they have strikingly similar stability and mechanical response properties. Thus, cell membranes suitable for living organisms can exist in liquid methane.

Computational chemistry simulations show that acrylonitrile and several other small polar organic molecules containing nitrogen atoms can form "nitrogenosomes" in liquid methane. Azotosomes are small spherical membranes that resemble liposomes formed from phospholipids dissolved in water. Computer simulations show that acrylonitrile-based nitrogenosomes will be both stable and flexible at cryogenic temperatures in liquid methane, giving them the properties they need to function as cell membranes for hypothetical Titanian living organisms or any other organisms on the planet with liquid methane on the surface. ... The azotosome in the image is 9 nanometers in size, which is roughly the size of a virus. Blue - carbon atoms, blue - nitrogen atoms, white - hydrogen atoms.

Scientists at Cornell University are looking at the findings as a first step towards demonstrating that life in liquid methane is possible and developing methods for detecting such life on Titan by future space probes. If life in liquid nitrogen is possible, then the following conclusions go far beyond the boundaries of Titan.

In the search for conditions suitable for life in our galaxy, astronomers usually look for exoplanets whose orbits are within the habitable zone of a star, which is determined by a narrow range of distances within which the temperature on the surface of an earth-like planet will allow liquid water to exist. If life in liquid methane is possible, then stars should also have a methane habitable zone - an area where methane on the surface of a planet or its satellite can be in a liquid phase, creating conditions for the existence of life. Thus, the number of habitable planets in our galaxy will increase dramatically. Perhaps on some planets, methane life has evolved into complex forms that we can hardly imagine. Who knows, maybe some of them even look like sea monsters.