Little is known how four billion years ago, life emerged on Earth out of a pre-biotic ""soup"" featuring complex organic molecules.
Saturn's moon Titan is believed to resemble the pre-biotic Earth, because the large distance from the Sun has ""deep frozen"" its development state similar that of the early Earth.
Tholins are a slush of complex organic molecules that instruments on the Huygens probe detected in Titans atmosphere. In a French laboratory experiments are now underway to recreate tholins in a Titan-like gas mixture...to ultimately understand how complex organic molecules--and which ones--might have been present in our own Earth's pre-biotic atmosphere.
The shot list is posted under http://television.esa.int/photos/ACFB3F7.pdf
A WMV preview file is online under http://esatv-movies.e-vision.nl/videos/mphi/titan_s_tholins_12-06-06.wmv

Understanding Titan's tholins
00:00:40 Titan, Saturn's largest satellite, is the only body in our solar system to have a dense atmosphere. It has long fascinated astronomers and planetary scientists, imagining the complex chemistry this world-like moon was harbouring. Ground based observations, and the first Voyager fly-by had revealed a nitrogen and methane-dominated atmosphere, suitable for the formation of many carbon-rich compounds.
00:01:08 Clip François Raulin, Title: Huygens interdisciplinary scientist, University of Paris XII ""Sur Terre cette chimie du carbon a du conduire à la vie, sur Titan cette chimie du carbon elle doit conduire à des materiaux complexes, materiaux carbonés, dont on ne connait pas bien actuellement la nature."" [""On Earth, this carbon chemistry led to life, on Titan it should have prompted the creation of complex elements, carbon compounds whose precise composition we don't yet understand.""]
00:01:21 Visiting Titan became a key objective in spa