Enceladus May Hand Future Spacecraft Ready-Made Evidence of Life
Promising discoveries about the potential for life on one of Saturn’s icy moons
Planetary scientists at Freie Universität Berlin have published two studies in Science Advances that make Enceladus a far more promising place to hunt for life. One shows the moon's ice plumes slowly freeze and fragment ocean droplets, naturally separating and concentrating salts and organics into individual grains. The other finds that a methane-producing archaeon can thrive under simulated Enceladus ocean conditions, even at pH 10–11. Together, they suggest planned missions could detect biosignatures with existing technology.
Enceladus actually does a lot of the work for us in preparing samples for analysis that usually take a lot of effort in chemical labs on Earth.
- I_dream_of_Geni
OK... Serious question here: we find "life" (algae?) on one of Saturn's moons or one of Jupiter's moons. So, we spend ~$50 Billion (arguably much more) and find "life". So? Why is this important to people? There isn't one chance in (place your own word here) that we can do anything about it or even send humans there. Seriously want to know what people really think...
- jibal
> In fact, spacecrafts already in planning could be used to identify evidence of life there much easier than previously thought, should it exist.
But there's no reason to think that it does.