Saturn's moon Enceladus is a new place to find alien life, says study

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A mix of saltwater and ice grains erupt from geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus
A mix of saltwater and ice grains erupt from geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus

New Delhi : It’s been four years now that scientists are looking for life in the Enceladus, a Saturn’s moon. Way back in 2015, astronomers spotted a massive saltwater ocean hidden beneath the icy crust of Enceladus. And now a new study on this very subject has given high hopes to find alien life out there.

The data collected from a deceased spacecraft helped an international team of astronomers to discovered complex organic (carbon-containing) molecules, the building blocks of life, spewing from Enceladus. This new finding has been described in a paper which is published online on June 27 in the journal Nature. It study makes the small icy moon the most promising place beyond Earth to find life in the solar system.

“Enceladus’ subsurface ocean is a habitable place. The big question is if it is inhabited," Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and the study’s lead author, told NBC News MACH in an email.

 

However, it’s too early to conclude that life exists on Enceladus, the sixth-largest of Saturn’s 62 confirmed moons. But scientists are intrigued because liquid water, a source of energy and organic molecules are three key ingredients to support life and all the three molecules has been traced in Enceladus,

“We now know that Enceladus’ ocean has all of these ingredients, today,” Christopher Glein, a geochemist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and a co-author of the study, told MACH in an email. “Besides Earth, no other place in the solar system has confirmed evidence of all three requirements in a contemporary environment that can support life.”

Experts think these organic compounds originates in core part of Enceladus and then flow into the sub-surface ocean via hydrothermal vents, before absconding through cracks in the icy crust of the moon.

Also, earlier, scientists had detected methane and other simple organic compounds in Enceladus’ plumes. These molecules contain one or two carbon atoms and a few atoms of hydrogen. But the newly detected molecules are made up of hundreds of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, all arranged in rings and long chains.

“Large organic molecules are a necessary precursor for life, so this is encouraging,” Postberg said.

The data that led to the discovery was obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which spent 13 years orbiting Saturn and its moons before NASA ended the mission in September 2017 by intentionally driving the investigation into the ringed planet.

For now, researchers are now keen to send a space investigation to explore the icy moon up close and determine the origins of the molecules and to find if Enceladus host life or not.