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NASA finds evidence of life-supporting conditions on Saturn’s moon Enceladus

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V

Vagabundo

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LargeNarrowGlowworm.gif
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H

Huw_Dawson

Member
Basically they have found hydrogen gas being ejected from Enceladus, and they have noticed similar plumes of water or similar being ejected from Europa at a similar hotspots.

In terms of Enceladus, this finding means that we now know it has similar building blocks that support life in our own deep, sunless oceans.
 
O

Ovid

Member
Watching now.

What did I miss so far?

Huw_Dawson said:
Basically they have found hydrogen gas being ejected from Enceladus, and they have noticed similar plumes of water or similar being ejected from Europa at a similar hotspots.

In terms of Enceladus, this finding means that we now know it has similar building blocks that support life in our own deep, sunless oceans.
Click to expand...

Cool.
 
A

Afrikan

Member
I just hate that we have to wait so long to discover. 2020s for next Europa trip? :(

Just for more tests? :(

Still love and appreciate their work.

I'll just rely on films (Interstellar) and what's left of my mid 30's imagination...for my fix.

Oh yes and VR. :)
 
G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Rest of the article here.

Two veteran NASA missions are providing new details about icy, ocean-bearing moons of Jupiter and Saturn, further heightening the scientific interest of these and other "ocean worlds" in our solar system and beyond. The findings are presented in papers published Thursday by researchers with NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn and Hubble Space Telescope.

In the papers, Cassini scientists announce that a form of chemical energy that life can feed on appears to exist on Saturn's moon Enceladus, and Hubble researchers report additional evidence of plumes erupting from Jupiter's moon Europa.

"This is the closest we've come, so far, to identifying a place with some of the ingredients needed for a habitable environment," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at Headquarters in Washington. "These results demonstrate the interconnected nature of NASA's science missions that are getting us closer to answering whether we are indeed alone or not."

The paper from researchers with the Cassini mission, published in the journal Science, indicates hydrogen gas, which could potentially provide a chemical energy source for life, is pouring into the subsurface ocean of Enceladus from hydrothermal activity on the seafloor.

The presence of ample hydrogen in the moon's ocean means that microbes - if any exist there - could use it to obtain energy by combining the hydrogen with carbon dioxide dissolved in the water. This chemical reaction, known as "methanogenesis" because it produces methane as a byproduct, is at the root of the tree of life on Earth, and could even have been critical to the origin of life on our planet.

Life as we know it requires three primary ingredients: liquid water; a source of energy for metabolism; and the right chemical ingredients, primarily carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. With this finding, Cassini has shown that Enceladus - a small, icy moon a billion miles farther from the sun than Earth - has nearly all of these ingredients for habitability. Cassini has not yet shown phosphorus and sulfur are present in the ocean, but scientists suspect them to be, since the rocky core of Enceladus is thought to be chemically similar to meteorites that contain the two elements.
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T

TheRealTalker

Banned
Now we just hope for the ability of chemical evolution occurring there is order to have microbial life

that or other planet seeding before the planet froze
 
S

spekkeh

Banned
sphinx said:
yeah but it's like Black Holes in the late 80's, science pointed towards them existing. and they are there.

everything in the current research points at microbial life in enceladus..

connect the dots
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Which dots? I'm not seeing it. There's no lightning, like in Urey Miller, no UV light that penetrates that deep, either you believe these vents create bacteria, or they should have arrived before the crust froze over.
Which, without knowing that much about Enceladus, I'm assuming happened very early in its life.
 
C

CrimzonSamurai

Member
Razorback PT said:
Science still has no theory for the origin of life. There's no way of measuring if the possibility of finding it elsewhere is high or not.
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There's an equation for the probability, at least for intelligent life, but unfortunately you need to find at least 1 other civilization before you can plug that specific variable in.

I told my teacher math was useless.
 
T

TheRealTalker

Banned
CrimzonSamurai said:
There's an equation for the probability, at least for intelligent life, but unfortunately you need to find at least 1 other civilization before you can plug that specific variable in.

I told my teacher math was useless.
Click to expand...

yes for probabilities and what not with our limited scope and understanding but for chemical compounds turning into biological ones is unknown to us

hence why I for one believe that planetary seeding would be a more likely cause to propagate microbial life
 
O

old manatee

Banned
I don't even want to find aliens anymore. We're going to find Donald Trump's home planet out there, and it will be just crawling with billions of Donald Trumps, just rutting in the mud with other Donald Trumps, their bellies swollen with little Donald Trumps that will eventually eat their way out. No news is good news in 2017.
 
T

TheRealTalker

Banned
The Exploder said:
I don't even want to find aliens anymore. We're going to find Donald Trump's home planet out there, and it will be just crawling with billions of Donald Trumps, just rutting in the mud with other Donald Trumps, their bellies swollen with little Donald Trumps that will eventually eat their way out. No news is good news in 2017.
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I vividly pictured that

thanks
 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
65 km deep ocean? That's like 6x our deepest part.
 
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